Yes, that’s true. Which is why we have gpl violations and organizations to enforce conformance. Thanks for sharing your opinion.
If you need a good chuckle today, go to http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/21491599 and watch from 10:00 to 15:00 .
The subject is the midday meal, in a way that I’ve not seen Bhikkhu Bodhi before.
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Gosh, I would have liked to have a good chuckle today. Unfortunately, as I run Linux in all my computers, the site doesn’t let me play the video. It seems that it requires a Flash version that cannot be satisfied on my Linux boxes. That’s sad. Another instance of proprietary technologies getting in the way of people’s sharing knowledge on the Internet. And the subject of meals in Buddhist practice is one that interests me a lot.
Thanks for sharing the video with the community anyway, @AnagarikaMichael. It was nice of you to think of that.
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Lovely to see a fellow open-source-er here! There is of course the old Flash plugin for Linux, but it is long deprecated. I think, these days, Apple and Android also don’t support flash, and Firefox auto-blocks it. Why anyone still uses it for video is a mystery to me. Even Adobe is trying to put an end to it. Hopefully someone will port these videos to a modern format.
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Long live Free, Libre, Open Software and Creative Commons, Bhante.
I did try to play the video on Chrome and Firefox with the updated Linux plugin (version 24), but it didn’t work. (I only run Chrome because of DRM restrictions; I’m a Firefox user and I stand for an Open Web).
As you rightly point out, Flash is being deprecated. It poses huge security risks for users and it should only be used if strictly necessary.
Indeed, Banthe. Hopefully, they will be updated to open formats that can be played on any browser on any device.
On the subject of licensing, I remember you saying on one of the Dhammanet Sutta Talks that you are going to translate the Pali Canon into English and release it under one of the Creative Commons licenses. That’s a huge undertaking, Bhante. I can’t thank you enough for making your work freely available, so that other people can use it and freely distribute it without running into any copyright issues. That truly helps spread the Dhamma. We may not be able to do anything about what’s been done in the copyright area in the past, but we can try to make sure that our work on the things we hold dear are freely and openly available.
I look forward to reading your Pali Canon translations into everyday English–I’ve already read your MN 10 translation and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. Thanks again.
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Indeed, i am well into the project now, it has been very exciting. To be clear, I can’t recall if I ever said it would be under a CC licence, but in any case, it will be CC0, i.e. effectively dedicated to the Public Domain. Technically, I am not sure if this is a licence, but anyway that’s a legal distinction.
And that is exactly what we’re doing here!
I just heard the sad news that, it seems, the new Madhyamagama translation will, contrary to previous policy, not be usable at SC. It seems we shall have to re-translate this as well.
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It works for me on both Chrome and Firefox on Scientific Linux, but I have various extra codecs enabled…
Anyway, the audio is available here (unless you don’t use mp3…):
http://www.noblepath.org/audio.html
Direct link: http://www.noblepath.org/BB/20120331MN070-a.mp3
Bhikkhu Bodhi really is a hoot at times… 
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Wow, a monk who is a FOSS advocate.
I have been using and working with Free/Open Source software almost exclusively for a long time. My day job for a while was working on the mainline Linux kernel…
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If I’m misquoting you, that’s not my intention, Bhante. I’ve been doing some research on licensing lately and I watched those talks some time ago. I think my mind just slipped. 
If I misquoted you, I’m deeply sorry. It was never my intention to do that.
Thanks for releasing the translations under the CC0. That’s a truly free license.
That is geek cred right there. I am in awe!
But yes, we are all strong advocates of FOSS, in software as well as in Dhamma.
One of the things that the FOSS world has shown us in software is that, thanks to people like yourself, we can use a free OS that is as good, if not better, than the proprietary examples. I want to do the same thing with the Buddhist texts. The free versions of the suttas should not be second-class, just relegated to obsolete and unwanted cast-offs. Rather, the free and open versions should be the very best, a showcase of the love and care that we bring to the Dhamma.
The Buddhist world has always been built from FOSS principles, even if we didn’t call it that. It’s time we reclaimed our heritage.
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:-(((( What happenned?
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Thanks a lot for sharing the audio, @mikenz66! I do run some extra multimedia codecs on Xubuntu and Ubuntu MATE. I don’t really know what’s happening (and that’s a subject for the distro forum or the IRC channel 
).
I did listen to the passage that @AnagarikaMichael suggested. You made my day. I think I 'd never heard a monk laugh so hard (except perhaps from Ajahn Brahm when he tells his bad jokes). It’s great to hear people laugh.
Thanks for sharing and being such a welcoming community with noobs. It means a lot to me.
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Yes, that’s certainly the case in computing and typesetting.
Here’s a graph of OSs used on supercomputers: March 2013 – Microcosmopolitan ironically, Linux made it pointless for most companies to maintain their Unix software…
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Apparently they changed their minds.
As is stated in the file itself:
dBET_T0026_MadhyamaAgama1_2013.pdf (3.2 MB)
The first volume has already been released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
As licencors are repeatedly warned about on the Creative Commons website, such licences are irrevocable. The page above, which is the link given in the file the publishers provide, says:
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Neverthless, the publishers, according to the report I have received, have decided to revoke this irrevocable licence and to refuse permission for others, including SC, to reuse the text in the manner that they themselves granted.
This might sound incredible, but in fact it is quite common. I can think of several other similar examples off the top of my head.
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Nice graph!
Since most webservers, and the vast majority of phones/tablets, not to speak of much of the so-called Internet of Things, all run on Linux, we are in the somewhat unprecedented position of having a predominance, bordering on monopoly, of open source in all forms of computing—except for desktops.
To me, this is such an amazing validation of the notion of the commons. Every day, every time someone uses a digital device, they are relying on FOSS code, yet they’re usually not aware that it even exists.
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very sad…
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wouldn’t you wish to place a constraint on commercial distribution of the translation?
can an irrevocable license be legally revoked? if one ignores their illegal revocation what claim would they advance in court, if the dispute goes down that path, to defend their decision which has no legal merit, the claim of being momentarily incapable at the time of subscribing to the license terms?
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There is no legal basis, and there would be no grounds in court. They haven’t updated their website, so I am not sure how the change in policy will be represented. There is no reason why they shouldn’t make a polite request regarding the use of their work, but the information I have received is that they intend to revoke the licence. I informed them that this has no legal standing, but have not heard back from them. If it all seems unclear, that’s probably because it is.
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Have you heard anything about revoking the license? I would like to print out the dBET Madhyama Agama pdf for my own personal study, but I feel conflicted about it 