Club Linux Coffs Harbour

Earlier this month the Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced a "reboot" of it's High Priority list, a list of projects critical to allowing people to use their computers in freedom. I've finally had a look at the revised list, and think it's right on the money. Apart from the obvious projects (free replacements for Flash, Skype, etc., which for the most part already exist but just need a little bit of extra work, or often just promotion to get more people using them), there are a couple which you might think are a bit out of left field.

I think this is an encouraging sign of how far we have come. Ten years ago you could say "but I can't realistically do word processing with free software" (no OpenOffice.org), or "I can't realistically do my web browsing with free software" (the Mozilla project had only just started and the browser crashed every 30 seconds or so). Now the complaints are "I don't have a command-line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically", or "I can't do reversible debugging". I don't want to downplay the importance of these projects, but you've got to admit it looks like the number of categories where non-free software has a significant lead is dwindling.