On 28/01/14 22:03, Tobias Platen wrote:
On 28.01.2014 21:39, Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 28/01/14 21:37, Florian Weimer wrote:
- Daniel Pocock:
That, too, is what I commented - getting more people to pay by electronic means (making cash/anonymity appear shameful) seems to be the objective
Cash is already heavily regulated, at least in countries with a stable economy.
What has this to do with free software, by the way?
How much of the software used for those electronic currency/banking/payment transactions is free?
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Most ATMs run with nonfree software (mostly Windows XP), but this does not seem to be a problem for Richard Stallman: "Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then."
There is also a really old programming language called COBOL http://jxself.org/cobol.shtml. As most COBOL software is never distributed, developing COBOL programs seems to be compatible with the free software movement.
Actually, my job at Barlcays Capital was rolling out the Ganglia system across the whole enterprise. Banks do use free software, usually in those cases where it is really compelling to do so (Linux, Git, Jenkins are other common examples, although Firefox has some way to go to displace IE6 in some bigger corporates)
On the other hand, the issue with electronic payment is very different. From the perspective of the user of the currency, they have little or no control over just what happens to their data.
Just as Facebook reveals who your friends are, your financial transactions reveal a lot about your economic preferences (e.g. where you eat, whether you go to the pub every night/every weekend).
People concerned about these wider technology issues would see the move away from cash as something similar to banning ToR and forcing everybody to browse the web while logged into Google.