http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39136836/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times
"Given the suspicions that these investigations are politically motivated, the police and prosecutors have turned to Microsoft to lend weight to their cases. In southwestern Russia, the Interior Ministry declared in an official document that its investigation of a human rights advocate for software piracy was begun “based on an application” from a lawyer for Microsoft.
In another city, Samara, the police seized computers from two opposition newspapers, with the support of a different Microsoft lawyer. “Without the participation of Microsoft, these criminal cases against human rights defenders and journalists would simply not be able to occur,” said the editor of the newspapers, Sergey Kurt-Adzhiyev."
Hi all,
Microsoft recently announced they would change something in their policy to avoid that in the future. But sure it's a very bad advertising for them.
See also Glyn Moody's article quoting the New York Times where he places the issue within Free Software advocacy. I particularly agree when he writes that he doesn't understand why those NGOs, promoting Freedom etc., don't already use Free Software, as this would protect them better against that sort of things, but sure against all sort of intrusions.
I remember for example one of the heads of Greenpeace in France, whose laptop was very weakly protected (using Microsoft Windows and stuffs) and information was leaked to companies he fights against (like Total).
So I think the second interesting question is:
how do we, Free software supporters and Free software NGOs, can cooperate more with other NGOs to explain them: - the values of freedom carried by Free Software - the inherent advantages in terms of control and security over their information - the collateral advantages in terms of hacktivism online, etc.
What do you think is the answer? Are you also working with other NGOs not related to the software field?
Best regards,
2010/9/17 Hugo Roy hugo@fsfe.org:
how do we, Free software supporters and Free software NGOs, can cooperate more with other NGOs to explain them:
- the values of freedom carried by Free Software
- the inherent advantages in terms of control and security over their
information
- the collateral advantages in terms of hacktivism online, etc.
What do you think is the answer? Are you also working with other NGOs not related to the software field?
Wikimedia may be a helpful example to use. It is not a software-related charity, but an educational one. However, because it's full of FOSS nerds, it has a strong free software policy [*]. This extends to a lot of the stuff a charity uses - e.g., WMF contributes paid development effort to CiviCRM.
Wikileaks is a news organisation rather than a charity per se, but Julian Assange's paranoia started well before he needed it - software such as Rubberhose, specifically for NGO workers operating in dangerous situations.
Suggestion: a page about software useful for charities, and email wikitech-l when a first draft is up asking for other stuff WMF uses and that WMF workers know about even if they don't use it.
- d.
[*] WMF used Java when it had not been entirely freed yet, and the image servers were until recently on Solaris 10 for the sake of ZFS (I believe this is changing).
* Hugo Roy hugo@fsfe.org [2010-09-17 12:30:44 +0200]:
See also Glyn Moody's article quoting the New York Times where he places the issue within Free Software advocacy. I particularly agree when he writes that he doesn't understand why those NGOs, promoting Freedom etc., don't already use Free Software, as this would protect them better against that sort of things, but sure against all sort of intrusions.
This reminds me about my first university paper :) I explained why organisations which cooperate with developing nations have to use Free Software:
Kulturtechnik Software -- Warum Organisationen, die mit Entwicklungsländern kommunizieren, Freie Software einsetzen müssen http://www.difficulties.de/mk/papers.html
Regards, Matthias