Folks:
... thoroughly disgusting, shouldn't FSF(E) comment on that?
[... As if all that wasn't enough, here's another brick to add to the teetering tower of news, courtesy of Andres Guadamuz, a lecturer in law at the University of Edinburgh.
Guadamuz has done some digging and discovered that an influential lobby group is asking the US government to basically consider open source as the equivalent of piracy - or even worse. [...]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/23/opensource-intellectua...
And we're still talking "just" open source, not even software libre here... K.
On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 08:42:23AM +0100, Kristian Rink wrote:
Folks:
... thoroughly disgusting, shouldn't FSF(E) comment on that?
working on it.
There are so many things wrong with this, I hardly know where to start.
Best regards, Karsten
Karsten Gerloff schrieb:
working on it.
There are so many things wrong with this, I hardly know where to start.
I see. :) Good to know that, it seems that this kind of lobbyism is hardly doing (us?) any good these days. Just wonder why there are no statements by any open-source driven companies (RedHat, ...) on that...
K.
Kristian Rink writes:
Karsten Gerloff schrieb:
working on it.
There are so many things wrong with this, I hardly know where to start.
I see. :) Good to know that, it seems that this kind of lobbyism is hardly doing (us?) any good these days. Just wonder why there are no statements by any open-source driven companies (RedHat, ...) on that...
Maybe the ones who would make statements don't know what to do about the IIPA and things like this?
We know that the proprietary software industry and other "new enclosures" groups have thoroughly captured most industry associations like Intellect and even the UK Patent Office is now the wrong-named "Intellectual Property Office".
Maybe FSFE could encourage a new *liberal* creative industry association that mainly coordinates its members on things like this, without either trying to extract dues from its members or group them together into consortia? I don't see any way for companies to join FSFE on the website at the moment.
Personally, I'm trying to get the regional, national and international cooperative associations to use more free software - or at least not lock us out! - and I think fsfe's current supporters would give a far quicker and easier way to build a new industry body.
Regards,
MJ Ray schrieb:
Maybe the ones who would make statements don't know what to do about the IIPA and things like this?
Well... though you may be right, I would be thoroughly surprised seeing a (large-scale, by now?) software company like RedHat _not_ aware of those institutions. I mean, talking about Germany, everyone (even the small IT companies) know about BITKOM or the BSA, despite eventually disagreeing with what they do...
Maybe FSFE could encourage a new *liberal* creative industry association that mainly coordinates its members on things like this, without either trying to extract dues from its members or group them together into consortia? I don't see any way for companies to join FSFE on the website at the moment.
Not sure whether "one" institution (FSF? FSFE? ...?) seems a good idea here; I'd rather see many small forces joined together in some sort of network. Germany, in example, has the BIKT[1] as an association which seems in competition with BITKOM while aiming at collecting SMEs and promoting their positions and views (i.e. talking about software patents). Is this the only example?
Best, Kristian