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Neil Williams wrote:
I dont think I can get too excited about wording on this document. The free software community should show itself by its deeds and community spirit, not necessarily by words alone. The whole WSIS agreement is flawed in the extreme because the first hurdle is universal ratification of the declaration of human rights, which we wont see happen too soon (sadly) in many countries. Even among those that have "ratified" it, there are varying degrees of "enthusiasm" for up holding it. Principals are easy, positive action is a "little" harder.On Friday 16 December 2005 11:10 am, Stuart Dunstan wrote:Don't know if this came up here already, I haven't been reading any mail lately, but i found it whilst surfing. http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39238443,00.htm Thought I'd post the link in case you hadn't."the aim of free software is not to enable a healthy business on software but rather to make it even impossible to make any income on software as a commercial product,"Thomas Lutz, the manager of public affairs at Microsoft Austria,"This is so obviously stupid and nonsensical that it seems pointless to comment on it: Just another monopolist trying to uphold their monopoly by preventing freedom of markets - which is what Free Software really aims at," Georg Greve, the president of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) Lutz asked that a [separate] reference to the open source operating system Linux be removed as "this is only one particular - anti-commercial - specificity of the open source landscape."Greve criticised Lutz' comments as "Microsoft propaganda".Microsoft obviously haven't understood the RedHat business model. Not particularly surprising when they still consider GNU to be "just another development model". (Comment from the MS representative at LinuxWorld Expo - where one would have hoped that MS would have sent someone who had some level of knowledge about GNU/Linux.)Personally, I think we have ourselves (i.e. the wider GNU community) to blame for this kind of misunderstanding. Too long we've pushed "open source" as the holy grail when what we actually wanted was free software.
I think we should instead concentrate on pointing out why we feel developing countries should be using free software instead of proprietary. Sadly a few countries / NGO's have already gone down the Bill Gates foundation route and found themselves tied up in microsoft's contractual agreements. These organisations are learning the hard way about proprietary software and more importantly the practices of companies behind proprietary software.
For my part I have joined the DDN (Digital Divide Network) and at every opportunity have pushed free software, I expect it wont be long before I'm dismissed as a crack pot but hey .... Im trying. Its surprising how many people working in the Digital Divide arena are not aware of the possibilities, but luckily most of them are open minded as long as you dont make wild claims. As much as possible I wish to stop people from following the same old dead ends, because its a waste of time, but Im not going to force people, just try to persuade.
I think Neil is right, we seem to concentrate too much on words, and ideology and splitting hairs because of the degrees of difference between "open source" and "free software". In an ideal world there would only be one license and that would be GPL, but unfortunately we have to deal with complexities and varying degrees of understanding and commitment, and some need to travel down the road one step at a time, while other make giant leaps, we need to support all methods of "conversion"
However, the good news is the more agencies that suddenly find that they have been boxed into a corner by proprietary software offerings and "aid deals" and the more success stories in the free software camp, the more likely people will be to adopt the free software model.
Its up to us (the free software community) to make our views known through are actions and deeds, because the saying that "actions speak louder than deeds" still rings true to this day. Let's not get too frustrated that things arent changing rapidly by rejoice that things are changing ... slowly but for the better.
Tom. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html