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Red Hat Asks for UCITA Reversal
OSS advocate writes "According to this NewsForge article, Red Hat has engaged the services of Carol Kunze (ucitaonline.com) to try to convince the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws to take UCITA back. There's a list of email addresses in case you want to send the commish a letter yourself." Red Hat's letter is a good start.
I said UCITA is "bad for users of Free Software" when I really meant to say that it's bad for Free Software in general (the FSF has a good explanation of it).
Having said that, UCITA is indeed bad for users of Free Software. When Free Software authors are held liable for defects while software companies are allowed to disclaim liability (exactly the opposite of the way it should be!), both the developers and users of Free Software suffer. When proprietary vendors are allowed to create closed and legally inaccessible file formats, the developers and users of Free Software suffer greatly.
UCITA is an immense threat to anybody who is not a big corporation.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
I have read the articles here and on several other sites, and I've read many Infoworld articles over the past few years on UCITA, and I _still_ don't see how it is damaging to Open Source. As pointed out earlier, this page seeks to address the concerns of Open Source advocates, and does a good job of such. I have understood the dangers of large proprietary corps like M$ being able to turn software off and abuse consumers in other ways, but I have not been able to find a single credible reference to how UCITA will hurt Linux developers or users. Can someone post a rational and clear explanation using traceable references to UCITA language that demonstrates the potential for harm? I'm certain that many others would also appreciate clarification.
Thanks