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Why Human Rights Requires Free Software

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the necessary-but-not-sufficient dept.

andyo writes "Why Human Rights Requires Free Software: Report on a practitioner's view of the critical role free software plays in the work of human rights activists around the globe."

7 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. but by anonymous+coword · · Score: 3, Funny

    i don't want gnu/human gnu/rights.

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    Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
  2. So... by infornogr · · Score: 2, Funny

    Does this mean that people who lived before the invention of free software were not really free? Someone should go write a letter to Locke about this.

  3. Re:I think we're stretching things a bit... by paul.dunne · · Score: 5, Funny

    We need a new acronym. RTFA: Read The Fine Article

  4. WTF do you expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    It *is* Red Hat, after all!

  5. Re:I think we're groping things a bit... by noshellswill · · Score: 1, Funny

    Heh pad're you did mean Stalinism ... didn't you ??

  6. Re:Yes, Offtopic by Apreche · · Score: 2, Funny

    yeah put all the stuff in the Jon Katz category. So I'll never ever see it. You know I almost forgot about Katz until you mentioned him. I think I've had his articles blocked for almost a year now. Dang.

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  7. Re:Nasty comments by istartedi · · Score: 3, Funny

    Mathematica, MatLab and the like should all be independently verifable simply by the inputs and results and also by the inclusion of results of those programs in peer-reviewed scientific journals

    Likewise, the universe is subected to the same black-box testing by experimental physicists and various other scientists.

    Yes, that's right. God wrote Universe 1.0 and released it as proprietary software. No source. Just a manual with lots of difficult rules like "thou shalt not commit adultry". Sure it works for the simple stuff, but a lotta good it does when you're trying to find a substance that will laze at 560 Angstroms, and if you wanna selectively negate the gravitational field you can just forget about it. He didn't even give His customers a chance to sign the EULA. He just squeezes 'em out through a fleshy tube and says "this is how it is".

    So, a bunch of enterprising Angels got together in the basement and tried to come up with an alternative to compete with this monopoly, and what happened? He turned up the heat.

    This little parable, at the very least, explains why RMS is an atheist. To choose any other path, we would have to cast himself in the role of Satan. It also explains why Free Software advocates inevitably become hyprocrites.

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    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?