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Why Human Rights Requires Free Software
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."
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No no no no no no, that's not what the article says at all!
The point of the article is that in order to do Human Rights work, the all partions of your data collection and processing must be transparent and above reproach. Free Software facilitates this by letting all parties examine the code behind the data presented so that bias and obfuscation are minimized. Basically, the subject of the article wants to be able to show people human rights statistics and data without having to resort to expensive software where what's "going on under the hood" is not apparent to all. That's all. There's nothing about how Free Software is a basic human right. It's just a tool used by some of those who seek to protect and defend human rights, a means to an end.
It's not like someone is trying to outlaw the writing of Free software, or suppress the Free software movement.
Unfortunatelly there are several initiatives (mandatory hadrware DRM in PC among them) that will render free software useless as non-interoperable with commercial one. This is as close as you can get without explicitly stating it to outlaw free software.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
It's not like someone is trying to outlaw the writing of Free software, or suppress the Free software movement
You might be wrong about this. The Senate currently considering a bill which would require all personal computers to have DRM built in and Microsoft holds the patent on DRM Operating Systems. If Microsoft refuses to license this to any other companies or prices the license out of reach, this would effectivly outlaw Linux and any other OSS/Free project that either doesn't have access to the license or can't afford the license.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
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really? you seriously think software is more tangible than say free speech?
i assume you mean tangible the engilish word:
if you look at the first definition, i doubt you could apply this more to software than speech. sure you can touch a tape wich contains speech or software. but you are not touching speech or software directly.
wrt the second, i can reaize software, but i can also realize free speech. i was arrested a couple weeks ago in dc while realizeing free speech. the effects of free speech are quite evident on society, as are the effects of sofware. i would say they are equally tangible in this reguard.
now lets look at the third. can software really be valued monetarily? say some company charges $30 for software X. if i make a copy of it is each copy worth $30 or is each worth half of the original ($15). say i email software X to 1000 people. how much are those copies worth? since it's sofware they can be exact copies, does it devalue the original in some way?
take gnu sofware when considering the third definition. it can be obtained for free, and you are free to copy it. there is no monitary values associated with these transactions what so ever.
more tangible than speech? i dont think so.
-- john
You begin a good "straw man" attack.
The notion that software expressed in source code is a form of speech has been established in U.S. courts, at least. An attack on the "right" to free software is an attack against a category of free speech, and would represent an erosion of the entire category of free speech rights.
No?Maybe not in the U.S.,
maybe not right now.
In the recent past, the idea of free software was seriously threatened by a number of high-profile cases, mostly around the topic of encryption. There are many pending and emerging cases involving patents, so-called 'intellectual property' and Digital Rights. All of these represent an effort by various established interests to classify free software as an infrigement on their rights.
Nobody expected Habeus Corpus to come under attack in the United States, 18 months ago. Surprising and drastic things happen in a very short time.
The artical in question does not even advance a claim like this.It is proposed that all software used by Human Rights workers in the field should be free software (Software Libre,) wherever it is at all possible.
It is also advanced that there are inherent inequalities in the control and trust relationships with proprietary vendors - which might be acceptable parts of a social contract for home use or doing business. Nonetheless this is a repugnant situation and represent an unacceptable risk to the mission of the workers and the well-being of subjects in Human Rights field-work.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
the "confirmation of results" & peer review point I was making had to do with crypto and offsite backup software more than with statistical software. When we're talking about crypto or storing someone else's data, it's super important to be transparent. Re: stats, well, one of my slides pointed out that up 'til now, I've always hacked numbers & graphs in Stata, which is proprietary (though most of the really good stuff is published freely, but that's another matter). We should use R, but for cost & "who controls the license" reasons as much as (if not more) than verifiability.
While we're on the verifiability point, human rights data organization techniques tend to be pretty complicated, and it helps to be able to use free software. While distributing the data (via XML) may or may not be useful, it is very important to open the data specifications. I think that means opening SQL scripts, too, and all the database software (in our current mix, the backend is postgres, the front end is Java). That's coming in about a month.
But human rights folks are pretty underfunded, and the "free as in beer" part of open source and free software is a big help, too.
slashdotters might be interested in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, Article 15(b), which states that everyone has the right "To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications." This is a real, live, human right.
But the real bottom line to human rights and free software has to do with power. Our core rights -- to freedom of speech and free association -- are increasingly exercised in electronic media. Who controls the online world? Can any contractual obligation resulting from a license abridge your human rights? IMHO, these questions make software a human rights concern.
-- PB.