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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."

3 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I think we're stretching things a bit... by theRhinoceros · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:I think we're stretching things a bit... by Gadzinka · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  3. Re:I think we're stretching things a bit... by Hostile17 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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