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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
I'm sure this is quite offtopic, but what the hell.
/. is wasting a lot of space posting the transcripts of what some microsoft employee says, then the 20 rebuttles from the free softwar community. I think I could do without it. Any chance we can make "Free Software-Good/Bad" it into a category so it can be filtered out by everyone? Or maybe just throw it in with the "Jon Katz" category...
Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's overkill to give a spot on the front page to every article that expresses an opinion on how good/bad free software is?
Sure, the first few discussions that reach the mainstream public... that makes sense. Now,
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
We need a new acronym. RTFA: Read The Fine Article
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
In this case the College students were able to deliver better than the IT workers. This is in part due to reuse of old labor (code)as well as presumebly cheaper pay.
As far as cheaper pay there are already systems of natural and artifical checks and balances to keep an equilibrium of pay for services releative to the cost of living.
As far as free labor (code), the laborers have to feed themselves and therefore will have to dedicate resources to paid labor. Also, the "free" labor could have been part of an assignment for a class that would be bartered for college credits that would eventually be bartered for a degree.
So in conclusion, yes free software is causing companies to fire experienced professionals and replace them with part time college students. However, this is not neccessarally a bad thing. If the professionals are really that damn good they will be able to get another job. If they can't then society probally has little need for their labor and they will learn new other skills or work for what the college students are working for. The obvisious conclusion of this is there will be less college students taking up computer science/CIS and less free software written. This will cause a greater demand for programmers and greater rates of pay. Hence capatialism will keep the market in check.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
The argument made in the article is illogical and plain silly.
Statistical software doesn't need to be open source for people to know whether it works right - the algorithms used are well-established and documented. e.g. Matlab has extensive documentation which describes the algorithms used for each function. Furthermore it's easy to check whether the software is works correctly by running it through test cases.
The fact that a piece of software (e.g. matlab, excel,etc.) is used by scientists, financial engineers, etc. is a better assurance of reliability than its open sourceness.
Why, whatever did the framers of the Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution ever do before the concept of Free Software?
What a bunch of tripe. Human rights requires vigilance and dedication. Software systems are a non-sequitur--they can express freedom, but they cannot create it.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.