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Hall On Worldwide Open Source Movement
adamsmith_uk writes "There's an article up on ZDNet
summarizing an interesting speech from Jon "Maddog" Hall about non-US open-source, as well as protecting open-source from 'looters' - well worth a read: 'The open-source development community is an international treasure and should be protected as such, said veteran Linux advocate Jon "Maddog" Hall, in a talk in Birmingham, UK, that emphasized the role of open-source software outside the United States.'"
Because open-source software is in the public domain, support was provided by local engineers, creating Brazilian jobs, Hall said.
WTF?!? It's NOT public domain.
Hall seems to know what he's talking about, so I'm going to guess that the article author - Matthew Broersma - did a botch-job in paraphrasing him. Note that this comment isn't actually in quotes, unlike four other comments attributed to Hall.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Anyway, I realize the speech was about something else and this quote was probably selected because of its topical nature (or the reporter's leanings), but the story has been well disproven as a falsehood seized upon by the media in their frenzy to discredit the US and the UK. I'm surprised to see the "thousands and thousands" version of the story, intended to swing public opinion against the Iraq war, still being referenced.
"These treasures were created over tens of thousands of years, and all of a sudden, because of the lack of foresight of a few greedy people, a lot of them were removed from the world," he said. "The world has to decide whether or not to send in troops to guard this free and open-source software, to protect it for the world's use."
Even The Guardian has backed off of the earlier story.
If you want a right-wing source instead of a left-wing source, try WorldNetDaily which was published more than a month before the Guardian one (it helps to use multiple sources).
And even if the original version of the story had been true, I could really care less about some museum pieces compared to the lives of the US and UK military, the Iraqi people, the Kurds, etc.
Dmitri was arrested in the United States and was charged with trafficking a circumvention device because the program, which was copyrighted to him, was being sold for a profit off of US servers.
I'm not defending the DMCA, but it was within the US borders.
-Eyston
You know, LI and Caldera/Lineo were best buddies for a long time. The original Caldera founders (Bryan Sparks and his friends from Novell) were good honest-to-goodness people who wanted to make Linux and OSS happen. But things started to degrade when Ransome Love replaced Bryan, and now SCO has nothing of Caldera left in it. Caldera was a good company (good as in benefactor of the community), got the first successful commercial Linux distro out back in 1995 (if I remember correctly), then got shafted by RedHat over RPM, then pretty much missed all the opportunities that could have made them great, and now they're just plain aggressive idiots.
In short : John Hall must feel like he's walking on eggs here. SCO isn't at all the Caldera he was talking to back in the good days. I wonder what ties remain between LI and SCO, and if they could be severed for good at last.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
And then of course nations who are copyright scofflaws can be strung out to dry by the World Trade Organization.
Just because his words were printed in a communist newspaper doesn't make them wrong.
This portion especially I found salient and insightful:
Stallman said that vigorous efforts are on to colonise the world of computer users by a few big monopoly computer companies and called for resisting this phenomenon by spreading the network of free software movement. He called upon countries like India to emphatically reject the Wipo Copyright Treaty which is intended to further strengthen the grip of big business on the markets. "The World Intellectual Property Organisation does not represent public interest and the people must likened software programmes to recipes and said preventing sharing of software was like asking neighbours not to share their recipes. "It is morally wrong to make people promise that they will never share. As it is we don't always share everything with everybody, so why create barriers?", asked Stallman. He cautioned particularly against allowing Microsoft to peddle its software in thousands of Indian schools. "Bill Gates donations of computers to Indian schools is really aimed at getting children hooked on to licensed software. It is a bit like selling cigarettes to children." He called for encouraging the usage of free software among Indian students.
I have no pants and I must scream
I wasn't commenting on the orignal claims of 170,000, I was commenting on the /.er's claim that only a few were stolen, so in that context, yes it is the part that struck me.
The
Guardian reports "33 major items and around 2,000 minor works have gone". So to use the 33 number as the "real" number of items stolen is almost as bogus as the original claim (an exageration factor of 65 compared to a factor of 81 for the original claim). Over 33 major pieces and 2,000 pieces minor pieces from a museum in the birthplace of civilization is NOT inconsequential however it may relate to the original claim. Civilization is not about to be reborn again anytime soon so there is no replacing those items. Toss the numbers around however you'd like, there was a significant loss.
Yes, the GPL "ebodies the principles of Free software" but the Free Software Foundation recognizes many other licenses as Free. In particular, there are many license that are Free but non-viral, like the X license or the Python license. The FSF says: "The term ``open source'' software is used by some people to mean more or less the same thing as free software. However, their criteria are somewhat less strict; they have accepted some kinds of license restrictions that we have rejected as unacceptable."
"the way the U.S. should have stepped in and prevented the destroying of the international public treasure in the Iraqi museums"
You must have only read the original New York Times article stating 170,000 objects were lost. Try reading a more recent article. Only 33 major works are missing!!!
WaPo
" But the losses turned out to be not nearly as widespread as feared. Reports published around the world that 170,000 items were missing -- the sum of the museum's entire collection -- were vastly inaccurate.
When the inventory was calculated this week, a total of 33 of the museum's 8,000 most precious vases, statues and jewels were actually gone. Two underground vaults beneath the Central Bank of Iraq were discovered to contain many of the collection's priceless pieces, including the treasures of Nimrud, gold and ivory pieces unearthed from four royal tombs in 1989. Other items turned out to have been taken home by museum officials for safekeeping during the U.S. offensive."
See my reply to someone else below on why the 33 number is bogus. But even if only 1 item was stolen, let's say the Mono Lisa (though we have lots of other works by Da Vinci, unlike the archaelogical treasures which are entirely one of a kind), it is still valid to say that an international public treasure was destroyed.
Dmitri was in Moscow when he 'committed' the alleged 'crime'. Except that it wasn't a crime in Moscow, it was perfectly legal. He was later invited to a conference in the United States where he spoke on a related topic, but what he said is not alleged to have been criminal (anywhere). So he committed no crime either in the United States or anywhere else in the world. He did something in Moscow which might have been criminal if he had done it in the United States, but he didn't.
There are lots of things that are legal in one country but illegal in another. For example, carrying or even posessing any sort of hand gun is illegal here in Scotland. Do you think that if you've ever carried a handgun anywhere in the world, if you visit Scotland you should be arrested and charged?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews