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LUG Pres Resigns Over Military Linux Use
Joe Barr writes "NewsForge is carrying the news that the founder and president of Linux Users Los Angeles (LULA) has resigned because of his opposition to the war in Iraq and the U.S. Armed Forces' use of Linux."
Seems to me the guy's complaining about a primary aspect of the GPL -- that there are no restriction as to who can use the software.
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
This person is mixing up a specific political view with the use of free software. The good thing about free software is that there can be no restrictions on who may use it. I do not neccessarily agree with the war on Iraq, but limiting software licences to those who agree with my standpoint would be a bad way to express my opinion. There are many other ways to do that. Plus, if this would become common practice, we'd have to prepare ourselves for a hard time. Checking for all software you use whether the author included some kind of usage constraint would be very tedious. Imagine the situation where for example the Apache Group would say: "we're pro the war on Iraq, so who's against can not use our webserver to promote that standpoint". Very undesireable of course. Please don't mix up politics and free software.
I will still participate in the LUG, just let new leadership come to the fore.
Actually, it sounds like he guy is just a drama queen. I mean, really, look at this quote. The group is a bunch of dorks who get together to drink soda and talk about computers on Friday nights instead of getting laid, and he's talking about "new leadership coming to the fore". Oh puh-lease. Imagine the lead fry cook at the local McDonald's quitting saying this.
Piling on, I would still like to understand the difference between the Demicans and the Republocrats.
One party strives for power, the other lusts after it, near I can tell.
Both are meatpuppets for rich interests, while feigning populism.
Gimme Jesse the Body in '08.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Now, if someone had quit the military because they use Linux, that would have been a more interesting story.
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson
Define 'needless deaths'.
Two years ago, I visited London. Outside of the parliament were huge signs demanding an end to the sanctions against Iraq. Why? Appx. 1,000 Iraqi children were dying each week, and that's only children age 2 or younger. The overall numbers of actual humans dying were a fair bit higher. Since the war started, www.IraqBodyCount.com (Full disclosure: An anti-war site which produced a rather inflated count, at least for a while) claims that, as of April 21, 2004, a min of 8897 and max of 10747 civilians have died. Seeing as the war started over a year ago, I'll round the number of weeks down to 52 weeks. Taking a likely inflated number, dividing by a known deflated number, and I get 207ish people dead a week. Yes, this is a horrid number. Look at it. Realize that each of those 207 people had a family, friends, and a life. Now look back up. Sanctions were killing five times as many people.
What seems to be advocated is a preference for death by inaction, rather than death by action. I'd honestly like to know, why is letting 1000 some odd children die because some asshat tyrant can't be trusted better than having a fifth as many die, while granting freedom and independance?
You make a good point. But like the anti-war freaks you forget that best estimates are that Saddam murdered between 1 million and 2 million Iraqis during his ~20 years in power. That works out to between 50,000 and 100,000 per year, or about 1,000 to 2,000 per week.
It's interesting to note how the press has constantly minimized this. Before the war there were varying estimates, but now the numbers I see quoted in the press as Saddam's murder tool are just the numbers of bodies already found in mass graves (~300,000 I believe), as if that's really it and there are no more anywhere. I remember the shock I felt while reading an editorial by an anti-war columnist, when the writer, in the course of admitting that Saddam was a pretty bad guy after all, referred to "thousands of Iraquis killed and hundreds of thousands repressed". NO, jackass, it's millions killed and 10s of millions repressed.
Look at all the vigourous debate about linux, about licensing, and about the war has been generated here as a result of hit resignation.
I think he achieved his aim very well indeed.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Maine and Nebraska in fact do something other than the 'winner take all' that the other 48 states do. They tally up the votes in each congressional district, and the winner in each district gets one delegate. Then the overall totals for the whole state are added up, and the winner there gets two more delegates.
However, Maine only has 2 districts (4 electoral votes) and Nebraska 3 districts (5 evs), so in practice it doesn't really matter much, but I wish more states followed this system. Unfortunately, states that tend one way or another wouldn't want to switch to this system, since it'd hurt the candidate that's more popular in that state (California wouldn't want to take 20 or so of its 55 and hand them to Bush, e.g.), and states that are battlegrounds would be less of a battleground under this system, and thus would get less political attention. Nice idea, nevertheless.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
There's something to be said when a vote in one state counts more than a vote in another. Namely, there is no equality under the law.
You are correct that the Electoral College somewhat levels the playing field for states. However, what the gp was saying is that it causes a disparity in voting power for an individual. Using your example, whose vote affects more of the electoral college? It seems to me that a single popular vote in Wyoming is worth more than one in California.
if you think this is bad, you should have seen my last sig