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German Linux Community Boycotting LinuxTag
em8chel writes "LinuxTag, Germany's major fair for Linux and Free Software, is facing a massive boycott from open source enthusiasts in the country this year. Although the event doesn't open for a week, the community is voicing their anger and disappointment on various forums about this year's LinuxTag running under the auspices of Wolfgang Schaeuble, the conservative Minister of Interior, whose positions on issues of interest to the community are controversial to say the very least. Due to online protests and calls for a boycott, the organizer of LinuxTag has released a statement (German version, serviceable Google translation), holding that the politician's policies and political views have nothing to do with supporting free software, adding that if the community boycotts LinuxTag, it's the open source software that will be hit the hardest, and that Schaeuble probably won't even notice."
I might as well boycot Debian because it's under the auspices of GWB. Is this Wolfgang Schaeuble guy trying to taking credit for or promote free software? I'd be so very happy with GWB for the same that I might forgive him for the invasion of Iraq. Back in reality, one has nothing to do with the other.
The best way to defeat your enemies is to make them into friends.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
There's no point being politically active if the target of your activism probably won't even notice. May as well just put up with it and get on with your life.
Wrong.
Anyone with money invested in the event will notice, and I'm sure the backlash from the grass roots users will convince them they should rethink their associations in future. seeing they are the people with the money, they are the only people who can make the Minister notice.
Figures in power are directly unreachable to the common man, but we can impact on them indirectly.
From the linux community to the interior minister:
Nuts!
That's just a politician who wants to generate PR by attending an event that contains lots of buzzwords ("this Linux thingy and these computers and technology, that's trendy, let's attend"). But he doesn't own the LinuxTag. By staging a boycott, the German OSS crowd gives him a de facto ownership of the event.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
How would you like it to hear stuff like:
This surveillance camera and its motion detector was brought to you by Linux!
Or BigBrother 2007, it can't be evil, it's all open source!
I don't want this fucker (Schäuble) to be associated with anything FOSS.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Unless a machine is running under your directions, you have to take the word of the person owning or running it. Even if you can see the source, you have no way to determine whether it's the source of the program running. So what difference does it make? They could well show you one source and have a completely different binary running.
Yes, I do not trust our politicians.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sometimes, despicable people will try to gain credibility by associating themselves with an honorable institution. We see it with radical Right Wingers in the US associating themselves with Jesus Christ even though old JC would probably have put his size 9 sandal up the crack of their asses.
Take this Falwell monster who just croaked. He had no problem rubbing bellies with death squads and dictators in Central and South America and apartheid leaders, and then turning around and acting holy at a prayer breakfast with Presidents who were too scared of his well-fed, smug and judgmental ass to throw him the fuck out like they should have. Did you see all the Republican presidential candidates falling over themselves trying to compare him to Ghandi and Martin Luther King?
I'm just guessing, but I've got a feeling that about 10 seconds after he died, he got the shock of his life when instead of seeing St. Peter, he met the dude with hooves. I'm hoping it was the South Park version of Satan, too.
If the Linux community boycotts LinuxTag, it's not going to hurt them one bit. In fact, standing up for what's right could make a lot of people take notice of them, especially with moral courage being in such short supply these days.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That sounds like exactly the reason Schaeuble is a bad sponsor for the event. And exactly what people of conscience do, that corporations don't - one of the crucial differences between Linux and other OS'es, like OSX and Windows.
And it sounds like it's LinuxTag which should notice their community rebelling, not their pet Minister who doesn't care at all about either of them.
--
make install -not war
Who is speaking for me again? This is not a boycott from the "German Linux Community", it's a boycott by people that don't agree with his political policies. That's ok, but don't use that label. Schäuble is the minister of the interior, which is exactly the person that should be involved in this (that is, the person holding that position). Sure he's a dick, but he is the minister of the interior. If you don't like his policies, just vote next time.
> This surveillance camera and its motion detector was brought to you by Linux!
Either you believe in NO restriction on field of use or you don't. Remember, you can use FOSS to build puppy mulchers. It is if course perfectly fine to object to puppy mulchers, and anyone who actually mulches a puppy but whether the machine runs Linux, BSD or Windows shouldn't matter. Except if it has some neato realtime hacks in the control mech, they use Linux and the manufacturer refuses to give up the patches. But if they participate in the usual way their patches should follow the same path into the kernel as anyone else's. If the fscking Norks start sending in patches they should be given exactly the same peer review as any one else's.
But on the broader issues here, part of civilizived behaviour is being able to agree with someone on one issue and work with them while disagreeing on others. I don't claim to understand the intricate German politics involved in this issue but if the Interior Ministry is putting money into sponsoring a show I just don't see the problem unless they plan to use their money to influence the show for some purpose at odds with the goals of Linux in the commercial settings a trade show normally deals with.
Let me give a few examples. I'm a right leaning anti-idiotarian libertarian, which puts me at odds politically with most of the readership here and a majority of the F/OSS camp. I can still think RMS is a visionary on the issue of Free Software, while also considering him a hopeless 'crazed moonbat with near terminal BDS' politically. But since he doesn't go to Linux events and rant about how evil Bush is I don't have a problem with him, at least on software issues. When RMS speaks with his FSF St. Ignuisus hat on I'll listen and often agree. I suppose he is also active on Kos or DU, but I wouldn't know. Which is the point, he doesn't try to use his considerable influence and moral authority to lend weight to issues is isn't an authority on. On the other hand I stopped donating to the EFF after 9/11 because they DID let their conspiracy theory politics infect their work.
Democrat delenda est
To be fair and to hold to the principles of science we simply cannot say that with certainty. What you just did is the exact same thing all the religious people do, i.e. you made an absolute claim in the absence of conclusive evidence to support it.
We simply do not, at this point, understand the nature of consciousness. We theorize that it has similar properties to that of various computational systems and that the neuronal functions are reducible to programs which can be executed by Turing machines or some other well-defined automata, but we, at this point, cannot demonstrate that it is so.
For example, it is conceivable that some fundamental properties of matter/energy on quantum (or lower) level play a part in the phenomenon of consciousness by influencing (and possibly being influenced by) the electro-chemical processes within neurons. What if that is so? What if Everett's "multiple universe" theory (or some such like thing) combined with murky phenomena in some directly unobservable by physicists dimentions of space combine to play a direct role and we simply are not grasping the implications because we still lack appropriate explanatory models and/or apparatus? Remember that fundamental areas of quantum physics and the properties of space-time continuum are still largely a mistery, despite tremendous progress made so far.
Until more conclusive evidence comes in, i.e. for example we have managed to replicate a complete human brain in some other hardware and its functions and actions can be demonstrated to be precisely as those of a "living" one, you simply lack the empirical and theoretical foundations to make absolute claims of this nature.
That is why I am a "we have insufficient data" sort of an Agnostic. It is in my view the only scientifically honest position.
This of course in no way endorses any of the "mainstream" religions, which consist for the most part of, to put it diplomatically, loads of ridiculous donkey manure, lovingly shaped to entice the weak minded into slavery of one sort or another.
Excuse me, but, beeing an European living in Germany, I happen to know that they do have a ministry of technology (BMWi, "Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie"). So, why Schaeuble?
Schaeuble has a long track record of spreading (political) FUD. How can LinuxTag benefit from his involvement? How can he? Well, it seems LinuxTag does not benefit at all (being boycotted), and Schäuble at least gets some publicity. Smart move, LinuxTag!
I do not think Linux (or F/OSS or whatever software) is well off if pushed by non-savvy users: F/OSS is not just a cheap alternative to Microsoft stuff, its not just Yet Another Business Model.
I guess this discussion is actually about FREE and OPEN SOURCE software: OPEN SOURCE is a technical term, FREE has political implications. Of course it is mad to have freedom endorsed by someone who is known to (want to) limit freedom and basic human rights.
LinuxTag (and Novell and the like) seem to want to marginalize the "political arm" of the F/OSS movement. I, for one, am deeply concerned about the implications of ths trend.
Well, LinuxTag has a choice: they can continue under the auspices of Schauble, or they can disassociate themselves from him. Either choice makes a political statement.
In general, Schauble seems to be a persona non grata to many people, and the smart thing would have been to avoid the controversy by choosing someone else in the first place.