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No OLPCs for Cuba, Ever
An anonymous reader writes "In a move going largely unnoticed by developers, the OLPC project now requires all submissions to be hosted in the RedHat Fedora project. While this may not seem like a big deal, the implications are interesting. First, contributors have to sign the Fedora Project Individual Contributor License Agreement. By being forced to submit contributions to the Fedora repository they automatically fall under the provisions of US export law. So, no OLPC for Cuba, Syria and the like. Ever."
because US laws and export restrictions never change. ever.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
things change fast in the world
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I wouldn't say "ever"...both Cuba and Syria have made steps towards getting removed from the US ban list, and with Fidel teetering on death's edge, who knows what the future will bring.
Yet, not too surprisingly, Windows has found its way into Cuba and I'm certain the OLPC will also be found there in mass quantities if it is indeed useful/popular. Physical devices may be harder to find there than software but you'll find them there.
This isn't news. The U.S. trade embargos have been in place on Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and Syria for a while now. Furthermore, if the laptops are made and assembled outside the U.S.
So let's get creative here, you make and manufacture the hardware outside the United States. Then you ship them to restricted countries (I think the parts are going to come from China anyway). You leave it up to people inside Cuba or where ever to install the OLPC image. Who has violated the TOS? The citizens of the country who really don't give a damn what U.S. export laws they're breaking.
And if these laws are broken, who's going to enforce them? Redhat/Fedora? The U.S. government is going to show up and stop laptops from going to children? The U.S. government is going to shutdown a free open source software hosting site? I highly doubt it.
My work here is dung.
Yeah, like US Law has never ever changed. Remember trade embargoes during apartheid? Castro's ill, it's not clear who will be taking over. New high-level talks have opened with Syria recently also. Not saying that either of these things are likely to change next month, but "never" is pretty long.
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lol what the fuck do you know about Cuba that you didn't see on FOX?
Sit down, Rambo.
...over goodwill.
Raj Against the Machine! http://social-butterfly.appspot.com/
That'd teach those kids for living in the wrong countries.
- Castro dies
- Mutual Defense Pact is unveiled between Venezuela and Cuba, and Castro's successor asks Venezuela for "help."
- Venezuela military moves in under the guise of "protecting" Cuba from invasion from other countries.
- Cuba becomes a satellite province of Venezuela.
Unless the US and other countries have the balls to throw up a naval force and cordon off Cuba so the people of Cuba can handle it for themselves.
OLPC worse and worse everyday
Don't worry about Cuba, I am seeing a bunch of "Bolivarian computers" in their future...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
"They don't really give a shit about their people anyway."
...
unlike the us government who gives much shit about their people, plunging 400 billions of dollars in a war for the oil industry, refuse to give health insurance to sick americans to cater for private insurance business, wiretap their citizens,
land of the free!
wow you guys really drank the neocon coolaid. Learn to look through the propoganda, and you might see there is a world OUTSIDE THE US. Fuck off you stupid drones.
Sanctions only exist to subjugate the peoples of these countries,increasing the death rates of the young, and lower the quality of life of the citizens. Sanctions, and withholding of technologies of these "rogue states" (read: any states that have the balls to stand up to US economic and social hegemony), only serves to bolster these regimes(many of which were installed and supported by the CIA/NSA/etc to fight other "threats").
Face it, US foreign policy is one of economic fascism, cultural indoctrination and genocide.
I'm a proud American who is embarassed by the evil imperialists who run our country.
Why ? Have you been there ? They have a much better society than they would have had the American Mafia continued running it. They have good education, reasonable health care and while not so much stuff, they do not have foreclosures and bankruptcies the likes that you have been experiencing. Not to mention the next round coming on about now. Even after all these years of embargo by their ever so caring neighbors to the North, they still smile much more than anywhere I have ever seen in the US. I think sir it is you who ought to read a book.
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
The US sponsers a hell of a lot more terrorism than Cuba. For example, what exactly did you think 'shock and awe' was supposed to be? George Bush has now killed far more innocent people that Castro could if he lived to be 200.
One statement is true. Which one?
1) Cuba sponsors terrorism directed at the US.
2) The US sponsors terrorism directed at Cuba.
It's a lot easier to dismiss opinions you don't like by alleging they are being propagated by people who don't analyze them, isn't it?
I'm of the philosophy that proportionality is irrelevant when it comes to existential conditions like suffering. That is to say, roughly, a million people dying early through lack of health insurance is a 'huge swath' whether it is a million amongs three million, or a million amongst three hundred million. And seeing as how it is forty million amongst who-cares-how-large a population, that qualifies in my mind as, to put it mildly, a 'huge swath'.
And, as another poster put it sharply, nobody 'chooses' to not have health insurance. Self-employed people have a hard time getting insurance at the same rates as large employers, because large employers benefit from huge quantities of corporate welfare and preferential deals regardings scale when they deal with HMOs that somehow never trickle down to self-emloyed folk. And, just for the record, nobody willingly chooses to die early, which in the vast majority of cases is what not having health insurance practically means. BTW, most of the uninsured aren't self-employed people; most of the uninsured are children of self-employed people. And they, roughly, didn't have any choice whatsoever in their circumstances.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
So, don't fool yourself. Right now, lack of OLPC notebooks is the least of the problems faced by Cuban children. Or, for that matter, by their parents.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
You say this like it is a bad thing. The less IT infrastructure these repressive regimes have the better. I personally think the embargo against Cuba at this point is counter-productive, but I am not going to cry because they can't use this software either.
Excellent point. Without technological infrastructure, things like the DMCA takedown notices, RIAA John Doe suits, Echelon, Carnivore, and CCTV cameras on street corners would all be impossible. Or do you have some other, more narrow, definition of "repressive" in mind?