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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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Just put Centos on them...
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/
One day the US will normalise relations with Cuba. The process might not happen until after the current generation of ex-Cubans in Forida is dead, but that's hardly _never_.
In the mean time they could just funnel shipments through a neutral third party. Creative accountants can manage to hide billions from the IRS, why shouldn't they be able to do something socially useful like vanish a couple of shipping containers of laptops.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
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.
"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
I think GP was reacting to the rather more ridiculous contention that American politicians by and large give more of a crap about the people they govern than politicans in other countries. That the countervailing evidence manifests as health insurance being inaccessible for a huge swath of the working population (when a good portion of the rest of the world has amply demonstrated is not a necessary situation), and the prosecution of an transpatently profiteering war that has killed tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans (which most of the rest of the world considered if not illegal than just plain stupid to get involved in), is simply a reflection of our own neuroses. Other countries screw over their people in different ways, according to different guiding ideologies.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
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.
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 97%
male: 97.2%
female: 96.9% (2003 est.) World Factbook - Cuba
Well, initially it was the upper and middle classes that stood to loose their wealth due to redistribution and probably some due to their assistance to the people who were at the receiving end of the revolution. Now, after 30+ years of sanctions there are people who wish for more money and the things that accompany it, the same as immigrants from other countries.
I have spent some time in Cuba and have had many interesting conversations regarding the revolution. The funny thing is that many seem to think the embargo is funny. A cigar that sells for 5 Euros in Europe sells for 5 times than on the US market. It is always fun to watch US tourist queue up to purchase them wherever they are available.
Not everyone in the world is dying to leave their country and move to the US, no matter what the boys at Fox say. Rupert is not even there most of the time.
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
One person signs the agreement and submits the project to Fedora. Anther person submits the project from Fedora to OLPC. There is no requirement that it's the same person.
But Cuba's main agricultural product, besides tobacco, is sugar, and the US has had high tariffs on sugar for a long time. Not only does that prop up US sugar producers (mainly Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida_) by keeping the US sugar price far higher than the world average, but the High-Fructose Corn Syrup lobby likes high sugar prices because they can put their dreck into our soda, while the rest of the world gets to have Coke with real sugar in it. So the Archer Daniels Midland gang also don't want free trade with Cuba.
I'd recommend that next time you're in Canada, you get some Cuban cigars, except for the problem that they put carcinogenic flammable tobacco products in the things....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
... this will be the one that finally triggers democratic reforms in Cuba!
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
I was under the impression that part of the OLPC project was not only to get computers into the hands of people in under developed countries, but also to get them connected. Well, in Cuba it is an offense to have a PC at home without permission and license from the State, and private internet connections are forbidden. Possessing a PC, and having connected to the net can get you 20 years in the pogey. So, the OLPC would likely have been a no go in Cuba anyway. Furthermore, I think the money wasted on OLPC would have been far better spent setting up programs for low intensity, organic agriculture desigend to replace cash crop cultivation with food supply crops. But, I guess feeding people isn't as cool, or sexy as sending them a bright gree, hand cranked laptop. To me, Negroponte is an ass.
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?
Or as Osama Bin Laden says: "I am still free, how about you?"
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
The point of why this is a bad move for OLPC isn't just about what's bad with the Cuba export ban specifically. That ban *is* indeed stupid, but this also subverts the international intention of the OLPC project to the narrow whims the US administration.
Perhaps some other country or countries will be declared official enemies next year. Especially if, say, MS and Intel can persuade a US administration that a mandate for Free Software in, say, Peru or Bolivia, is "contrary to US interests". Or even if such a ban is declared for completely unrelated reasons, the OLPC should not allow itself to be derailed by partisan or sensationalist whims of a USA administration.
Buy Text Processing in Python
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?
Here's a perk of living in (even rural) Canada: I go down to the garage/general/liquor store, and there on the shelf is Havana Club, "Ron puro Cubano," mmm, great is right. And cuban coffee in the cupboard, it's only pretty good but it's organic.
There may be long-term competitive benefits accruing to Cuba out of the blockade and its hardships.
The whole island has pretty much gone organic, as part of the austerity produced by the embargo, and they're trying to turn that constraint into a strength. When the embargo finally drops in the US, watch for cuban specialty products showing up in the organic food stores.
They need an internationally credible domestic certification system to really flourish, however the embargo has forced them to look hard at their local food security, so they'd be okay if international trade was interrupted. They have international trade in things like organic fruits and coffee, and they've made interesting innovations with domestic distribution in mind, like the Organopónicos.
The embargo has created constraints that make it an interesting testbed for development without the overwhelming influence of large transnationals. It's a race between the international organic sector to help establish Cuba as an entrenched organic ag system and the influx of Life Sciences transnationals that might happen if there's regime change.
Cuba's ripe turf for donated linux-ready systems, so support that goal in some way. There's enough real zeal for independence and common interests to make it a interesting test bed for a society running on open-source software.
Damn those pesky terrorists