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Boycott Novell Protesters Manhandled In India
James Mathew writes "This is an interesting story from Kerala, India, where the ruling Communist Party organized a national conference in its efforts to hijack the Free Software Movement, which has enviable roots in the state. They got Novell to sponsor it. On the second day of the conference, a few free software activists who displayed posters against Novell were manhandled by the organizers and police — typical of what is expected from them. Most of the snaps taken during the scuffle were forcefully deleted by the organizers, after seizing the protesters' mobile phones. Still they couldn't delete all. Here is another blow-by-blow account."
These protesters are merely obstructionists who are looking for ripe targets to shake down. They're simply professional malcontents who can't contribute anything worthwhile society in general, much less to software development.
This incident does bring up the question of what we will do when a government, NGO, or criminal group like the Mafia decides that Open Source software belongs to them and that people must pay a fee to them for using it. This situation will undoubtedly arise in places (like third world countries and minority communities in the EU, UK, and USA) where violence has always been and continues to be the way that the local leaders govern community activities.
When a corporation tried to muscle its way into open source 'ownership' several years ago by claiming that they owned Linux because some other corporation tricked them into buying UNIX, we were able to organize, fight, and destroy them using the American court system. Which is a long, expensive, tedious, but not violent process. Court room tactics don't often work in places where decision-by-violence is the normal way of handling disputes. Yet these places are usually where open source software is most attractive because violence-based economies don't generate enough wealth to afford wide-spread use of paid proprietary software.
Maybe we should just encourage people in violence-based parts of the world (like India, Russia, and the minority communities of the USA) to use pirated Microsoft and other proprietary software. That will keep Microsoft busy and keep us from having to deal with violent people who would direct their violence against us in order to keep 'their' software working.
Maybe the open-source community needs to become a little more realistic and a little less altruistic. And please don't tell me that I'm a racist or that I don't understand your open-source vision. The open-source vision only works in places where people aren't violent by nature.
I can't wait for despotic assholes who have nothing better to do than cut people down appear.
Oh, shit, Master of Transhuman is already here, I'm too late.
He who whores for karma by cutting others down deserves a slap upside the face with a replica of a horse cock.
Hey, you wanna cut people down? I don't know shit about Novell, I'll just cut you down because you're the easiest target, with your unfettered diarrhea of the mouth.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Well, I can imagine the scene. Someone holds up a poster during a presentation, blocking the view of the people behind them. They make some sort of noise to get attention, when the organizers attempt to removed them, they don't budge which causes the police to get involved, when he doesn't leave then, they drag him out. Then they realize it was just a publicity stunt and attempt to delete the pictures of the people apparently filming it. And here you have the Sensational headlines- communists man-handle protester who was minding his own business doing nothing to anyone, anywhere, anyhow. Look at how evil Novel is now and oh yea- the Indian government who likes to kick puppies and wants to take your free software... oh yes, again, they attempted to CENSOR the events by deleting people's pictures of it.
It all sounds like some stages publicity thing to me in order to get a word out. Of course My first thought was people are actually still going after Novel, what idiots, then I realized they were serious and I just felt sad for them. The entire Novel is evil bit wasa farce in the first place.
Exactly. I bet they are very happy now that this story is in Slashdot's RSS feed :))
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