Stallman Crashes Talk, Fights 'War On Sharing'

schliz writes "Free software activist Richard Stallman has called for the end of the 'war on sharing' at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane, Australia. He criticized surveillance, censorship, restrictive data formats, and software-as-a-service in a keynote presentation, and asserted that digital society had to be 'free' in order to be a benefit, and not an attack. Earlier in the conference, Stallman had briefly interrupted a European Patent Office presentation with a placard that said: 'Don't get caught in software patent thickets.' He told journalists that the Patent Office was 'here to campaign in favor of software patents in Australia,' arguing that 'there's no problem that requires a solution with anything like software patents.'"

Comments

Worse Than Software Patents

[TheEyes]

Even worse than software patents, there is a new UN resolution going around that would give world governments more control over the internet. This is even worse, IMO, than software patents, which "only" threaten to drive software innovation to a virtual standstill: allowing governments to control the flow of information on the Internet could well destroy it, and the newfound freedom of expression and access to information we are currently taking for granted.

There are so many new threats to freedom on so many new fronts it's hard to even define what they all are, let alone what can be done about them.

Re:Go Stallman

[mcgrew]

He's following in the late great Grace Hopper's footsteps. Hopper wrote the world's first compiler (FLOW-MATIC), then co-wrote the world's second compiler (COBOL). She coined the word "computer bug"; the first computer bug was a moth that got fried in the circutry. In pursuit of her vision she risked her career in 1949 to join the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and provide businesses with computers. There she began yet another pioneering effort of UNIVAC I, the first large-scale electronic digital computer. To ease their task, Admiral Hopper encouraged programmers to collect and share common portions of programs. Even though these early shared libraries of code had to be copied by hand, they reduced errors, tedium, and duplication of effort. Stallman has some big footsteps to follow.

Re:the printing press

[mcgrew]

bought about the creation of the middle class, modern democracy, and the death of the feudal system and the aristocracy

Completely incorrect and bass-ackwards. Wikipedia on the printing press: "The rapid economic and socio-cultural development of late medieval society in Europe created favorable intellectual and technological conditions for Gutenberg's invention", not the other way around as you state. Gutenberg invented the press in 1439, nearly three hundred years before the industrial revolution.

Too bad your misunderstanding of history detracts so badly from the better points in your comment.

Re:the printing press

[gerddie]

No, we need IP laws and the lack of them will bring innovation to a standstill.

You have it all wrong: for example James Watt brought the development of the steam machine to a standstill using his patents, and only after these patents expired, innovation could continue:

Once Watt's patents were secured and production started, a substantial portion of his energy was devoted to fending off rival inventors. In 1782, Watt secured an additional patent, made "necessary in consequence of ... having been so unfairly anticipated, by [Matthew] Wasborough in the crank motion"... . More dramatically, in the 1790s, when the superior Hornblower engine was put into production, Boulton and Watt went after him with the full force of the legal system.

...

After the expiration of Watt's patents, not only was there an explosion in the production and efficiency of engines, but steam power came into its own as the driving force of the Industrial Revolution. Over a thirty year period steam engines were modified and improved as crucial innovations such as the steam train, the steamboat and the steam jenny came into wide usage. The key innovation was the high-pressure steam engine — development of which had been blocked by Watt's strategic use of his patent. Many new improvements to the steam engine, such as those of William Bull, Richard Trevithick, and Arthur Woolf, became available by 1804: although developed earlier these innovations were kept idle until the Boulton and Watt patent expired. None of these innovators wished to incur the same fate as Jonathan Hornblower.

Re:I don't care what anyone says

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So THAT'S why moderate muslims don't denounce the crazies. I get it now thanks.

Are you serious?

Thousands of muslims leaders and millions of regular muslims have denounced the terrorists.

Hell, even the leader of the axis of evil, Ayatollah Khamenei, publicly condemned the 9-11 attacks.