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The FSF's Donald Robertson Talks About Secretive Trade Negotiations (Video)
Donald Robertson, is the Free Software Foundation (FSF) copyright administrator (and wearer of several other hats as well), so he's the FSF person to turn to when you want to discuss trade agreements, how they are negotiated, and how info on these (typically) secret) goings-on get leaked so that we can see what our negotiators are up to. And don't think, even for a second, that the TPP is the only trade agreement our government is working on, or necessarily the worst. After that, we learn how Don Robertson hooked up with the FSF and got what may be the best job in the world for an attorney who likes (and uses) GNU/Linux. (And for more, check out yesterday's interview with Mr. Robertson.)
You are all Cows. Cows say Mooo! Mooo. Mooo. Mooo cows Moo. Mooo say the cows. YOU TRANS PACIFIC COWS!!!
now can they!
When France is shot up, it's an immigrant problem.
When the US is shot up, it's a gun problem.
Lol!!!!
I don't have to maintain nearly the caloric intake that this guy does, so what's the worst that could happen? I'll let him worry before me.
I saw that movie. It was kinda boring and liked the previous three better
In my opinion, it's quite hypocritical to disparage restrictive agreements while at the same time supporting the GPL.
The GPL is one of the most restrictive open source licenses out there. It's an agreement that's all about taking away the ability of people to do what they want with source code.
The supporters of the GPL will claim that it's about "keeping the source code open forever" or some nonsense like that, totally ignoring how much freedom this ends up eliminating!
There are some open source licenses that are all about maximizing the freedom of all of the parties involved. Those licenses include the BSD and MIT licenses. They do not include the GPL!
It's ok for a supporter of the BSD and MIT licenses to take a stance against restrictive agreements. After all, such a person has shown that she has already taken a consistent, principled stand on such matters. But a GPL supporter is not in that position, given his support for such a freedom-limiting license.
> wearer of several other hats as well
The ones he wears when he's asking if you want fries with that?
Looking down the comment section I have to admit, it seems the whole TPP reporting starts to worry someone, we sure got a LOT more astroturfing going on now than usual.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I seriously need flash player to view this content? It's annoying as hell to go and find the flash plugin with a html5 capable browser.
The Corporate Sovereignty provisions are the biggest turd in these shit piles. It really is just a coup, where the normal democracy and law making process is replaced by a panel of corporate lawyers dividing up the market.
So a country makes a law that requires tobacco to be sold under the counter, 'Big Tobacco' companies take them to the tribunal of lawyers where they are required to remove this law because it affects the tobacco company profits. Or Volkswagon overturns diesel efficiency standards because it affects their profits. Or Microsoft overturns open format laws because it stops it selling access to your documents to you.
It puts corporations in the position of being able to overrule national laws and national governments.
No lawmaker would ever hand over sovereignty of their country to a foreign committee of corporate lawyers, so of course they keep these discussions secret. Plotters don't talk openly about their plots!
BSD was founded (in Berkeley) in an age of innocence, a time when academics and technical enthusiasts gave freely of their time and effort and a time in which malicious actors were almost unheard-of, and their impact was rarely even considered.
Those days are long gone. They were already on their way out before Snowden showed the world what is going on behind the scenes and put a truckload of nails in their coffin. The NSA revelations killed off any trust the BSD community may have had in closed source, just as firmly as HIV killed off Berkeley "free love". There was a time for it, but that time has passed.
While the right not to provide source code remains available in the wording of BSD licenses, the fact is that 100% of the developers of BSD distros and BSD packages do publish their own source code and their modified versions of other BSD packages, simply because it's too dangerous to trust closed binaries anymore. What's more, nobody with any credibility would recommend that others use closed BSD-derived binaries, because it's about as sensible as dismissing the importance of protection in sex. The analogy is an apt one since "infection" is a concept that applies in both domains.
What this means in practice is that the BSD communities now embrace provision of source code just as strongly as does the GPL. The alternative is just too dangerous in this unsafe world, and ill-advised to support. Indeed, if you find a BSD fan supporting closure of BSD sources, it's probably someone from the NSA. (The other possible explanation is youth, which often lacks the wisdom needed to understand the value of privacy and the dangers of universal surveillance.)
The old days of innocence are gone. You need to understand that, and stop promoting practices that just play into the hands of criminals on both sides of the law. The key distinction between BSD and GPL has in practice now disappeared, because the right to close sources just hands NSA and other evil-doers a trivially exploitable attack vector. Don't do it.
Judging by his picture, I'm banking that his secret tactic is: I'll gladly trade with you on Tuesday for a hamburger today
This fat fuck has made many secret trade negotiations with Twinkies.
Watching video content on Slashdot is an unpleasant experiences. I don't know exactly why, but this is not something that I like to do..