The OpenOffice.org Annual Conference goes to Beijing

"I have a hard time understanding a freedom loving software group honoring China by having a
conference there. Is China not the most restrictive country for journalists, much less its
citizens?"

To answer your question: No. You are simply repeating the propaganda you have been fed since
birth. No wonder you have a hard time understanding. If we want to propagate ideas about
freedom, this is exactly the right thing to do: go out there, meet people, let them see that
what we stand for is friendly and peaceful, that we have something good we want to share. You
can't force people to be free - it has been tried in Iraq (as well as in Afghanistan, Vietnam,
Korea, ...), and we ought to have learned by now.

This is not to say that there is nothing to criticise, but show me a country where everything
is perfect; where everybody enjoys perfect freedom, where there is no inequality, no social
injustice, etc etc. And try to turn it around: America has been criticised strongly - and with
good reason - for its transgressions, but the only effect this has on most Americans is that
they get defensive; it certainly hasn't made the American government change its ways, as far
as I can see. So why would anybody expect it to be different for other countries? If we always
criticise China, we only achieve to alienate the Chinese.

Apart from that, before we even think about criticising, we should at least make sure that we
get the facts right, so we don't make ourselves look like idiots. "Democracy" and "freedom"
means different things to different people, and if you ask people, you will find that it
rarely has anything to do with lofty principles; people just want to be free from worry.