On LWN dealing with Eric [LWN.net]

On LWN dealing with Eric

Posted Jun 24, 2004 15:20 UTC (Thu) by rgoates (subscriber, #3280)
In reply to: On LWN dealing with Eric by coriordan
Parent article: On dealing with Microsoft

coriordan, you make some very good and precise points. The only real threat to free-as-in-speech software is bad law. That includes the law(s) enabling software patents.

There have been a few noises in the community about organizing to lobby against such bad law, but I have yet to see much effective action. Am I missing something? I would love to contribute monetarily (and by writing letters/emails) in support of an effective OSS lobbying organization. I'll even consider participating in peaceful protest marches, which is not something I'm prone to do. But I'll only commit significant support to an organization that is making a significant and honest effort. By "honest" I primarily mean keeping focused on fighting for the freedoms needed by OSS and not being suborned to other causes.

Political lobbying is not the only thing required in this fight. Even more important is getting the general public to understand the issues and realize how important to everyone's welfare this fight is. If we can get the public to understand, we win. This will be harder than political lobbying. Is there any significant effort in that direction? I would love to contribute money to an effective and honest public relations campaign.

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On LWN dealing with Eric

Posted Jun 24, 2004 19:37 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Hi rgoates, I'm stuck for time, so this post is quite coarse. I'll follow this post up with a better one tomorrow.

The best thing you can do is to educate yourself. I have a small list of sources for digital freedom info. Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen are the two guys to look out for. The Wikipedia page on Eben Moglen has links to a lot of very interesting (and entertaining) talks he's given.

If there's no software freedom organisation in your area, set up a mailing list and get the word out. FSF or FSF Europe will happily do this for you. Twelve months ago in Ireland, there was no software freedom group, but I got a list set up and now it has 80 members. We're working on the software patents issue, the IP enforcement directive, the EU Copyright Directive, setting up conference stalls, organising talks etc.

People want to help, they don't know where to start. So make a starting point and ask for help, then people realise that they have some useful contacts, knowledge, etc. Collaboration works better for politics as well as software.

Think about giving talks. This could be a good way to get the info to the masses. Most college computer societies run series of amateur talks and will accept all offers. I'm not a "people person", but I started giving talks when I saw that no one was talking about software patents, I put my name down to give a talk. This had the benefit of educating a room full of people, but it also lit a fire under me to make sure I knew enough not to make a fool of myself.

hmmm, more tomorrow. Your post sounds a lot like me 3 years ago, and it more deserving of an essay than an LWN post.

On laws, in general

Posted Jun 25, 2004 8:46 UTC (Fri) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

A quote from Kropotkin's article on Anarchism for The Encyclopaedia Britannica:

Laws, [Godwin] wrote, are not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of their passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure. If and only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the decisions in the arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen for that purpose, real justice would gradually be evolved.

I feel this sentiment is relevant to the freedom-vs-bad-law problem.

On laws, in general

Posted Jul 1, 2004 11:49 UTC (Thu) by markhb (guest, #1003) [Link]

angdraug quoted:

Laws, [Godwin] wrote, are not a product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of their passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure. If and only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the decisions in the arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen for that purpose, real justice would gradually be evolved.

I submit that quoting anarchist propaganda falls exactly into the category of comments ESR was talking about when he wrote:

FSF-style propaganda about freedom or user's rights has its uses occasionally, but it will register on this campaign's target audience of bottom-line-fixated IT managers as irrelevant or nutty. And when you look irrelevant or nutty, you hand Microsoft a victory.

Remember: regardless of what we say about corporations, the largest swing block of voters in the USA today is relatively comfortable suburban mothers ("soccer moms"). Those mothers, taken as a group, have as their overriding priority the safety of their children, and they are perfectly happy with any reasonable restrictions on freedom (read: PATRIOT Act) that appear to support that goal. Anarchist sentiments are about as far in opposition to that as one can possibly imagine. As I used to say in my Slashdot .sig,

Those who would surrender essential liberty for a little temporary security may deserve neither, but they tend to be the majority of voters.

On laws, in general

Posted Jul 1, 2004 15:38 UTC (Thu) by angdraug (subscriber, #7487) [Link]

I submit that quoting anarchist propaganda falls exactly into the category of comments ESR was talking about

What was quoted wasn't anarchist propaganda, it was anarchist analysis. And my impression is that LWN's audience is not "soccer moms", but mainly critically thinking IT professionals who can take an argument for its worth, without running away crying "gasp! anarchists!".

Those mothers, taken as a group, have as their overriding priority the safety of their children, and they are perfectly happy with any reasonable restrictions on freedom (read: PATRIOT Act) that appear to support that goal.

And that is the reason why anarchist analysis of laws is relevant: it demonstrates that it is not necessary to allow "soccer moms" and politicians to decide what's good for us.

Anarchist sentiments are about as far in opposition to that as one can possibly imagine.

Which further proves that these sentiments are correct. Unless you mean to say that opposition to bad laws like PATRIOT Act is wrong, of course.