[ale] Are Open Source tools in danger? <was Re: Are our Ethernet drivers in danger?>

aaron aaron at pd.org
Wed Jul 4 01:06:26 EDT 2001



It's independence day, so I'm sharing my thoughts on this thread as a
small declaration of independence from Microsoft (and all similar
glaring failures of capitalist theories).

Previously, Joseph A. Knapka typed into the ether:
> Darin Lang wrote:
> > 
> > No law is violated.  GPL'd software IS available for the private sector.  In
> > fact it is the only software that truly is available to the private sector.
> > Someone perhaps does not understand the term private sector which means
> > non-governmental sector. Nasa's research and development and in fact all
> > governmental research is paid for by public money, therefore the technology,
> > etc belongs to the people. That's the theory anyways, anybody can see that
> > it doesn't work that way, or perhaps it does it just takes 30 years for it
> > to be declassified (ecryption, GPS, etc).
> > 
> > What is actually being pushed below is M$'s latest propoganda campaign to
> > discredit Open Source, Free Software Foundation, GPL, Linux, etc. The
> > semantics are being attacked and it is being contended that the law means
> > that the gov't should sell the tech to a "private company" (like, oh I don't
> > know...hmmm....maybe M$) and give them a Monopoly on the
> > technology/development. "private company" and "private sector" are two
> > entirely different things.
> 
> I agree that MicroSoft's line on the entire Open Source issue
> boils down to a huge steaming ball of FUD. However, there
> are a couple of actual points buried in there.
>
> An argument made elsewhere in the same forum, and which makes a lot
> of sense to me, is that any product (software, human genome, etc)
> whose development is funded by taxpayer dollars should be placed
> in the public domain, unencumbered by any sort of IP restrictions
> whatsoever, be they GPL, patents, or what have you.

I disagree. In fact, I would strongly argue that the GPL (or something
very similar) should be the ASSUMED license for for ALL publicly
funded technology. This type of license protection is, at present,
the only one which can insure that the people who paid for the seedlings
will have access to the perpetual fruits of their publicly planted
trees without any unjustified, proprietary costs or encumbrances. The
alternative would be a world where the Webster's company could
levy a private tax on every citizen for the usage of words in our own
public language simply because they included those words in their
dictionary.

Unfortunately, in terms of electronic information technologies, we
already suffer that kind of hellishly absurd world on many levels.
Exploiting the "network" and "standards" dependencies inherent to any
medium of communication (or transportation), a single corporate entity
replaced the common public speech with the scrambled words, secret codes
and cryptic grammar of it's own proprietary dialects. The result is
that much of the world now suffers from the sometimes criminal, often
unethical and always consumer abusive activities of a global corporate
monopoly called Microsoft. 

Nothing speaks to the need for persistent, residual protections of free
language more than that company's continual efforts to further usurp,
infect, corrupt, distort, diminish, override or otherwise own and
control every publicly funded and/or community supported standard
established for electronic exchange of information. Such a sorry
legacy is guaranteed whenever proprietary control of a community's
language is allowed or tolerated. While books and printing presses
and paper and pens do not need to be free of cost to be functional,
the language, grammar, words and symbols they convey simply have
to be: free language is the essential core of all communication.

I believe the GPL was created as a necessary, consistent and
equitable mechanism for freeing the global community from the
entrapments of proprietary electronic languages. As an extension of
earlier Open Source licenses, it is a justified response to the
monopolist abuses and the corporate funded legislative attacks on
intellectual property law that have circumvented or diminished prior
Open Source protections. I find it quite plainly evident that legally
binding licenses with residual extensions like the GPL are, for the
present, the only effective guardian of free speech and usage
available for our publicly funded, openly published and community
supported electronic language technologies.

Just as important as the physical electronic technologies involved,
it has been the public, open and cost free nature of the our basic
electronic languages and protocols which created the global Internet
and continues to sustain its exponentially accelerating expansion.
If the free and open exchange of information which drives such
revolutionary innovation is to survive, if the free communication of
ideas is to continue, then all of the common, public languages of that
communication must be absolutely and uncompromisingly free.

peace
(after justice)
Aaron Ruscetta



PS:
I didn't catch exactly which "other forum" this discussion related to,
but if my comments are appropiate there, feel free to post them.


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