Hi all
It seems that the Free Software movement has well-informed allies in rather unexpected areas. At least to me, it was news that traditional development-collaboration organizations are concerned about Information Technology, to an extent that they are discussing software patents with the Patent Office. So, please let me describe an experience before I ask a few questions.
Today, a number of Swiss non-governmental organizations met in Berne to discuss WSIS, the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society [1] whose first part will take place in Geneva in December 2003. Most of the audience was rather remote from computing: Besides Alex Schröder and myself, who were both representing Wilhelm Tux [2], probably pretty much everyone else was from a media, development, women's, human rights, ... organization. Correspondingly, a big part of the discussion was about topics like the digital divide, community radios, or oppression of journalists -- all very important, but not immediately related to Free Software.
However, the official position paper ('platform') of the Swiss NGOs [3] does include short statements about Free Software and Intellectual Property rights. The symposium brochure contains several paragraphs about these topics. Actually, the organizers turned out to be quite familiar with the goals of our movement. For example, Chantal Peyer of 'Bread for All' [4], who co-organized the symposium, has read the GNU philosophy pages and is well aware of the discussion around software patents. Chantal told me that their position on the patent system actually is one of the areas where they got into a debate with the Swiss administration, so they had discussions with a representative from the patent office.
I was quite surprised and delighted to hear this, of course. In my humble opinion, the least we as proponents of Free Software should do is to become more visible to these supporters of our goals. While I personally doubt that big-scale events like WSIS can have very concrete effects, the world summit in December might be a good opportunity for getting publicity and more supporters. So, I'd like to ask a few things:
* Does the FSF have any plans with regards to the WSIS summit in Geneva? I've found a few postings on the Web containing both 'WSIS' and ('GNU' or 'FSF'), but nothing too concrete. The official list of WSIS participants does not seem to include FSF.
* Are people at FSF Europe aware of WSIS? Did the country chapters establish any contacts to the respective preparation groups in their area? Maybe other groups will be surprised, too, to hear about unexpected supporters of Free Software.
* Would it make sense to have more texts catering to NGOs, for instance explaining why Free Software is good for developing countries?
* Another area where NGOs might become our ally is encryption: Why is it that the likes of Amnesty International, Greenpeace etc. are not loud voices in the discussion about outlawing cryptographic technology? After all, one would presume that these people had an interest in crypto being legal.
* Wilhelm Tux could officially sign the Swiss NGO position paper [3].
Personally, I wouldn't mind going to some preparatory meetings, explaining the Free Software movement to NGO people, etc., but I'm sure there are people around who are better suited for this.
I'd be sorry if all this was old news to everyone but me. I did try to find information about FSF's participation at WSIS on the Web, but I had no real success. I think it would be quite awkward if such a big-scale event about the "Information Society," which also is a chance to meet many potential supporters, was without the presence of one of the most important groups.
Best regards
-- Sascha Brawer, brawer@acm.org [5] Berne, Switzerland
[1] http://www.itu.int/wsis/ [2] Swiss Campaign for Free Software, http://wilhelmtux.ch/ [3] http://www.comunica-ch.net/ (cf. sections II.5 and II.6) [4] Development NGO funded by Swiss protestant churches; http://www.ppp.ch/ [5] http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~brawer/ (I'm not there anymore and should have moved my page a long time ago..)
"Sascha" == Sascha Brawer brawer@acm.org writes:
Sascha> * Are people at FSF Europe aware of WSIS? Did the country Sascha> chapters establish any contacts to the respective Sascha> preparation groups in their area? Maybe other groups will Sascha> be surprised, too, to hear about unexpected supporters of Sascha> Free Software.
In France, we are in close contact with the preparation groups. Some of our ideas/propositions are in the documents of the last PrepCom.
Fred.
Hi all,
many thanks to everyone for replying to my questions with regards to WSIS, the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, December 2003.
To summarize: Free Software proponents are in contact with several local WSIS preparation groups. Also, some local NGOs, whose declared goals include the propagation of Free Software, have registered with the summit. However, unless I'm overlooking something, the Free Software Foundation has not officially been present at any meetings so far.
I cannot speak for the FSF, of course, but I really think that it would be a pity to miss this opportunity. At least in my personal opinion, the Free Software Foundation should be represented at the summit.
Does anyone know how to make this happen?
-- Sascha Brawer, brawer@dandelis.ch http://www.dandelis.ch/people/brawer/
"Sascha" == Sascha Brawer brawer@dandelis.ch writes:
Sascha> unless I'm overlooking something, the Free Software Sascha> Foundation has not officially been present at any meetings Sascha> so far.
Sascha> I cannot speak for the FSF, of course, but I really think Sascha> that it would be a pity to miss this opportunity. At Sascha> least in my personal opinion, the Free Software Foundation Sascha> should be represented at the summit.
In France, the FSF is represented in the preparation process (by me, mainly).
It is much more important to be in the preparation process (discussion with local groups, PrepComs...) than to be in Geneva at the summit itself.
Sasha Brawer wrote:
Would it make sense to have more texts catering to NGOs, for instance
explaining why Free Software is good for developing countries?
Another area where NGOs might become our ally is encryption.
I work in Malaysia and have a part to play in the running of the 'Asian Open Source Centre' (http://www.AsiaOSC.org) Personally I support free software but the Government is funding this centre and 'free software centre' would not be supported financially, not enough people have heard of that term in Malaysia and the (fairly conservative Government) feeling is, we have to start the argument based on cost, and mention the freedom aspects when people are listening. 'Software is a human rights issue' doesn't tend to attract too many listeners round here. In a country where demonstrations are not a recommended activity unless the demonstration is an official Government demonstration, human rights / activism is considered 'best left to NGO / Govt'.
Of course, many argue that precisely in developing countries, price is not the issue, since piracy of proprietary software is so rampant. Particularly, that applies to the home user. Businesses are occasionally raided here for software piracy, but private homes never are. So there's very little incentive for the home user to clean up his/her act and move to OSS.
Anyway, I think free software can make a big push into developing nations. Especially if you can get to countries early in their IT adoption process, you have less legacy proprietary software slowing things down. FSF-India can hopefully be a big help.
The major news I heard about WSIS and open source / free software, was the way USA attacked and watered down a WSIS statement on open source recently. At least that shows that events like WSIS are talking about the issues. http://theregister.co.uk/content/4/29157.html
Encryption - I think that's a more difficult way to push free software. Why is encryption limited to free software? Couldn't Microsoft launch an (admittedly, difficult to trust) PGP-a-like?
If anybody from FSF Europe would like to come to Malaysia at any time and talk free software, I'm sure I could find you an opportunity during 2003.
Imran William Smith
Imran William Smith imran@imran.info wrote:
Of course, many argue that precisely in developing countries, price is not the issue, since piracy of proprietary software is so rampant. Particularly, that applies to the home user. Businesses are occasionally raided here for software piracy, but private homes never are. So there's very little incentive for the home user to clean up his/her act and move to OSS.
Maybe the main incentive to offer these people is the ability to fix and adapt the software to do the tasks that they need to do? That, and the ability to study the software design in detail, to give them new useful skills for the future.
MJ Ray wrote:
Maybe the main incentive to offer these people is the ability to fix and adapt the software to do the tasks that they need to do? That, and the ability to study the software design in detail, to give them new useful skills for the future.
Yes, certainly we can push the benefits for education and developing an vibrant local software industry. In particular, the current widespread anti-American feelings may help to encourage people to be wary of software pushed onto them by US based Microsoft (Taiwan and China are especially influenced by such political motives).
In the recent Asia Open Source Symposium I attended, which Georg Greve from FSF Europe also attended (my writeup and all the slides from the sympo are at http://www.asiaosc.org/article_22.html), there was mention of 'replacing the US centric development model'. I didn't like to mention that just as much stuff is done in Europe.
On an unrelated topic - could the FSF do something to raise the profile of the risk anyone involved in shared source / GSP is to further software development? If we can make companies worried to employ people with a GSP / shared source history, because of possible future lawsuits from MS, then programmers know it's in their personal interests to refuse any GSP / shared source work. I would like to see a question on IT recruitment forms asking if you've ever done GSP / shared source work worked. Let's make these people 'untouchables'!
Imran Malaysia
On Sat, 2003-03-15 at 15:15, Imran William Smith wrote:
On an unrelated topic - could the FSF do something to raise the profile of the risk anyone involved in shared source / GSP is to further software development? If we can make companies worried to employ people with a GSP / shared source history, because of possible future lawsuits from MS, then programmers know it's in their personal interests to refuse any GSP / shared source work. I would like to see a question on IT recruitment forms asking if you've ever done GSP / shared source work worked. Let's make these people 'untouchables'!
Do you have or are there evidence that MS could file lawsuits against developers that read MS code? Do you know people of governments that actually read the final NDA and can tell us for sure that this would be the case? We need to find out for sure before we declare them "untouchables", otherwise we run the risk of being called "names" :)
regards stef
On Wed, 2003-03-19 at 11:28, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
On Sat, 2003-03-15 at 15:15, Imran William Smith wrote:
On an unrelated topic - could the FSF do something to raise the profile of the risk anyone involved in shared source / GSP is to further software development? If we can make companies worried to employ people with a GSP / shared source history, because of possible future lawsuits from MS, then programmers know it's in their personal interests to refuse any GSP / shared source work. I would like to see a question on IT recruitment forms asking if you've ever done GSP / shared source work worked. Let's make these people 'untouchables'!
Do you have or are there evidence that MS could file lawsuits against developers that read MS code? Do you know people of governments that actually read the final NDA and can tell us for sure that this would be the case? We need to find out for sure before we declare them "untouchables", otherwise we run the risk of being called "names" :)
The problem is that probably the NDA forbid to tell others details about the NDA itself, at least the NDA on MS CIFS protocol documents seem to be designed like that.
However the SCO vs IBM case show clearly how dangerous can be signing NDAs without deep evaluation.
Simo.
Simo Sorce simo.sorce@xsec.it wrote:
The problem is that probably the NDA forbid to tell others details about the NDA itself, at least the NDA on MS CIFS protocol documents seem to be designed like that.
Anyone for the "sucker punch" tactic? Get them to let you read the NDA, then refuse to sign it and tell the world.
MJR
On Wed, Mar 19, 2003 at 11:28:29AM +0100, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
Do you have or are there evidence that MS could file lawsuits against developers that read MS code?
MS can always file a lawsuit, as long as it can convince the court that it has a case. If it sues you of copyright violation because there is an indication that you have read MS source code and then used portions of it in your own code, that is certainly enough of a case to at least allow the allegation to be tested in court (and once they have dragged you into a lawsuit, it doesn't really matter if they are right or wrong, or if you can proof that).
The best defense is to stay away from proprietary source code as far as possible.
Thanks, Marcus
Hi Sascha,
I was at PrepCom2 for the WSIS in Geneva in February. Both from the round tables and from talking informally to participants, from Africa in particular, I got the impression that the so called "Less Developed Countries", to use the WSIS phrase, are far more aware of the benefits of Free Software, and far better informed about it than European Countries - be it at Civil Society's or at government's level.
While computer literacy is indeed a boost to economic development, one shouldn't confuse economic deprivation with computer illiteracy. In that latter respect, many European governments are far worse off than their Southern counterparts.
All the best
Claude
-----Message d'origine----- De : wilhelmtux-discussion-bounces@wilhelmtux.ch [mailto:wilhelmtux-discussion-bounces@wilhelmtux.ch] De la part de Sascha Brawer Envoyé : vendredi 14 mars 2003 04:10 À : discussion@fsfeurope.org; Wilhelm Tux; gnu@gnu.org; team@fsfeurope.org Cc : Chantal Peyer; Loic Dachary Objet : [wilhelmtux-discussion] World Summit on the Information Society
Hi all
It seems that the Free Software movement has well-informed allies in rather unexpected areas. At least to me, it was news that traditional development-collaboration organizations are concerned about Information Technology, to an extent that they are discussing software patents with the Patent Office. So, please let me describe an experience before I ask a few questions.
Today, a number of Swiss non-governmental organizations met in Berne to discuss WSIS, the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society [1] whose first part will take place in Geneva in December 2003. Most of the audience was rather remote from computing: Besides Alex Schröder and myself, who were both representing Wilhelm Tux [2], probably pretty much everyone else was from a media, development, women's, human rights, ... organization. Correspondingly, a big part of the discussion was about topics like the digital divide, community radios, or oppression of journalists -- all very important, but not immediately related to Free Software.
However, the official position paper ('platform') of the Swiss NGOs [3] does include short statements about Free Software and Intellectual Property rights. The symposium brochure contains several paragraphs about these topics. Actually, the organizers turned out to be quite familiar with the goals of our movement. For example, Chantal Peyer of 'Bread for All' [4], who co-organized the symposium, has read the GNU philosophy pages and is well aware of the discussion around software patents. Chantal told me that their position on the patent system actually is one of the areas where they got into a debate with the Swiss administration, so they had discussions with a representative from the patent office.
I was quite surprised and delighted to hear this, of course. In my humble opinion, the least we as proponents of Free Software should do is to become more visible to these supporters of our goals. While I personally doubt that big-scale events like WSIS can have very concrete effects, the world summit in December might be a good opportunity for getting publicity and more supporters. So, I'd like to ask a few things:
* Does the FSF have any plans with regards to the WSIS summit in Geneva? I've found a few postings on the Web containing both 'WSIS' and ('GNU' or 'FSF'), but nothing too concrete. The official list of WSIS participants does not seem to include FSF.
* Are people at FSF Europe aware of WSIS? Did the country chapters establish any contacts to the respective preparation groups in their area? Maybe other groups will be surprised, too, to hear about unexpected supporters of Free Software.
* Would it make sense to have more texts catering to NGOs, for instance explaining why Free Software is good for developing countries?
* Another area where NGOs might become our ally is encryption: Why is it that the likes of Amnesty International, Greenpeace etc. are not loud voices in the discussion about outlawing cryptographic technology? After all, one would presume that these people had an interest in crypto being legal.
* Wilhelm Tux could officially sign the Swiss NGO position paper [3].
Personally, I wouldn't mind going to some preparatory meetings, explaining the Free Software movement to NGO people, etc., but I'm sure there are people around who are better suited for this.
I'd be sorry if all this was old news to everyone but me. I did try to find information about FSF's participation at WSIS on the Web, but I had no real success. I think it would be quite awkward if such a big-scale event about the "Information Society," which also is a chance to meet many potential supporters, was without the presence of one of the most important groups.
Best regards
-- Sascha Brawer, brawer@acm.org [5] Berne, Switzerland
[1] http://www.itu.int/wsis/ [2] Swiss Campaign for Free Software, http://wilhelmtux.ch/ [3] http://www.comunica-ch.net/ (cf. sections II.5 and II.6) [4] Development NGO funded by Swiss protestant churches; http://www.ppp.ch/ [5] http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~brawer/ (I'm not there anymore and should have moved my page a long time ago..)
_______________________________________________ wilhelmtux-discussion mailing list wilhelmtux-discussion@wilhelmtux.ch http://wilhelmtux.ch/vmailman/listinfo/wilhelmtux-discussion
Hello,
An interesting article for you, I believe: http://www.worldsummit2003.de/en/web/237.htm
Chantal Peyer
Geneva, 26 February 2003. The government delegations are currently working on the summit action plan, after they have debated the "vision" and "key principles" sections of the draft declaration. The latest version of the draft was scheduled to be out yesterday evening, but only came out to the public this morning. Civil society groups are working everywhere to produce comments and amendmends. The drafting group of civil society's "content and themes" committee is putting them together as a common input for the sessions of PrepCom subcommittee 2. There are a number of issues that are not welcome by many groups. For example, all mentions of "open source" and "free software" have been deleted completely in the current draft. "Security", which became a big theme in the recent months due to the US-led "war against terrorism" has got a whole section now, arguing for the need to "prevent the use of information resources or technologies for criminal or terrorist purposes". Civil society groups fear that this language would be used to legitimise new suveillance powers and weaken civil liberties. The European Union today circulated a "List of Issues" paper for the declaration themes and the action plan, which was mostly welcomed by Civil Society. But it is still unclear if the EU will use its international weight to really push this in the negotiations. The Greek presidency seems to be very calm, and the other EU government delegations leave it up to them to speak out publicly. These conflicts will continue in the coming months. Today it became clear that PrepCom2 will not produce any final version of the draft summit declaration. With only one and a half days left for negotiations, time is running out. Today we heard that the outcome of PrepCom2 will probably only get the status of a "rough draft". This working document will further be discussed in an "intersessional process" before PrepCom3 in September. It is still not clear if this will be an open process with participation of all stakeholders, or if the government delegations will meet behind closed doors only. But even if the intersessional process is open, it creates heavy problems for the real participation of many disadvantaged actors. The poorest countries which do not have permanent missions to the United Nations in Geneva might not have the ressources to attend all these meetings, and the high costs for traveling and staying in this expensive city will prevent a lot of civil society groups from participating, too.
The lack of openness and inclusion of all stakeholders again led to sharp criticism in the open session of subcommittee 2 this morning. The private sector delegates were really annoyed by the exclusion, and the international organisations and civil society speakers voiced their critique along the same lines. The president of the PrepCom, Adama Samassekou, was quite impressed by these complaints. He invited the heads of the government delegations to a special discussion on multi-stakeholder participation and involvement. We have not heard any outcomes yet, but we will closely follow the further progress of these debates.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sascha Brawer" brawer@acm.org To: discussion@fsfeurope.org; "Wilhelm Tux" wilhelmtux-discussion@wilhelmtux.ch; gnu@gnu.org; team@fsfeurope.org Cc: "Loic Dachary" loic@gnu.org; "Chantal Peyer" peyer@bfa-ppp.ch Sent: Friday, March 14, 2003 4:09 AM Subject: World Summit on the Information Society
Hi all
It seems that the Free Software movement has well-informed allies in rather unexpected areas. At least to me, it was news that traditional development-collaboration organizations are concerned about Information Technology, to an extent that they are discussing software patents with the Patent Office. So, please let me describe an experience before I ask a few questions.
Today, a number of Swiss non-governmental organizations met in Berne to discuss WSIS, the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society [1] whose first part will take place in Geneva in December 2003. Most of the audience was rather remote from computing: Besides Alex Schröder and myself, who were both representing Wilhelm Tux [2], probably pretty much everyone else was from a media, development, women's, human rights, ... organization. Correspondingly, a big part of the discussion was about topics like the digital divide, community radios, or oppression of journalists -- all very important, but not immediately related to Free Software.
However, the official position paper ('platform') of the Swiss NGOs [3] does include short statements about Free Software and Intellectual Property rights. The symposium brochure contains several paragraphs about these topics. Actually, the organizers turned out to be quite familiar with the goals of our movement. For example, Chantal Peyer of 'Bread for All' [4], who co-organized the symposium, has read the GNU philosophy pages and is well aware of the discussion around software patents. Chantal told me that their position on the patent system actually is one of the areas where they got into a debate with the Swiss administration, so they had discussions with a representative from the patent office.
I was quite surprised and delighted to hear this, of course. In my humble opinion, the least we as proponents of Free Software should do is to become more visible to these supporters of our goals. While I personally doubt that big-scale events like WSIS can have very concrete effects, the world summit in December might be a good opportunity for getting publicity and more supporters. So, I'd like to ask a few things:
* Does the FSF have any plans with regards to the WSIS summit in Geneva? I've found a few postings on the Web containing both 'WSIS' and ('GNU' or 'FSF'), but nothing too concrete. The official list of WSIS participants does not seem to include FSF.
* Are people at FSF Europe aware of WSIS? Did the country chapters establish any contacts to the respective preparation groups in their area? Maybe other groups will be surprised, too, to hear about unexpected supporters of Free Software.
* Would it make sense to have more texts catering to NGOs, for instance explaining why Free Software is good for developing countries?
* Another area where NGOs might become our ally is encryption: Why is it that the likes of Amnesty International, Greenpeace etc. are not loud voices in the discussion about outlawing cryptographic technology? After all, one would presume that these people had an interest in crypto being legal.
* Wilhelm Tux could officially sign the Swiss NGO position paper [3].
Personally, I wouldn't mind going to some preparatory meetings, explaining the Free Software movement to NGO people, etc., but I'm sure there are people around who are better suited for this.
I'd be sorry if all this was old news to everyone but me. I did try to find information about FSF's participation at WSIS on the Web, but I had no real success. I think it would be quite awkward if such a big-scale event about the "Information Society," which also is a chance to meet many potential supporters, was without the presence of one of the most important groups.
Best regards
-- Sascha Brawer, brawer@acm.org [5] Berne, Switzerland
[1] http://www.itu.int/wsis/ [2] Swiss Campaign for Free Software, http://wilhelmtux.ch/ [3] http://www.comunica-ch.net/ (cf. sections II.5 and II.6) [4] Development NGO funded by Swiss protestant churches; http://www.ppp.ch/ [5] http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~brawer/ (I'm not there anymore and should have moved my page a long time ago..)