Ahoy me hearties, we all be pirates!
Comments(3) There’s a fantastic article in today’s Guardian (via Computer World Magazine) about the International Intellectual Property Alliance, who say that countries advocating the use of open source software should be put on a “Specialist 301 list” (ie a trading watch list) because open source “weakens the software industry” and “fails to build respect for intellectual property”. The IIPA is an umbrella group for organisations like the RIAA and the MPAA, who are of course well-known for their open-mindedness and forward thinking.
Go read the articles, I’ll wait…
As well as the obvious lack of understanding of, well, anything, this is all quite bizarre. It implies disapproval of almost the entire internet infrastructure, as well as the big (US) players like Google. It shows a complete lack of understanding about companies (in the US) making a revenue from an open source business model, or even including open source software within their offerings. And how you can claim that the open source licenses somehow harm intellectual property is beyond me.
Oh well, I guess that puts the British Government on the watchlist, as well as the US government, and presumably the IIPA need to put themselves on if they use Apache at all…
Remember that redhat campaign citing gandhi:
“First, they ignore you – then, they laugh at you – then, they fight you – then, you win”
I think we’ve gone over the ignoring and laughing part, and the fighting looks pretty desperate now, too
I find this whole article kinda reassuring – it’s just a matter of time now. Governments won’t go back their hardly won independance and saved money to comply with gangster laws – good for us.
Great!! Spain is on the watch list, at least we are on a list…
Well, there are worse USA lists than these one…
http://www.bis.doc.gov/complianceandenforcement/liststocheck.htm
A friend of mine once said, “if you’re not on any list (I’m on one in Saudi) then you’re a nobody”. Seriously this does not surprise me of at all. Cuban guv uses open source for ideological reasons, but the City of Munich does too and they’re not anti-American, and Indonesia is puzzling as a key SE Asian ‘friendly’ like Malaysia (largely Muslim but not extremist). The US attitudes in exiting the International Tribunal under Bush, thus appear not to have changed under Obama, who effectively finds it very hard to implement his ideals. But more broadly this’ll be another notch in the FOSS vs. COTS debate that will never abate (debate, abate, got it?), which you and others document so well. Perhaps that is why I insist on standards and metadata in my blog, to keep issues in the open where it can be mediated without playing Catch 22.