OT - Limiting freedom

[Oleg Broytmann]

http://lwn.net/daily/guardians.php3

   "It is fundamentally about why this movement is about free software, not
open source.
   FreeDevelopers is about being the guardians of the world's freedoms, not
just the freedoms of developers. And certainly not about just efficient and
better software.
   If you don't understand that, then you do not understand what Richard
has been saying for 17 years. And if you have not understood it after 17
years, it becomes doubtful that you will ever understand it."

   "With the connectivity of the Internet and cyberspace, software is the
functional equivalent to law in real space, because it controls people,
just like law does.
   But while law uses a human police force to enforce its rules, software
uses a digital police force to enforce its rules.
   That actually makes the digital police force much more obedient and
therefore dangerous in the wrong hands."

   "The world has fought a lot of wars to make regular law open, democratic
and available to the governed.
   We shouldn't let technology take us backwards to a time when a few
people have the arbitrary power to create whatever law they please and have
everyone else just subject to it.
   I found that technologists discount these ideas more than they should.
   You should seriously think about them."

Oleg.
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     Oleg Broytmann            http://phd.pp.ru/            phd at phd.pp.ru
           Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN.