Re: Neil's Newsforge article
Rob Kaper <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.kde.cafe |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday September 06 2003 8:26 pm, Timothy R. Butler wrote: > From the surface though, it would seem to me the patent protest is quite > different from Neil's credit. Afterall one affected only the web site, the > other was a change to the official code base... Changing the website in the way it was done inconveniences users. Adding a credit that has to be specifically clicked towards does not, in any way, hinder accessibility of the KDE project. I agree that KDE should refrain from politics, including protests against software patents. There are better places to protest against those than obfuscating existing project infrastructure such as the www.kde.org website. If it turns out the Iranian government hinders KDE development in that country, can we expect the same kind of boycotts? How many developers and potentials must be affected by politics before a statement in the project is warranted? The "this affects KDE directly" argument is a very subjective one. In the end, most of us probably own a credit to our countries including the people, culture and governments in it. And because most people seem to want to tie the comment to current events: what if an Iraqi developer would join the project in the future, an opportunity that he probably would not ever have had with Saddam in control of the national firewall? Would he be allowed to credit the US army? A policy of "politics that affect KDE directly" will be much harder to maintain than one of "no politics at all" or "whatever the maintainers of a certain part of KDE decide". Rob - -- Rob Kaper | "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little [email protected] | temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." www.capsi.com | - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE/W8TDtppIl2G1SjcRAqS6AJ9jz/Gy0DvgcrqnMjuUyk89RaocGQCgj/fK MpnkJPihWLp6XBhdcog1T5k= =Qu4i -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Kde-cafe mailing list - [email protected] http://ofb.biz/lists/listinfo.cgi/kde-cafe DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this mailinglist are the personal opinions of the author and do not represent OfB.biz: Open for Business, KDE or the author's employer.