Re: Neil's Newsforge article
Dominique Devriese <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.kde.cafe |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Rob Kaper writes: > 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... > I agree that KDE should refrain from politics, including protests > against software patents. I disagree. KDE has to be able to voice its opinion on politic developments that are important to its goals. You seem to like to use hypothetical situations to make your point, so how about this one: What if the US government is considering a law forbidding free software development ? Would you still think it is inappropriate for KDE to respond to that ? You should realise that the reason that so many people in the free software world are so concerned is that the software-patent directive isn't all that much less than a law forbidding free software. > 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. It is indeed a subtle criterium, but everyone in KDE except for Neil Stevens seem to have had enough common sense to make the distinction so far.. > 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? No. > 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". It would indeed be a bit harder, but if the developers show their common sense, I don't think that should be a showstopper. cheers domi 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.