[WSIS CS-Plenary] PCT and WGIG

[Vittorio Bertola]

Beatriz Busaniche ha scritto:
 > El vie, 14-01-2005 a las 09:17 +0100, Vittorio Bertola escribió:
>>It seems that PCT caucus members consider the free 
>>software concept as if it was (C) FSF/FSFE, and no one else was allowed to 
>>use it, promote it, modify it or even discuss it without their authorization.
> 
> I don't think you meant to say that anybody ought to be able to modify
> the meaning of a concept, because that would be absurd. 

Uhm... I really don't understand. I used the term "modify" to refer to the 
liberties promoted by the free software concept itself. Are you saying 
that those liberties should apply to software, but not to ideas?

Since the beginning of mankind, our knowledge and our ideas have been 
developing by taking the older ones and modifying them - this is the basic 
procedure for human evolution and, indeed, is what the current 
intellectual rights regime is putting at risk.

The meaning of concepts such as "freedom" does depend enormously on the 
society to which they are applied, and evolves significantly with time. 
Even now, we have plenty of different modifications of the 
"free-as-in-free-speech" concept applied to intellectual objects, and 
indeed the FSF one is different from Larry Lessig's one (on the Creative 
Commons website, they say to have been "taking inspiration in part from 
the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL)", 
which is exactly what I mean by "modify") or from D.J.Bernstein's one.

Again, it seems to me that what you are saying is that 5'000 years of 
human evolution have ultimately lead to the concept of "free software" as 
defined by the FSF, and now it's so perfect that it can't be made better 
any more - and no one should dare changing it or building something else 
on top of it. Or, that "if it's not branded FSF, it's not free software".

Excuse me for this long reaction, but historically this is what has been 
overly disturbing me in every discussion I've had with the "blue-ribbon" 
free software people, because I think that this is what might make the 
free software idea ultimately fail or be enclosed into a small preserve. 
I'd be glad to hear from you that things are different.
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
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