Microsoft prohibits GPLed work via licensing of CIFS standards

[Alistair Davidson]

At 11:00 AM 4/8/02 +0100, Martin Keegan wrote:

>I'll say it again: we need a European campaigning organisation for the
>digital environment, covering the issues of freedom of speech, privacy,
>crypto policy, intellectual property and open architecture.

I agree, but as we both know every attempt so far has failed utterly. I 
think the reason is an obsession with accommodating everyone, making sure 
we piss noone off and so on. I'm beginning to think that it might be best 
for the CDR to just form such an organisation itself, with the CDR as the 
first member and hopefully recruiting other European organisations quickly. 
I think the CDR experience has shown that it's perfectly possible to 
campaign while keeping to the "broad tent" idea, simply by focusing on the 
issues that we all agree on. also, most of the work has been done by a few 
dedicated individuals doing things without spending ages debating on 
mailing lists. I think we all no that no of any importance decision is ever 
taken on a mailing list ;)

For non-CDR folks: there's a range of opinion within the CDR, from 
copyright abolitionists to people who simply want to stop the EUCD and 
similar measures. Despite this (and the, er, 'heated' discussions it's 
generated) we've been able to all rally behind the specific campaigns. So 
far that's been fairly easy because they're all negative, but there's been 
discussion of positive campaigns that we all agree on, like a positive 
right to fair use.


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