Norwegian Free Software Center Opposes Government Pro FOSS Policy

Alex Hudson home at alexhudson.com
Mon Sep 13 13:30:23 UTC 2010


On Mon, 2010-09-13 at 15:21 +0200, Carsten Agger wrote:
> man, 13 09 2010 kl. 13:54 +0100, skrev Alex Hudson:
> > If we take that argument at face value, what we're saying is that for
> > any Government website (as an example), people should have the right to
> > run a modified version of it for their commercial purposes that have
> > nothing to do with the Government data. It would be interesting to see
> > the construction of an argument that those freedoms are necessary for
> > good governance.
>  
> No. A website is a service that is provided but runs on the Government's
> server. 
> [snip]
> And to pass the changes on to partners who need e.g. the same error
> corrections. That's two of the freedoms already.

You're pretty much entirely missing the point.

If we're saying that software freedom is not just a nice-to-have at
Government level, but an actual necessity required for good governance,
then the example I set out must be defensible - there has to be a good
reason why that *must* be the case.

If it isn't, then at best only a subset of the freedoms are required. 

Showing how freedoms can benefit Govt. is easy, but that's not the
question.

Cheers

Alex.


--
This message was scanned by Better Hosted and is believed to be clean.
http://www.betterhosted.com




More information about the Discussion mailing list