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On the Culture of Free Software: Interview with Christopher Kelty
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| Free Software provides a radical form of openness which is, perhaps, a very
| American way of constituting a public (suspicious of the state and
| corporations, obsessed with ideas of balance and fairness, and a weird mix of
| individualism and populism). The question I think it raises is whether, as a
| politics it has a content. Free Software as it exists has an insanely refined
| focus on form over political content (and this is the source of the suspicion
| about the dominance of the technical). But the question is: is this focus on
| form itself a particular kind of political content? At some level yes, but it
| is one that is open to, and maybe even encourages people to challenge it. It
| is a way of saying: if this is a (for instance) “libertarian” form, it is one
| that you are allowed to change — so make it less libertarian if you believe
| that will make it better. It says nothing, however, about whether people will
| have the power to do that, which is its weakest feature, its inability to
| incorporate the concrete fact that history has led us to this point.
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http://transition.turbulence.org/blog/2008/08/25/on-the-culture-of-free-software/
Watch this view where RMS encourages selling Free software.
http://www.archive.org/details/e-dv203_cambridge_4_stallman_08-04_001.ogg
Last week:
How world-changing are the culture and politics of free software?
,----[ Quote ]
| Free Software provides a radical form of openness which is, perhaps, a very
| American way of constituting a public (suspicious of the state and
| corporations, obsessed with ideas of balance and fairness, and a weird mix of
| individualism and populism). The question I think it raises is whether, as a
| politics it has a content. Free Software as it exists has an insanely refined
| focus on form over political content (and this is the source of the suspicion
| about the dominance of the technical). But the question is: is this focus on
| form itself a particular kind of political content? At some level yes, but it
| is one that is open to, and maybe even encourages people to challenge it. It
| is a way of saying: if this is a (for instance) “libertarian” form, it is one
| that you are allowed to change–so make it less libertarian if you believe
| that will make it better. It says nothing, however, about whether people will
| have the power to do that, which is its weakest feature, its inability to
| incorporate the concrete fact that history has led us to this point.”
`----
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-world-changing-are-the-culture-and-politics-of-free-software/2008/08/23
Free Software movement fights to keep internet freedom in Brazil
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| A proposed new law that restricts the freedom internet use in Brazil has
| already passed the Senate and is dangerously close to going on the books. The
| law, created by Senator Azeredo PSDB, restricts things like open wifi
| networks, forces ISP’s to keep user information for 3 years and gives ISP’s
| the ‘green light’ to open and look at packages coming from P2P user’s
| connection to check for copyright violations, and the list goes on and on.
|
| [...]
|
| It is quite of a big surprise to see such law coming from a government that
| has defended the use of Free Software, supported the Creative Commons license
| inside of its Ministry of Culture and promoted initiatives of digital
| inclusion and knowledge sharing. Hopefully, the proposed legislation will be
| blocked and internet users from Brazil will not have to be worry about being
| monitored by packet sniffing by ISP’s. Otherwise, Brazil will become one of
| the biggest users of TOR, a free software that provides anonymity online.
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http://news.northxsouth.com/2008/08/18/free-software-movement-fights-to-keep-internet-freedom-in-brazil/
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