Sunday, June 17th, 2012, 8:47 am
Focus of My Activism
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CTIVISM for software freedom seems to have weakened somewhat. Truth be said, the FSF saw its power declining, key staff at the FSF left, and Android, which champions the Linux ideology in some sense, does almost nothing for GNU and very little for software freedom. Its code is Free/open source, but it also embraces DRM and other nasties.
Speaking for myself, I intend to extend my activism to freedom in general, as well as justice. For the past 5 years or so I’ve described myself as an advocate of fair competition. This also implies greater parity and more opportunities for new players, as opposed to the cabal of corporations that reign the status quo.
Yesterday I spent a long time speaking to a gentleman from Afghanistan. He came to the UK some years ago and I’ve had several opportunities to speak to him and ultimately befriend him. Things in his own country are grim, he told me, but he does not seem bothered by police state culture in the West, let alone the unjust inequality. For some people, perhaps not idealists or perfectionists, a world full of flaws is OK and not worth improving. But one needs to always be reminded that progress in society never happens without the hard work of those sacrificing their life for good causes.
George Bernard Shaw once said: “The resonable man adapts himself to the world; the unresonable on persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
