Re: Furthering respect to intellectual property rights (was: [ox-en] "Open Source Solutions Showcase" Week : May 27-31, 2002 (fwd))
- From: Russell McOrmond <russell flora.ca>
- Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 17:19:37 -0400 (EDT)
On Sun, 26 May 2002, Stefan Merten wrote:
Hi Russell and all!
Yesterday Russell McOrmond wrote:
"Open Source Solutions Showcase" Week
May 27-31, 2002
Very interesting - especially I'd visit the business people telling
why they like Free Software - if I would be closer to Ottawa ;-) .
I believe that "most" business people are involved in Free Software - it
is really a vocal-minority at this point that are opposed, and many that
are so far "confused".
* Promote respect for intellectual property law, because civil servants
can rely on legal off-the-shelf open source software to open and work
with files that they receive in proprietary formats.
This I find an particularly interesting point because is is - as far
as I have seen yet - never brought up in German discussions, but at
some regular basis in North American ones.
It is often hard for people to admit what is really going on. If the
"authorized" software for a government department is Lotus Suite (or even
an older version of Microsoft Office), and people send them a Microsoft
Word file from a recent Microsoft Office, they are left with a few
choices:
a) Reject the document, which is unfortunately not part of the culture.
(I believe it should be - only open standards should be interchanged
by government)
b) install Word (Illegally, since they won't get approval for the
purchase if the department has standardized on another suite).
c) Install OpenOffice - avoids procurement problem because of price,
avoids legal problems, etc.
I am looking forward to when OpenSource tools like OpenOffice are the
'standard' across government, and any proprietary tools are the
lesser-desired additional option.
On a separate meaning of the protection and respect for Copyright/etc, I
wrote this article:
"Want to retain copyright? Author Free Software!"
http://weblog.flora.ca/article.php3?story_id=149
In a letter written by a Microsoft representative to the Congress of
the Republic of Peru, a number of mis-truths, misdirections and
misconceptions were presented by Microsoft. The most invalid was the
suggestion that with Open Source and Free Software, software
programmers lose their copyright and their main source of payment.
I argue that this is not only not true for Free Software, but is
actually more true for proprietary software.
I remember Robert
Chassell(?) from the FSF mentioned exactly that point in a talk he did
in Braunschweig: Free Software helps (young) people to stay legal.
It also helps built a respect, rather than an animosity, towards
copyright.
I guess in Germany no one would officially admit, they are using
pirate copies...
*grins*
The wording from the government is not officially admitting anything,
just talking about what we all know to be the truth.
Mit Freien Grüßen
Stefan
---
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
See http://weblog.flora.ca/ for announcements, activities, and opinions
I will be speaking on Tuesday May 28 - see http://www.flora.ca/osss2002/
"Open Source Solutions Showcase" week - hosted by GTIS, PWGSC
_______________________
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