[Solar-educacion] (Fwd) Re: [school-discuss] Some questions about OSS in educati

[Daniel Ajoy]

> Podemos denunciar a las escuelas que sabemos usan software
> trucho (como dicen ustedes)?
> 
> Una lista de escuelas en la internet, y una carta a los
> medios explicando las implicaciones... ellos aman los
> escándalos.

Hay algo equivalente en Argentina a los 
"school board members". El comité de padres
de familia quizá? Quizá algún miembro del
comité podrían exigir que la escuela tenga
licencias de software para el software utilizado
que necesita licencias...
 
Quizá podría hacer ese pedido en una asamblea...

Daniel



------- Forwarded message follows -------
On Sunday 15 August 2004 11:45 am, Daniel Taylor wrote:
> Daniel Ajoy wrote:
> > BTW, Why doesn't Stallman like the the word "pirate" applied
> > to software?
>
> because it is stupid to equate helping people with attacking a ship,
> attacking a ship is bad, helping people (by giving software for
> free) is good. Hence the dislike of the term.

Greetings,

First off, OSS is, in my opinion, the way to go for a 
number of reasons.  In this Stallman is correct, although 
he dislikes the name "Open Source."

But, if I create a piece of software, investing my time and 
money and equipment so to make it work, and if I decide to 
sell the binary and keep the source as a secret, it is my 
creation to do with as I so desire.  I have no moral 
obligation to take something which I created and give it 
away.

If I choose to give the source to the community, with 
certain restrictions such as with the GNU Public License, 
that is also acceptable.  I can determine what to do with 
that which I create.

For me to use something that I have no permission to use is 
stealing or piracy.  Even if I don't agree with the terms 
of usage but need the program, I can not take it on my 
terms.  I don't have that right.  If I have permission to 
use the program with certain restrictions -- such as under 
the GPL -- then I have the moral obligation to follow that 
license agreement.

For moral reasons, especially the planned obsolescence of 
proprietary software, I do not choose to use it.  Morally I 
believe the GPL and other open source licenses are more 
defensible, thus I choose to use open source software.

I personally refuse to use Microsoft products.  But where a 
shop or individual uses Microsoft products, I believe we 
must encourage them to act in accordance with both the 
spirit and the letter of the End User License Agreement.  
Indeed, we need to be so anal retentive about it, showing 
the absurdity of the EULA, that people will reject the 
products covered by the EULA.

I am a school board member.  I am insisting that we can 
prove that every piece of software is covered by a proper 
license.  This means, because we have not used site 
licensing, that for each copy of Windows 95/98 which we 
run, we must have a proper certificate of authenticity and 
the proper EULA.  If we can't do that, those computer 
systems can not be powered on.  (Oh, let's just load Linux 
and open source software and be done with the problem.)



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