[Fsfe-france] Re: 01net Conference (December 20)

[Loic Dachary]

Richard Stallman writes:
 >          I tend to think that participating to the round table will
 >     have the effect of blessing the conference as a Free Software event
 >     where it really is a proprietary software event talking about Free 
 >     Software.
 > 
 > I cannot judge this.  It depends on details, such as
 > how effective Frederic is at showing the real issues
 > of values.  I don't know.

        Frédéric is very effective in general, given that he has enough
time to speak. He won't have a chance to address all the issues raised
during the one day conference, though, because he will only speak during
the round table.

 > Note that while none of the participants shares our ideals,
 > they are not all our enemies.  We should not accuse them ALL
 > of wanting to privatize free software.  We should not treat
 > IBM (for instance) like an enemy.

        Yes. The problem of warning people about the proprietary angle of
the conference is that it will create an hostile climate between the Free
Software movement and the companies that the speakers represent. Instead 
what we really want it that they realize that what they say misrepresent
the Free Software movement. We want to encourage them change what they
say so that it is faithfull to the Free Software movement.

        That seems like a catch 22 situation:

        - if we warn people so that they are aware that most of the
          views presented during the conference do not match the Free
          Software philosophy, we risk breaking the link between the
          speakers and the Free Software movement

        - if we say nothing, people will listen to the various points as being
          part of what the Free Software movement is (mixing Free Software
          and proprietary software, avoiding the GNU GPL etc...) 

        Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  address@hidden
24 av Secretan         http://www.senga.org/      address@hidden
75019    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 09 16          address@hidden
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt