The obvious way to get other “human rights centers” to understand software freedom issues is to give them their software freedom. Because non free software can not be trusted, no activist should use it.

It’s not just trust or privacy intrusion but criminalisation too.

The same privacy, security, convenience, features, cost and performance advantages apply to activists as the rest of the world but activists should be more receptive. They see the same astroturf harassment as we do and many of them have been harassed by government as well. They have been put on various government watch lists and been scrutinized at airports and elsewhere. Protesters were raided in their sleep and preemptively arrested at both US presidential conventions, for example, and had their computers seized. Whole drive encryption and email encryption that’s both easy and can be trusted should be of great interest to people at risk of that kind of privacy violation.

That about sums it up. It is about time that freedom and human rights centers start to join in after all these years. Question is how to bring them in.

As I said earlier, the attention given PJ and Techrights has the stink of an organized campaign. These dorks are passing around three year old smears. I wonder if Microsoft Jack is ashamed he waded into Jo’s lair or if Microsoft wants him to splash it out.

If you look at the progress FLOSS has made in the past two decades the corporations are losing ground.

I don’t think that’s the case at all. In fact, since the economic crash of 2008 things have gotten a lot worse very rapidly. Those that really empower of individual (people’s rights as opposed to corporate ‘freedom’, meaning deregulation) are Wikileaks and other activist groups that use information to achieve objectives. That’s why between December and March I spent so much time covering these issues in Daily Links. Free software is part of a broader battle for human rights. Techrights tends to look more at the IT side of things because focus — not breadth — is required for deeper understanding of subjects of choice. As expected, 90% or more of our opposition comes from the expected places, e.g. Microsoft, Novell, companies that want to turn FOSS into something else. Their heckling only helps validate our effectiveness.

From my stand point it’s a war of corporations against individuals. If you look at the progress FLOSS has made in the past two decades the corporations are losing ground. But the more ground they lose, the harder they fight and the dirtier they fight too.

Thank you for standing your ground in the face of such insults. They are lesser men than you.

Richard

Jack Schofield in another article, called stupids to all IT that didn’t migrate from XP to Vista/7. I collected this and other comments and write to the portuguese government sice they adquire 2 million and an half netbooks aon laptops for distribuition among students.
They aeu currently distribuiting them and all with XP and a GNU/Linux portuguese distro Caixa Mágica.
In this plan, the companies choose what OS they think is the best and in this case Microsoft Portugal choose XP. Since a voice like Microsoft Jack calls everyone stupid he knows something that MS Portugal should know too right?
So in this case I can only see 2 alternatives:
- Microsoft Jack is wrong and most apologize his dumbness;
- Microsoft Jack is right and Microsoft Portugal deceived the portuguese government (as usual…) and the 2 million and half kids and their families.

But in not only Portugal since the portuguese assembler also sold 2 million Magellan for Venezuela. I’m thinking that writing to president Chavéz is also a very good idea.

After all ZDNet is a very responsible company or not?

Best regards.

PS: I dont comment to people like that because I don’t want to feed them.