Re: Stormy's update: Week of July 13th

[Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org>]

Dear Richard,

An organizations like GNOME is free to decide for themselves which of
the online services they will use.

There are two things you can do here.

o. First is to set up a business that operates the way you want and that
   allows an organization like GNOME to sell the kind of things it
   wants to sell. This means offering competition for Amazon and then
   convince groups like GNOME to use your service instead. 

   I personally think this is the best option for you. Perhaps sit
   together with people like Stormy Peters to get an idea of the
   requirements that GNOME has?

o. Second is to try and get yourself elected on the GNOME foundation
   board, and that way have a more direct influence in such decisions.

When I read the article that you referred to it seems to be mostly about
Amazon's Kindle device. I fail to see much relevance with what GNOME
wants to do with Amazon.

Besides (and a bit off topic here), the terms[1] referred to in the
article state this under "Subscriptions":

        (iii) if we terminate a subscription in advance of the end of
        its term, we will give you a prorated refund; (iv) we reserve
        the right to change subscription terms and fees from time to
        time, effective as of the beginning of the next term;
        
Interestingly failed the EFF.org author to mention this. If people don't
agree with such terms, then why do they buy a Kindle device?

Although I'm not sure whether this would hold in a European court. As it
seems to go in conflict with a previous statement in the "Use of Digital
Content" section.

It's up to the people who bought a Kindle, and had content that is
affected, to settle this with Amazon. This isn't GNOME's responsibility.

We're not the Internet police.


--- 
[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530


On Tue, 2009-07-21 at 10:41 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
> Created some Amazon affiliate accounts in US, UK, Canada and Germany so tha=
>     t
>     Jaap can set up stores and a Firefox widget that will enable people to
>     direct Amazon referral fees for their purchase to GNOME.
> 
> It is not a good thing for the GNOME Foundation to support Amazon in
> this way.  Amazon is one of the main perpetrators of DRM
> (see http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/07/orwell-2009-dystopia).

-- 
Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
http://pvanhoof.be/blog
http://codeminded.be