Re: GNOME/KDE interoperability hothouse

[Alan Cox <alan redhat com>]

> Actually, the current situation within the USA wrt technology related
> law-making is all the more reason to go there. Americans need our help to
> fight these kind of laws, not our ignorance.

US citizens can fight such laws effectively, for a non US citizen it is
very hard. They risk months unable to leave the USA, they risk
deliberate use of race hate against arabs and political biases about eastern
europe being used for jury trials.  The fact they are extra-territorial is
far worse. The US recently sentenced a Canadian to jail for trading with
Cuba, which is -required- under most national law. 

(The same is true for any nation. When people seek to stretch and abuse
EU law it is done the same way. The UK police were described by a UK 
judiciary held inquest as 'Institutionally racist'. I'm sure the european 
views of visiting the US match certain US executives view of visiting
France right now and for the same reasons.)

> And how would removing Free Software development from the USA help us in
> any way? Leaving the USA would basically be the same as admitting defeat and
> granting proprietary companies to do as they please in the USA. How is Free
> Software truly Free when it's availability is limited to geographical
> regions?

With the current continuing rise in crazy US software patents, the
billions of dollars being spent by media companies to own the US
government and the like its getting dangerously close to an inevitable
conclusion. I have lots of cool software on my website, a growing part
of which through no choice of mine is not available to US citizens, only
in the free world.

Why don't we hold the meeting in Cuba ? They don't seem to have an
paticularly problematic restrictions about who attends a conference there,
or problematic extra-territiorial judicial claims

Alan