Re: GNOME/KDE interoperability hothouse

[Martin Sevior <msevior mccubbin ph unimelb edu au>]

On Fri, 31 May 2002, Alan Cox wrote:

> > 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
> 

This whole thread is truely bizzare. As an Australian I find this
irrational bias against the US to be without foundation. As if the FBI
Marshells are going to swoop in and bust up a Free Software discussion!

Was it in Germany that a KDE hacker got sued coz he named his application
KIllustrator?

There lots of weird things happening all over the place and not just in
our small pocket of free software development.


Martin Sevior