Alexandre François Garreau, le dim. 23 févr. 2020 01:08:25 +0100, a ecrit: > Le dimanche 23 février 2020, 00:02:27 CET Samuel Thibault a écrit : > > I see my students not think that much when they put software on github, > > if I don't discuss with them. When you create a repository on github, > > it proposes to set a licence, and it happens to list essentially free > > licences (it may not be so long-term wise on github). But if you > > don't explicitly make a choice, no license is set, and thus in many > > juridictions the software is not free. > > This is bad of github, but this is a bad copyright law trick (that all > States favoring copyright (that is, imho, all of them) do), and people > should be warned against. > > So we need education… but only because work is done *against us* in the > other direction! Wouldn’t the State instantiate such tricky laws, in a > world where everybody publish stuff and don’t expect it to have special — > and technically obvious to circumvent— restrictions, we wouldn’t need to > do that.
Ok, but that's what we have now. So yes, we have to teach people. > > > We shouldn’t be defending free software because it is good but because > > > it gives freedom, so we shouldn’t try to make it good *just* for the > > > fantasy of it to be considered as such so then people agree on free > > > software. People need to be *politically convinced*. > > > > Sure. But if your software is unknown, it will not attract new > > contributors, and you will not have the opportunity to discuss with them > > about the politics. > > It’s not with contributors that you should discuss about the politics but > with the users. To make sure that long-term-wise you have free software alternatives, you want to discuss with contributors too. > > > So people will want to uphold freedom anyway. Maybe fewer, and that > > > would be sad, but then we’d need to give them *political* > > > hand-holding, not technical one. > > > > But they'll most often come from a technical door. > > Personally I’ve more seen the opposite. As most people aren’t technically > skilled, or programmers anyway. I'm talking about contributors. They would most often come contributing for technical reasons, not for political reasons. > > We often see this kind of situation in the community-driven ISPs of > > FFDN: people often come with technical questions to help some people > > with Internet access, and they come home not only with technical > > answers, but also political aspects of why e.g. network neutrality is > > important etc. > > Do people join *before* knowing about political aspects, in areas > where it is already possible and even common to use commercial ISPs? Yes. > Anyway, as I’ve told before, these local ISPs are way different, For various reasons, yes. But for teaching people about the politics involved behind just setting up Internet acceess, I believe there is a lot in common with teaching people about the politics involved behind just writing software. > > If we were not nice/welcoming on the technical questions, they would > > just not listen to whatever politics we'd like to talk them about in > > addition to the technical parts. Because they have no idea that these > > questions are important. We have a similar situation with free software. > My current ISP is part of FFDN. [...] Sorry, I didn't understand the actual relation with the point I was making. > So here, in the end, you could think it is like GNU, a bunch of expert old > hackers who control everything because they were here from the beginning… > > …except actually it’s not, pretty much the opposite: > > — these weren’t there from the beginning, they just happened to arrive in > the middle, and were enough “skilled” and “meritant” to set up a > completely informal meritocracy (like what was argued for since several > months), by doing the right things in the right time; So perhaps some written constitutional text was needed to prevent this from happening? > — statutorily it is democratic, so it is a proof constitutions proves > nothing (it just takes from people who gave their name to the states, who > reserved domain names or who are root on the right machines to do whatever > they want if we let them, and them justify themselves); > — constitutionally, it is upholding free software, as FFDN statuses > require to, ?? Where does FFDN requires that? The word "logiciel" doen't appear in the statuts, règlement, and charte. Samuel