“On Thursday, open source advocates will leave the conference en
masse and march on City Hall in San Francisco to deliver a proposal
‘that is, for once, aware of free software and open source
software’. Similar marches for software freedom will take place in
the UK, Peru, Germany, New Zealand and Finland.“Backed by major players such as Red Hat, the disparate open
source movement will lobby for proposed US legislation known as the
Digital Software Security Act (DSSA) to ‘protect its future and the
future disposition of public domain, free and open software’.“Red Hat cited a number of pieces of existing and proposed
legislation ‘that are dangerous to free software, to open source,
to civil liberties and to programming freedom’.“Among those named were the Security Systems Standards and
Certification Act (SSSCA), the Uniform Computer Information
Transaction Act (UCITA) and open source nemesis the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)…”
Related Story:
CNET News: Open Source’s New Weapon: The Law?(Aug 10, 2002)