by Carla Schroder
Managing Editor
Any political discussion can turn dangerous in a heartbeat, and
they usually do, with foaming and fireworks more usual than relaxed
give-and-take. So a lot of folks avoid any kind of political
discussion entirely just to keep the peace. And this makes sense–
why pick unnecessary fights? Among my little social circle is a
sub-group I call the Contentious Old Codgers. These old coots enjoy
arguing for the sake of argument, and getting people riled up.
They’re not interested in discussion or finding common ground
because they live for the thrill of combat. When they get started I
excuse myself and go find someone calm to talk to, because it’s not
fun for me.Then there are the Dogmatic Bores who live under the delusion
that their well-worn, oft-expressed, unfounded, and never-changing
opinions are golden pearls, and everyone they meet is dying to
receive their wisdom. (Actually, no, we’re not.) My favorites are
the Passionate Tormented Activists. The world is in constant
crisis, and it wears on these poor souls. They have no
lightheartedness and do not enjoy themselves very much.So avoiding unproductive arguments is wise, I think. But we
shouldn’t ignore politics entirely. It often seems that our (US)
government is this strange alien entity that has nothing to with
real people; that it’s a strange, dishonest world where normal
folks don’t want to go because they don’t want to get contaminated.
And that’s not entirely untrue. But ignoring it has bad
consequences.Free/Libre software itself is political. The GPL is called a
copyleft license, which is wordplay on copyright.
It is a clever use of existing copyright laws to protect software
freedom, and copyleft has expanded to include a number of creative
works, such as books, articles, photos and other images, movies,
and music. Which is in direct opposition to the fierce attacks on
existing copyright law, especially the insanely over-the-top
attempts at exterminating fair use, and turning minor copyright
violations into crimes of the century.Then there are the larger issues of what keeps a democracy alive
and free: transparency, unrestricted access to public information,
and accountability. Which are pretty much the same as Free software
values. Closed, proprietary document formats and data warehousing
are backdoor methods of keeping citizens locked out. In my little
county they still have books of handwritten records going well back
into the 18th century, and anyone can read them. Do you think any
digital data today from today is going to survive that long? Lots
of luck.Electronic voting? It is to laugh. It is astonishing how
incompetent Diebold has been with building electronic voting
machines. (Though now that they have changed the name of their
voting machine division to Sequioa I’m sure they are much better.)
(That was sarcasm.) Whether it’s deliberate or not, I have my own
suspicions. It’s just simple counting, for goshsakes. This is the
same company that makes ATMs– are you sure you want to trust
them?The security and personal control of our personal data isn’t
even on our government’s radar– and it’s no surprise, when there
is so much money in buying and selling us without our knowledge or
consent.An unfiltered, non-government controlled Internet means the
truth will always be out there somewhere, and not hidden away, or
sanitized and re-packaged beyond recognition.So there are a few examples of important political issues that
Linux/FOSS users can address and influence knowledgably. It doesn’t
matter who is in whatever elected office, or what party they belong
to, because these issues affect everyone. Our elected persons are
hearing mostly one side of the story, and that is the side that
gets rich off corruption and abuse. They need to hear from the good
guys, too.
Resources
Electronic Frontier
Foundation
GNU Project
Lawrence Lessig’s
Blog
Groklaw
More
Touch-Screen Machines Malfunction(Nov 07, 2008)
Presidential
Election Voting Machines Violate Ghostscript Copyrights, Suit
Claims(Nov 05, 2008)
The Most
Important Open Source System: Voting(Sep 29, 2008)
Editor’s
Note: It Is A War(Sep 12, 2008)
Vote-Dropping
Software Bug Could Gum Up Elections(Aug 25, 2008)
States
Throw Out Costly Electronic Voting Machines(Aug 20, 2008)