moin, moin,

we've recently been seeing lots of really bad assaults on the Free
Software/Open Source community.

DMCA, UCITA, Carnivore, Skylarov, Felton, E911, crypto bans, no court order
wiretapping, etc.

These are all attacks on our freedoms. They are also a sort of Denial of
Service on our community. When Alan Cox, Jeremy Allison, rms and Bruce
Perens have to drop everything to respond to something we are losing their
leadership where we want it, namely building better software.

What can those of us who aren't internationally known do? We can watch out
for infringements on our freedoms. We can add to the 700+ messages crying
out against the potential loss of our freedoms. We can help inform those who
don't know about these attacks. We can help make sure our freedoms stay free
by adding to the strong body of software we've created and make sure ours is
the best technology.

How do we do this?

We can watch the news sources and research stories. We can watch
announcements and minutes from organizations that are in a position to help
or hurt us. We can share this knowledge with each other. I recently saw a
post somewhere about being a successful leader. It was suggested to choose a
topic and start learning about it. Eventually one becomes an expert and
moves from the simple student to being the one helping others. We all have
the potential for this type of leadership. It's an important leadership as
well.

When we do see infringements on our freedoms we can speak out against them.
Our responses have to be intelligent and articulate. Janet Daly asked for
specific examples of problems in the W3C patent draft. She also asked for
specific suggestions. Excellent advice ( though it came in a bit late ).

Responsibilities of citizenship include helping fellow citizens keep
themselves informed. No one can watch everything. Everyone should watch,
though, the industries with which they interact a lot. For most of us on the
list that's some sort of computer or electronics industry. I have a friend
who's a trucker. I ask him about trucking companies and the companies he's
delivered for. It's not the full story, but I get a summarized report on the
industry from someone I know.

Finally, the one we probably most enjoy :). Advancing the capabilities of
FS/OS has been discussed here in the past. There are many ways to improve
it: documentation, bug reports, participating in discussion forums, doing
due dilligence to use FS/OSS and even coding :).

Lead by example. We've been doing an excellent job of that, which is why
there's a larger push for political DoSs against our community. We need open
standards because proprietary protocols along with laws forbidding us from
reverse engineering them keep us out of the game :(.

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
# der.hans@LuftHans.com home.pages.de/~lufthans/ www.DevelopOnline.com
#  A t-shirt a day keeps the noose (tie) away. - der.hans