Re: [aclug-L] illegal software

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I'm not quite clear at what you're driving at... is it:

1) You're concerned about some past episode; or
2) You'd just like us to watch out for the future.

If it is #2, I will say point taken and I'll continue to be careful
with this as in the past.  If you're saying #1, then perhaps you are
concerned about a post or two to this list.  I can understand your
concern.  On the other hand, no illegal activity was taking place and
ACLUG will do nothing to encourage illegal activity; in fact, if
anybody does try to use the ACLUG lists or meetings for illegal
activity, I'll put a stop to it.

It might be wise for everyone in the list to realize that these are
contentious issues and perhaps it would be prudent to be careful when
talking about them in a public place like ACLUG-L.

Wesley Simon <wsimon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> My main point is not whether it's ethical or not.  My point is that

I know.  I've made it into a bit of a different discussion.  I'll get
back to your original point below.  The reason for this is that the
law has yet to catch up with technology.  Cryptography is just as
illegal to export from the US and a nuclear warhead, and in fact, they
are regulated by the same law.  (That's right, the US gvmt. calls
encryption a "munition").

The law is supposed to reflect the common morality of the citizens and 
protect us from harm caused by others.  Unforuntately, sometimes, due
to misunderstanding of the issue, pressure from lobbyists, or
whatever, the law does not do this.   This has been the case, for
instance, with slavery in the south in the 19th century, and civil
rights problems in the first half of this century.

> according to the law, it is illegal.  There are groups of men that

Just because somebody believes it to be so does not mean it is so.  I
don't think anybody could credibly claim that the people in your
example were engaging in ethical behavior.  A valid argument can be
constructed, however, to show that creating non-free software is
indeed unethical.

> matter, it is still illegal.  A group that meets upon the WSU campus may
> consider the ramifications of such activity.  I'm sure the president of
> WSU would not be willing to discuss ethics if he booted a group for
> engaging in practices that are according to the law: illegal.

ACLUG does not engage in any illegal activities, regardless of the
ethical undercurrents, and I wholly agree with you that we should not.
ACLUG never has, and as long as I have something to say about it, we
never will.  We've never encouraged people to pirate software and we
always watch the licenses maticulously.  This is why, for instance, we
have installed Debian in the past.  We can legally make copies of the
Debian CDs but not the RedHat ones since the RedHat package contains
some non-free software like BRU2000.  We have, on occasion,
demonstrated legally-acquired non-free software such as StarOffice but
I have been careful to always explain that StarOffice, for instance,
is available for no charge for noncommercial use only.  Note that I do
not say StarOffice is "free" because here I use "free" in the way that
the Free Software Foundation does; not with regard to price.

That said, yes, there have been some posts that have casually
mentioned cracking at least.  I am not sure that the person(s) posting
were really serious about it, but I am sure that nobody from ACLUG
offered to help illegally copy commercial software.  Perhaps people
ought to be a bit more careful about what they say in public.  On the
other hand, simply talking about it offhand in the list is not
illegal, so if you're asking me to ban those posts from the list, I'm
not going to do that.  complete.org has been around since 1995 and
currently hosts 50 lists including this one.  In that entire time, I
believe I have used my ability to ban or block posts only twice in all
that time -- once for spamming and once for excessive inappropriate
language (on a different list).  If people start to use the ACLUG
lists or meetings to facilitate trading warez, I will put a stop to
it, but to my knowledge, this has not happened to date.

To sum it up, I take a very dim view of censorship and I will not
censor the list except in extreme cases (spam or obvious abuse).

As Alex pointed out, ACLUG is not an official WSU organization.  If we
were, we would be limited to only WSU students as members.  This is
not a limitation we were prepared to accept because we in no way are
restricted to WSU -- ACLUG welcomes people from anywhere.  We do,
however, maintain ties and coordinate with the WSU chapter of the ACM
and the WSU CS department.  Without going into a lot of detail,
suffice it to say that the current arrangement is beneficial for all
involved.

We try to be good citizens.  We do not encourage illegal or unethical
behavior.  To do so would only be detrimental to the spread and
acceptance of Linux -- as someone (you?) said, it only makes it all
the easier to spread FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) about Linux.
I have consciously used free software for everything I can, from the
ACLUG website down to the program that delivers e-mail announcements
of our meetings.

I hope this clarifies the situation somewhat.

John

-- 
John Goerzen   Linux, Unix consulting & programming   jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx |
Developer, Debian GNU/Linux (Free powerful OS upgrade)       www.debian.org |
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