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Australia

Stallman Crashes Talk, Fights 'War On Sharing' 309

schliz writes "Free software activist Richard Stallman has called for the end of the 'war on sharing' at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane, Australia. He criticized surveillance, censorship, restrictive data formats, and software-as-a-service in a keynote presentation, and asserted that digital society had to be 'free' in order to be a benefit, and not an attack. Earlier in the conference, Stallman had briefly interrupted a European Patent Office presentation with a placard that said: 'Don't get caught in software patent thickets.' He told journalists that the Patent Office was 'here to campaign in favor of software patents in Australia,' arguing that 'there's no problem that requires a solution with anything like software patents.'"

Comment "Open Source" tells us almost nothing (Score 2, Interesting) 115

Neither the post, nor the article linked, tell us much. "Open Source" just says that some people can read the source code. It doesn't tell us:

  1. Who can read the source (licensees only?)
  2. What you're allowed to do with the source

"Open source" doesn't mean "public domain". Somebody still owns the copyright, and can make permission to copy the source conditional on acceptance of a license. Then the terms of that license are all-important.

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