Secrecy is Weakness: Windmills
The SNEP and SCPP (a "civil company of the phonographic producers" trans.) is in the process of lobbying the French government for a change in the law that will ban open software.
SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department" bill proposal pass in the Parliament.
It appears that publishing Free Software giving access to culture is about to become a counterfeiting criminal offence. Will SACEM sue France Télécom R&D research labs for having published Maay and Solipsis (P2P pieces of software used to exchange data)?- (via FSF France -> Boing Boing)
All this does re-label a virtue as a crime. Even if this ridiculous bill is passed, open source software will continue to made available to French citizens from outside their jurisdiction. Much of the web runs on open and free software and one assumes they are not going to ban that. How exactly do you teach programming without 'publishing' source code? Will computer science lecturers be served with take-down notices as they chalk up the final semi-colon on the board? Will France simply stop training software authors?
If we do not communicate, there is no culture. Openness creates culture just as surely as secrecy will destroy it.
SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department" bill proposal pass in the Parliament.
It appears that publishing Free Software giving access to culture is about to become a counterfeiting criminal offence. Will SACEM sue France Télécom R&D research labs for having published Maay and Solipsis (P2P pieces of software used to exchange data)?- (via FSF France -> Boing Boing)
All this does re-label a virtue as a crime. Even if this ridiculous bill is passed, open source software will continue to made available to French citizens from outside their jurisdiction. Much of the web runs on open and free software and one assumes they are not going to ban that. How exactly do you teach programming without 'publishing' source code? Will computer science lecturers be served with take-down notices as they chalk up the final semi-colon on the board? Will France simply stop training software authors?
If we do not communicate, there is no culture. Openness creates culture just as surely as secrecy will destroy it.