[SGVLUG] BBC documentary

[John E. Kreznar]

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<juanslayton at dialup4less.com> writes:

>      Just wondering if anyone has access to BBC World broadcasting?
>      They are airing a 2-part documentary on free and open-source
>      software.  Reportedly they give it favorable treatment,
>      including significant air time by Stallman. 

>      There is a writeup at http://www.apdip.net/news/fossdoc

>      If I could get this on tape, I'd like to pass it around to a
>      few school board members here in the valley.

Are you sure that's a good idea?

Based on that write-up, the documentary perpetuates an association
between FOSS and the underprivileged side of the "digital divide", as
though FOSS were some kind of loathsome stuff that the privileged and
affluent avoid if they can.

Better to awaken school board members (and anyone else) to the dirty
secret of proprietary software: Its purveyors have an incentive to
keep their customers ignorant, because with knowledge they would no
longer need the purveyors.  The truly pathetic victims of this drama
are not the school children in Africa or the poor in Brazil, but the
generation of computer illiterates that's been created by Bill Gates
so he can continue to tax their ignorance.

- -- 
 John E. Kreznar jek at ininx.com 9F1148454619A5F08550 705961A47CC541AFEF13
 ... who can't do proprietary software, because he would rather go
 hungry than bind an innocent customer into ignorance with the reverse
 engineering clause of a EULA.  (That would be cruel punishment.)

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