Re: Linux 2.2.20pre10

Nick LeRoy
2001-10-22T17:45:48Z

Wayne, everybody..

I hate to belabor this point, but I'm in full agreement. If I really
believed that Alan's boycott would have *any* positive affect, I'd fully
support it, but the reality of the situation is that Wayne is right -- nobody
with any real power will ever know or be able to a difference. I think that
civil disobiediance is the only sensible action.

-Nick

On Monday 22 October 2001 12:21, Wayne.Brown@altec.com wrote:
> It's highly unlikely that Alan withholding information from a handful of US
> Linux users and developers will have any effect on US laws. Plenty of us
> have complained already to our elected officials, without results. The
> number of people who would care (or even know) about Alan's security
> boycott -- even if it includes the entire US readership of linux-kernel --
> is vanishingly small compared to the general population, and no politician
> is going to pay attention to such a small and dilute constituency. All a
> policy of secrecy will accomplish is to punish US kernel hackers (who
> probably disagree with the DMCA as much as the rest of you) and have no
> effect on the average citizen who doesn't have a clue about either the DMCA
> or Linux. I'm seeing a disturbing trend here; with all the talk about this
> topic and about EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL here lately, I'm starting to think
> linux-kernel is more about restricting information than disseminating it.
>
> I believe the DCMA should be treated like firearms laws or any other bad
> laws: Fight them where possible, and disobey them where fighting them is
> not possible.