On 11/14/23 02:17, Philip Hands wrote:
Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer <perezmeyer@gmail.com> writes: ...Just to be clear: I also do agree with the main intention of the proposal, what I do not like is that the current draft wording might backfire on us.I'd expect the multinationals, who have large legal teams, and are used to interacting with the EU, to find various ways of ensuring that they can continue to avoid responsibility for their (often-shoddy) wares. They seem to treat legal fees and fines as costs of doing business, so won't be significantly inconvenienced. Meanwhile, one could imagine something like the BSA going around looking to see if vendors of Free Software based systems have sold anything into the EU, and encouraging the EU authorities to audit them, just to crap on the competition. I remember MS signing-up UK schools to per-processor site licenses where if one offered to give a school 100 refurbished laptops running Debian, they'd often end up saying no because they couldn't afford the extra Windows/Word licenses that they'd have to pay for if they allowed those CPUs on site. I'm sure there are still people being paid by incumbents to come up with ways of maintaining market share by whatever means, who are perfectly capable of weaponising this legislation against new entrants -- and that seems very likely to include people associated with Free Software. Do we really want the likes of Purism to refuse to ship into the EU in future? I think that seems quite likely to be a rational response on the part of small enterprises where the bulk of their market lies elsewhere. I'd love for the vendors of crappy software to be held accountable for the endless plague of viruses, and the Internet of Shit, they're inflicting on the world, but I suspect that it won't work out that way. Instead, I worry that it will only touch people that are trying much harder to do a good job, but cannot afford a full-time lobbying team in Brussels. Cheers, Phil.
Hi Phil!Thanks for sharing your fears about this legislation. I probably fear more than you do (see below...).
I clearly remember in Cape Town, most of the DDs from Britain were so sad about the brexit, when you all thought that we should all love each other in Europe, and be one unique nation protecting each others. And you were unhappy about these racist morons that voted against the love of everyone else.
Well, I hope that now you've sober-up (all of you...), and your view on what Europe really is (or has become, you decide...) has evolved into a more accurate vision of what the EU is really about.
EU is not about peace (see Yougoslavia, Ukraine...), or about protecting its people from the (too big power of) world companies. It's not about being stronger together (another lie...). That is a narrative has aged, and hopefully, only the foolish still believe in it. Indeed, these days our "elites" don't hide anymore and it is easier to see what's going on. EU was a project from the most violents ultra-liberals, were we, the people, have no say, and were democracy is only an idea. It is increasingly an administration that is working against its population. This episode is only another iteration of the already occurred evilness, and it certainly wont be the last. I do blame big corps lobbying for this specific legislation, but I'm not naive enough to believe it is just a mistake (wooops, sorry we forgot free software...).
I also have in mind the soon coming eID. I hope that everyone in Debian, living in Europe, knows about it, and understand the numerous threats about it. If you never head of it, please take a bit of your time to search for what it is on the internet. They will first start saying we need it to avoid our identity to be stolen, and that we need trust on some government web site. Then they will blame it on pedophiles and terrorism, as an excuse to mandate it everywhere. And then next day, we will wake up in an orwelian world were that eID will be required to browse half of the internet, and anonymity will be something of the past. Welcome to the social credit "a la chinoise" in the EU. IMO, Debian also has to prepare a statement about it and fight against it. I see it as a bigger threat.
You wrote: > I'd love for the vendors of crappy software to be held accountable > for the endless plague of viruses, and the Internet of Shit, they're > inflicting on the world, but I suspect that it won't work out that > way.It's these words that made me react: I hope nobody is naive enough to think Europe is trying to protect its citizens here. Remember they tried to pass software patent with ACTA a few years ago... Thanks to the action of Jeremy Zimmerman and others from "La Quadrature du Net" doing the proper lobbying, it didn't happened, but it was a close call. Some companies are currently filling such invalid software patent in the EU, and the EU let them do it, saying that invalid patent wont hold in court... we we don't know yet, as there wasn't such case yet. I fear we effectively already have software patent in the EU.
I understand Scott reaction. Mine will probably be the opposite one, and I'll head for more radicalism and free software hacktivism.
If I have to do free software under a fake identity, because my government is working against the freedom of its people, so be it... Others in Debian already did that. The more time passes, the more I understand why they are doing this way.
So, finally: +1 by all means! Let's issue a statement, and fight this type of law. I'm not sure the original statement text is good (the deep content is super good, but I found it also complicated, and mostly, I fear it wont be readable by most), but we, as a project, as a community, and simply as a group of individuals, must strongly protest. Hopefully other communities will also protest against this law.
Oh, by the way... correcting myself: technically, there's no such thing as a "EU law", and we're being played like every time (to make us believe we're still in a democratic world): each country *must* (yeah, no choice...) make its own law out of this Directive.
Cheers, Thomas Goirand (zigo)