[CREATE] Free as in Speech, and Vietnam?

[Stani]

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 2:18 AM, Marcos Diaz <markos at nathive.org> wrote:
> My point of view is even any of us will be tortured, the money we would
> spend in a non-human-rights country could be used indirectly to torture
> others. It's just an ethical matter, dot.
Maybe ... ethics of an illusion. First of all the world isn't that
black and white. It is quite a challenge to divide the in
'human-rights' and 'non-human-rights' ('axis of evil' anyone?)
countries.   (See also my remark on Brazil later.) I suppose with
'countries' you actually mean 'governments'.This brings me to a second
point: I don't believe boycotting a population because of its
government very effective. So should we limit ourselves to
'human-right correct' countries? (Note that Belgium was condemned
unanimously by human right groups for its ban on full-face veils.
Oops, did the LGM fail?) Is that so ethical? So as a last point ...
how about post-colonialism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism

> For me a perfect place to LGM are countries that promotes Libre software,
> like Brazil, whose president, Lula, even mentions FOSS in in his political
> discourses and go to Libre meetings like the FISL (International Libre
> Software Forum) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzPmVGM3pp4 I cannot find it
> with subtitles now and I don't know Portuguese, sorry.
Strange ...  for 'ethical matters' Brazil might not be a 'perfect
place' for you:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/all-countries/brazil/page.do?id=1011123

To be clear: I love Brazil and BTW I speak Portuguese.

Anyway the ethical dilemma is not new in the Free Software history.
This whole debate reminds me of the discussion between the 'ethical'
HESSLA and 'free software' GPL licenses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacktivismo_Enhanced-Source_Software_License_Agreement

In the end the Free Software Foundation concluded it would be
ineffective to incorporate the ethical restrictions in the GPL. I
think refusing non-western countries such as Vietnam, Brazil, ... for
the LGM location is ineffective as well. The talk of Hong Phuc Dang
was very impressive. I'd love to see more Asian people involved in
Free Software. If organizing the LGM in Vietnam can push that further,
it is a worthy goal!

Have a nice day!

Stani

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