[CREATE] Free as in Speech, and Vietnam?

[Dave Crossland]

Hi,

I agree, going to a place like Vietnam, where freedoms and human rights are
respected even less than Brussels or Canada or Poland or France, to talk
about software freedom and computer users rights, will promote awareness of
the overall concepts. It perhaps in some small way may even help gain
respect for them.

Looking westwards: The UK isn't safe, its full of ... obnoxious British
people, like me :-) And, worse, British policemen; our Brasilian friends
might get shot on the metro if their laptop cables are not tucked into their
bags. Also, I suspect the UK is complicit in the USA torturing its citizens,
and I know Canada is.

While interesting, such broad political issues should not be decisive for
LGM, IMO. For a libre graphics event, what matters is the legal status of
software freedoms in a host country.

This means we should avoid countries who criminalise free exchange of
software ideas and reverse engineering: the USA is top of that list.

is Vietnam even on that list?

Regards, Dave

On 10 Jun 2010, 1:17 PM, "Stani" <spe.stani.be at gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 1:17 PM, Marcos Diaz <markos at nathive.org> wrote: >>
I don't believe boycotti...
How is hosting the LGM in Vietnam forcing anyone attending the LGM to
ignore the human rights violations of the Vietnamese government? Maybe
you'll start reading about it and become more conscious of it. I have
had many exchange contacts with artist activists from non-western
countries. They always laugh with our 'superior' track record of human
rights. For them Western democracies are not innocent at all. Maybe in
their own country, but not in the world abroad.

For me free software is not about judging governments in the first
place, but above all about building communities. I think it would be
rude to exclude the Vietnamese or Asian communities from hosting the
LGM. As Dang Hong Phuc noticed the Asian community is not very present
in the Free Software movement, although they like to take part. We are
not going to change that from our comfortable broadband connections
remotely. Refusing them to bridge this gap, is not very ethical
either.

I agree with Cyrille, that hosting the LGM in Vietnam rather promotes
freedom, than supports human rights violations.

_______________________________________________ CREATE mailing list
CREATE at lists.freedesktop.org htt...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/create/attachments/20100610/be827712/attachment.html>