[POLITICAL] Re: [Fribidi-discuss] License question to the pro ject owners

[VisualMind]

well, the trading boycott and what's related to it are something different I 
guess.

Anyway, The idea I want to explain is that choosing to make a software (or 
abs. anything) to be an opensource (no matter what the license is) means you 
trust whoever use it to respect that license and that also means there's a 
risk which regards those who respect no license (even if a commercial one, or 
highly protected).

In other words: we (I talk about myself and the Arabic programmaers I know 
plus a lot of other ones I hear about) do respect the software license we are 
using while paying no attention to where it comes from, although yes there 
are people (really few ratio) who don't respect the license (not just Arabs) 
but these also don't respect any thing so no matter what the license is; they 
really won't care.

And IMO it is so ridiculous to to say that having this license or another 
would make (SOME RACE) use it badly or not, if it's so imporant and you worry 
about that why did you make it an opensource in the first place? you already 
put it in risk.

Opensource software are dedicated to those who respect the effort of others 
regardless of thier countries and the license being used.

There's a big difference between programmers and users, programmers in Arabic 
world know what it means to respect the author rights, and when I said 
there's a contempt I meant it was showing a defaced picture about us.

Regards,
Salah Faya

> I, too, have no concern or saying with regards to the fribidi 
> license, but I did not sense any hint of contempt against any 
> country, and feel that the question that was raised is a valid one.
> 
> The sad truth is that many Arab states have laws against trading or 
cooperating
> with Israel. Moreover, trade unions in states like Egypt, which has 
diplomatic
> relations with Israel for 25 years or so, still forbid their members 
> to cooperate with Israel or Israeli. Such was an Egyptian author who 
> were cordially persuaded against publishing his book in Israel [1]. 
> Thus the thought of an Arab programmer being unable to share his/her 
> code with Israelis due to state laws is not unthikable.
> 
> Obviously, a similar threat may rise from the other side, if someone 
> in the Israeli Ministry of Defense wakes one morning and decides 
> that fribidi can be used by the armed forces of countries who are in 
> an official state of war with Israel, and therefore sharing code 
> equals to exporting munition to the enemy. Which is obviously absurd,
>  but so is blowing up a busload of students, so who knows.
> 
> Salam `aleikum,
> 
> Dan.
> 
> [1] Google found me this for a reference
> 	http://www.metimes.com/2K1/issue2001-20/eg/boycott_against_israel.htm
> 
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 09:49:13AM +0700, VisualMind wrote:
> > I'm not concerned about whether LGPL or MPL is being used, but I sensed 
some
> > contempt against Arabic-countries which I totally disagree with;
> > We really do respect all opensource licensees when we use any software no
> > matter who the author is, and if needed we can write our own code.
> >
> > I also hate (Fanatic people) who have a countryless/relegionless 
fanaticism
> > against whatever, and those don't really care about what license is there.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Salah Faya
> >
> --
> Dan Kenigsberg        http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~danken       
>  ICQ 162180901