[OT] Re: America. The land of the not-so-free (economy)

[Jon maddog Hall]

clark_k at pannaway.com said:
> Other than the fact that the Heritage Foundation's web server seems to run
> Linux, this entire thread seems to be off-topic.

No, I disagree.  Freedom of software is often limited by the freedom of the
economy and what the government does with it.

In my travels around the world I have noted that a lot of the countries that
are "second" and "third world" have very high costs of postal mail and
telecommunications compared to ours, usually because of a government that
tries to get revenue from them.  I believe that one of the reasons for the
success of the United States has been the continual low cost of communications
which allows us to exchange ideas.

Other areas that the government interjects policies are:

	o Software Patents
	o DMCA
	o Contracts for software

etc, etc.

So I do not consider this topic "OT" at all, unless you consider the discussion
of Linux to be strictly technical.

However, to placate those who think of a stricter use of this list, I have
inserted an "[OT]" symbol in the subject line. :-)

md
-- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
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