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

[Fred]

On Wed, 2005-01-05 at 08:45 -0500, Jon maddog Hall wrote:
> 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.

True in more ways than one. Though, to be honest, I don't see my little
rant being that related to the issue.

> 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.

It has certainly help to shepherd the exchange of ideas in the past,
though I would think it plays a lesser role today. Today there is FAR
more noise in my snail-mail box than good ideas. :-(

> Other areas that the government interjects policies are:
> 
> 	o Software Patents
> 	o DMCA
> 	o Contracts for software
> 
> etc, etc.

Well, governments will always try to get in the way of Freedom, as
they've always done in the past. The beauty of the Internet is it has
the potential of staying way ahead of the governments as far as what we
can do to *implement* Freedom Infrastructures. 

And if we do this right, we can render governments largely irrelevant in
the (hopefully near) future. Lets hope we can pull this off before the
existing governments discover what is happening. We can and will cook
that frog -- slowly ...

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

Linux may be the key to Freedom for us all. It's not just for computer
geeks anymore. I've got a background process in my head churning away at
the possibilities...

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

Or perhaps I should create a political Linux thread if there is enough
interest. 

-Fred