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Re: [fsfc-discuss] FSF Canada - Call for action.


From: Russell McOrmond
Subject: Re: [fsfc-discuss] FSF Canada - Call for action.
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:24:07 -0500
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (X11/20080226)

Fran?cois Gagnon wrote:

BTW: This end says that your name is encoded in ISO-8859-1, but that character isn't coming out. Any chance that you sent the character in UTF8 and thus things aren't matching up?


I'm hoping the following will be a start of a flood of responses to this call for action.

And tell us how you are willing to participate. Don't be shy : Everybody here has a job/a main ooccupation and therefore cannot care about this 24/7.

I can say what I'm already doing, and from that it should be obvious what I could do for an FSF.

I'm the host for http://digital-copyright.ca , co-coordinator of http://GOSLINGcommunity.org and policy coordinator for http://CLUEcan.ca . I'm a self-employed business person http://flora.ca who focuses on FLOSS consulting (which translates to primarily system administration and hacking on Web apps -- customers want me to do LAMP).


My interest is on the policy side of things, specifically how the government regulates the software industry.

The FSF is increasingly branching out into campaigns http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/ . The two top of these (Defective by Design and EndSoftPatents.org ) have a different stragegy and background in Canada than in the USA. How to keep legal protection for "DRM" out of Canada (We haven't yet ratified the 1996 WIPO treaties) is very different than how to get current legal protection for "DRM" out of the USA. The same for software patents: software patents were granted by specialized pro-patent courts in the USA, not something passed by their elected officials. In Canada it is only an interpretation by CIPO (Canadian Intellectual Property Office) in their Manual of Patent Office Practices http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/patents/mopop/mopop-e.html , and not something that has ever been declared by a court or by parliament (IE: it is current practice, not law - more at http://www.flora.ca/patent2003/).

I suggest questions that would be important to answer, as a group.
- What do you think should the FSF-C's first mission? first priority? charity status?

Charity status is what has held things up so far, and I hope we can just skip that. While it would bring in more money quickly, I think we should build before we expect people to come with cash.

There is so much we could do without charitable status, both on fundraising and volunteer recruitment.


I think my choice for priorities of short-term mission is obvious: Create a Canadian flavor of the existing FSF campaigns.

And I don't just mean the two above, but also work with CIPIC on the "RIAA Expert Witness Fund" which would become the "CRIA Expert Witness Fund", etc. CRIA has thus far claimed they won't sue in Canada (because they don't want to confuse politicians with the fact that the laws are already in place to allow them to sue), but if the politics of the day keep the Copyright bill delayed, they may change this very quickly and use the blueprint the FC and FCA gave them.

- What do you think should we keep away from?

We should obviously avoid overlap with other groups, both domestically and internationally. We should try to work with groups, partner, etc.

For instance, there are things that are best done under the name of the FSF, and then there will be things that FSF.ca can do jointly with CLUEcan.ca and GOSLINGcommunity.org.


There are also projects like http://softwareinnovation.ca/ which we should be trying to promote increased membership in, without necessarily needing to have the word "Free Software" there.

One thing I would love to avoid is ongoing debates about language: GNU/Linux, Free Software vs Open Source, etc.

I may be part of the "Free Software" movement, and not feel affinity with the term "Open Source", but I try hard to avoid that becoming a big topic of discussion/debate. People who use "Linux" eventually hear about Open Source. People who think of themselves as part of the "Open Source" movement eventually recognize over the long term politics is also practical and move closer to "Free Software". Beating people over the head early may drive them to the closed DRM world of Apple.


- How do you think should we externally organize the FSF-C? with the FSF? with already existing groups?

I have sent a message to the main contact address for FSF with the hopes that someone from the main group will join this list and help us understand the options.

I was told in the past that without charitable status that having an FSF Canada didn't make sense, and people should just join the main FSF. I think the very US-law-centric nature of the campaigns indicates that this isn't working out, and we need a way for Canadian Free Software activists to work on Canadian campaigns.

- How do you think should we internally organize the FSF-C?

I think this partly depends on what the FSF says, and also on what resources (human and money) that we have.

- Moreover, what can we concretely do for the cause of software freedom?

  See above ;-)

--
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property
 rights as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition!
 http://www.digital-copyright.ca/petition/ict/

 "The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
  manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or
  portable media player from my cold dead hands!"




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