[KLUG Advocacy] Re: Decency Standards for Open Source

[Jamie McCarthy]

awilliam at whitemice.org (Adam Tauno Williams) writes:

> This paragraph - 

> It is unfortunate that free speech idealists (like me,
> incidentally) often misdirect their enthusiasm for attacking
> "censorship." The censorship we should be worried about is what
> governments do to private and public enterprise. The real enemy
> is censorship by a central authority or small but vocal special
> interest, prohibiting speech in a broad domain, such that certain
> kinds of speech are prohibited from existing anywhere.

>  - is also particularly insightful.

No, it's wrong.  Censorship by non-governmental entities is also an
important concern, and in this country, is more of a practical
concern than whatever the government does.  We have a First
Amendment that greatly limits the damage that governmental
censorship can do;  to handwave away everything else leaves me
wondering what kind of free speech idealist the writer is.

I didn't really get very far into reading the piece.  It lost me in
the third sentence which started "However, as the concept of open
source branches out beyond software."  I think the author may have
been wanting to talk about Creative Commons projects, or similar
ways to license creative works under open terms.  But "open source"
is for software <http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php>
so I'm left wondering whether the author was just using the wrong
terminology or maybe was writing about stuff like this:
<http://www.durak.org/sean/pubs/kfc/>
-- 
  Jamie McCarthy
 http://mccarthy.vg/
  jamie at mccarthy.vg