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Re: [Fsedu-developers] Re: RFC for Free software consent based content m


From: Peter Minten
Subject: Re: [Fsedu-developers] Re: RFC for Free software consent based content mangement
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 16:36:10 +0200
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win 9x 4.90; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030529

James Michael DuPont wrote:
--- Stephen Compall <address@hidden> wrote:

James Michael DuPont <address@hidden> writes:


Their argument is that it is not possible to protect their content
without taking away the rights of the students.

If that is their argument, they are quite correct.  In fact, it is
silly to separate these concepts.

"Protecting" (i.e., restricting) content, in this context, **IS**
taking away the rights of the students.

Well said, Stephen.


Ok. So you are saying that it is not a worthly goal to find a way to
securly deliver fee based content to a single recipient, where the
consumer agrees that he will only view the content for a limited time
and in a limited manner.

You're basically proposing content shareware, you are restricted in how you use
it and/or you are forbidden from distributing it. IMHO that's a totally wrong
way to go. A company will not easily trust a student, if it can't check on the
student. To check on the student means proprietary software, since the student
can rig free software to fake the checks. The whole checking idea also
encourages treacherous computing (DRM).

I consider content to be no different than software, eg it should be free.
Furthermore educational content will often be created by teachers for specific
goals (a class), the teachers usually get paid per hour, not per text.

One could argue that if the content is provided freely schools would lose
students, however you need to visit an official school to get a diploma, so that
argument is invalid.

In fact a free educational content model would be advanteous to the schools, if
you can copy a book from another school and adapt it to your needs that's less
work, aka less costs.

For content provided by freelancers the case is also simple. Freelancers get
paid by institutions to write content because they need it, the institutions
have nothing to lose by making the content public. The freelancers have
something to lose, if they consider it their right to hoard content, but I don't
think we need to help proprietary content makers.

With free content a situation might evolve where every institution is waiting
for the other to fund the needed content. There's a simple solution to that
however, a content funding organization to which every institution pays money,
the organization would then fund the requested content when there is enough
money. Such an organization would make content much cheaper for the
institutions, but would also create a fair division of costs.

IMHO a company that owes it's existance to Free Software (no GNU, no GNU/Linux,
no RedHat) shouldn't uses licenses that are so horribly out of line with the
spirit of Free Software. However I don't think anything will change their mind
about this, it's simply too profitable.

I think that we (the Free Software community) need to launch our own education
program to compete with Red Hat's program. What Red Hat is doing is wrong, it's
restricting the freedom of students for the sake of proprietary content
providers. I'm worried about the signal this gives to the students, they are
taught about using free software, but definitely not about the philosophy of it.
In fact they're implicitely saying that the philosophy of proprietary software
is better, by using proprietary tactics in the program.

I think that some content can be effectivly delivere that way using
free software. If we are about to provide various levels of restriction
of the content, using free software, then the students will be able to
pay for teachers to provide them up to date content while still using
free software.

Restriction is only good if it protects freedom, business interests are a bad
reason for restriction.

I think such an consent based content management is much saner than
using non-free file formats and non-free software.

I think the fact that "content management" requires non-free file
formats and software means that there is more to discourage people
from using "managed content", and therefore more to discourage people
from "managing" content in the first place.  This is a good thing.


OK. So we want to preclude such a content management system from the
FSEDU?

Yes!

Greetings,

Peter








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