Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Announcing the "Federation of Free Software UK

[MJ Ray]

Pete Morris wrote;
> > Personally, I think the problem with AF for FFSUK will be the
> > revolutionary communist association, not the anarchist one.
> > http://www.af-north.org/?q=aims+and+principles
> 
> ...that and the fact that 99% of people rightly or wrongly associate  
> the word "anarchism" with violent clashes between the BNF and Unite  
> Against Fascism and windows getting smashed.

How journalists have screwed up a perfectly good word in the English
language isn't clearly the fault of the anarchists, though.

Taken a bit further, that sort of pandering to prejudice leads to all
sort of harmful actions.  I feel that the failed Open Source Initiative
was one similar mistake, trying to use "open" because some % of
businessmen were scared of "free" and so changing the emphasis.

It would be better to explain what anarchism means to people who have
been misled by the BBC, MEN and others, but I accept this isn't an
ideal world.  I quite expect that members of this group would prefer
one challenge at a time and it's more important to them to explain the
freedom meaning of "free software", rather than the governance meaning
of "anarchism".

> Philosophy is all well and good, but when you're trying to pitch to  
> your boss why having Debian on the web box is beneficial to his  
> business and profits, having the word "anarchism" mentioned anywhere  
> in the business case is not going to do you any favours.

I still think having revolutionary communism in it would hurt more. ;-)

[...]
> Me: "Free software is great because together, comrades, we will use it  
> to smash the oppressive forces of tyranny and overthrow the government  
> with our iron fist of protest"
> Boss: "Ummm, right, I've been meaning to have a chat with you about  
> some redundancies we've got to make in the company"

Is firing people for their political beliefs legal here?

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef) Webmaster and developer for hire at | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op