[lug] SSSCA to make all open source software illegal

[D. Stimits]

"J. Wayde Allen" wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 23 Oct 2001, D. Stimits wrote:
> 
> > I sent an email to the PR contact at for the George Lucas companies.
> > Hope he reads it. Imagine a company that sells software for
> > $8000/license and the customers must throw it in the trash, and has to
> > throw away the most productive special effects software in the world. I
> > sure hope he turns into a pack of killer bees.
> 
> Can't hurt to at least let them know that there may be a problem.
> 
> The alternative scenario may be that people won't care until the law gets
> passed and someone gets bit.  With luck that would be like taking a
> baseball bat to a hornets nest.  This thing just doesn't seem enforceable
> to me.  That was also the response I got from some non-Linux people at
> lunch.  My guess is that little obvious may happen until the pain or
> irritation factor gets big enough to get everyone's attention.

You should see the barage of email on the kernel dev list. But as far as
"unenforcable" goes, I think it would do extreme damage so fast that it
would still be a disaster. As for not passing, similar attempts are
being bound to other bills, they are being voted on in groups, not
singularly. I think Senator Walt Disney had something related fail, but
barely, it was riding along with new national security and
anti-terrorism legislation. If this bill comes to vote, you can bet it
will be manipulated to appear with some other bill against terrorism,
not everyone will be paying attention to this one when they say "yes".

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com

> 
> - Wayde
>   (wallen at lug.boulder.co.us)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug