Re: eGovOS conference in D.C.; I'm not attending that

[Stanley A. Klein]

At 05:34 AM 2/10/2003 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
>    Are you suggesting that in order for the conference to be legitimate a
>    university and a conference committee that includes several government
>    employees should deny a speaker from Microsoft the right to present the
>    Microsoft position in debate before an audience almost guaranteed to be
>    packed with active competitors and adversaries of Microsoft?
>
>From what I hear, it will not be a debate.  Microsoft will pretend it
>is another supporter of "open source", or at least not far from it.

At the last conference, Microsoft was there, represented by a couple of
shills from some Washington think tanks, one of which nobody ever heard
about before.  The panel session in which they appeared was organized in a
debate format.

The only thing that has been released thus far for this conference is a
list of accepted speakers, roughly organized into areas.  We still haven't
seen how the speakers will be organized into sessions.

Anything else you have heard is somebody hyperventilating on the basis of
zero information.

>
>A real debate would be a legitimate thing, but this event is the wrong
>place for it.  It should take place in a neutral academic event, one
>that does not pretend to be a place to advocate free software or open
>source.  

The conference is the creation of the Cyberspace Security and Policy
Research Institute of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences of the
George Washington University.  Think of the conference as being a neutral
academic event that happens to hear mostly from advocates of
free/open-source software.  Microsoft being there may be the only thing
that makes it neutral.

>
>It is accepted and legitimate for advocacy events to refuse to give
>the platform to the adversary.  We should not accept a double standard
>that says this is legitimate for everyone except us.
>

If FSF wants to sponsor an event, it can be done as a pure advocacy event
with no opposing views.  For example, Red Hat put on a "security summit"
and (except for some government speakers who avoided saying anything) it
was all refutation of Microsoft FUD.  Universities don't do pure advocacy
events.


Stan Klein