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

[Chalu Kim]

I saw this post too late.

> Cyberspace Security and Policy
> Research Institute of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences of the
> George Washington University. 

It sounds a lot of hog wash here. how long has this been around? on regular 
basis, various non-profit interest groups have been created to pacify stuff 
like anti-tobacco, silicosys, you name it. 

I worked with several of these spin groups that sound "legit"  but are not. We 
have no idea of what content they will put on but we were helping them to 
build content management.

On Monday 10 February 2003 12:56 am, Stanley A. Klein wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 

Chalu Kim
eGenius Inc
"Apple, PC and Linux/BSD Service in New York"
address@hidden, (718) 858-0142