Sunday 25 February 2007

GNU.Free availability

I know I've asked this question many times before : "Why if Jason Kitcat is so set against eVoting is the source for GNU.Free still available on his website?".

I've had problems resolving these two, surely if you're set against something you're not going to attempt to provide a mechanism for doing it.

I asked Jason about this (for about the fourth time) on his site and received a response basically saying he'd already answered here. I'm afraid I don't agree, and I'm sure any sane reader would agree, that page advocates eVoting within a certain context (i.e. free and open software), which is a direct contradicition to his and the ORGs stance that all eVoting is a "bad thing". Nowhere on that page does it say that eVoting should never be used, which is his general opinion.

So what's the story? It seems that Mr Kitcat is fighting against all forms of eVoting in an attempt to stop commercial organisations from being involved. Why? So that a free and open implementation can be pushed... guess what's (in his mind) the top candidate? GNU.Free of course! Please bear in mind this is just my thinking on the subject, I've got no concrete evidence to support this, just my conclusions from Jasons arguments.

I wonder how the good people at ORG would feel knowing that they're possibly being used to kill commercial eVoting to promote one persons agenda (and product)?

As I've said these are just my thoughts and are not presented as fact, if anyone else has a different intepretation of what may be going on please comment. I'd love to have a different view on this.

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