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Chris Harvey

Chris Harvey

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8 thoughts on “rms birthday 2007”

  1. Tell the truth… that’s one of those life-size cardboard cut-outs, isn’t it. 🙂

    Good thing I’m not one of those elearning experts, isn’t it, otherwise I might think were talking about me! 🙂

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  2. How cool would it be if someone made a life-size cardboard cut-out of rms. He came to Brisbane in Oct 2004 to give a talk. Thats when I met him in person, he’s a great man.

    Thanks for your comment.

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  3. that tells me quite a bit. you are vigilant and unforgiving. keeping people on their toes, helping people learn in your own kinda way. I wouldn’t call someone phoney for that alone though. and I think web2 has enough meaning to people for it not to be hollow. agreed though that web2 needs to acknowledge the original social(ist) internet as its source.. before .com

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  4. I would certainly agree that the free (and open source?) movement has many aspects to its sociology that are new, but do think they relate to socialist routes. I put (ist) in bracketts to insinuate that the connection wasn’t obvious.

    “Socialism refers to a broad array of doctrines or political movements that envisage a socio-economic system in which property and the distribution of wealth are subject to social control.”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

    Is this not similar to the ideas of free software, open source development, and social media?

    What really excites me about free software and the open source development model is that it does expose those narrow views of capitalism and economic rationalism. What frustrates me is how difficult it is to translate that message from the pure form (Like Stallman) to the current situation in my workplace.

    Its like this I think. I apply a slightly watered down message to my colleagues here, in the hope that they adopt some new practices that should snow ball. But who is it that applies pressure on me? It is you Chris! and others… your pressure motivates me to risk a show down with my IT department because I nagged them to make it possible for me to run Ubuntu… and other things.
    Now I’m nagging them to use open standard formats…

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  5. I’m not sure that Socialism demands that people give things away for free either. Communism maybe (although, its not to give away – rather it is collective). “Stallman is not a socialist” – that’s not what I’m saying. I was trying to make a connection between software freedom and socialism. Not communisim, Stalinism, or even Maxism, and certainly not labeling anyone. Just drawing associations the way I see it. Is it a narrow view of socialism that is the cause of this discussion? Or do I have too wider view of social-ism?

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