Buenas:

        Un texto con una serie de ideas para convencer de las bondades del
software libre a los oprimidos. Perfectamente aplicables al caso de la
Administración.

        Un saludo.

-- 
    .~.    Nombre:     Pablo López Cienfuegos
   (O O)   Página Web: http://www.asturlinux.org/~xtrasgu
   / V \   AsturLiNUX: http://www.asturlinux.org
  //   \\  HispaLiNUX: http://www.hispalinux.es
 /(( _ ))\ E-mail:     mailto:xtrasgu@asturlinux.org
  ooO Ooo  Clave GPG:  http://www.asturlinux.org/~xtrasgu/xtr_pgp.html

attached mail follows:

No sé si ya informaron esto pero lo adjunto aun.

El senado de la U. de Buffalo, estado de NY apoya SW Libre mediante una
resolución. Mencionan a Linux y Oo.

Buen ejemplo por si les interesa:
http://orange.math.buffalo.edu/csc/resolution2_april2003_approved.html

RESOLUTION FOR UNIVERSITY SUPPORT OF OPEN SOFTWARE AND STANDARDS

Approved by the Faculty Senate, University at Buffalo, State University of New
York, April 1, 2003.

1 WHEREAS, direct unmediated unfettered access to information is fundamental
and essential to scholarly inquiry, academic dialog, research, the advancement
of research methods, academic freedom, and freedom of speech; and

2 WHEREAS, complete control by a computer-user of the computer's operating
system and hardware is essential to the use and adaptation of computers in
research and to the preservation of privacy; and

3 WHEREAS, the free flow of information has for many years been hampered by
incompatibilities between Microsoft software and non-Microsoft systems caused
by Microsoft-specific modifications to open protocols (such as Kerberos[1]),
document formats (such as HTML[2]), and programming languages (such as Java
[3]); and

4 WHEREAS, there appears to be significant risk that future Microsoft operating
systems will serve to curtail the rights of scholars and the public to Fair Use
of copyrighted material, as is suggested by Microsoft's patent for a "Digital
Rights Management Operating System" (US Patent #6330670, Dec. 2001)[4], and its
development of Palladium[5] and Secure Audio Path[6], which are technologies
that prevent direct access by computer users to data on their own computers; and

5a WHEREAS, the restrictions imposed by the license agreement of the web-page
composition tool Microsoft Frontpage 2002, which states "You may not use the
Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC,
Expedia, or their products or services"[7], are an unacceptable restriction of
freedom of expression; and

5b WHEREAS, the "security patch" Q320920 for Windows Media Player, which gives
to Microsoft remote administration privileges on the user's computer and the
right to "disable your ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other
software on your computer"[8], involves a substantial surrender of control and
privacy on the part of the computer-user; and

5c WHEREAS, the fact that Windows Media Player logs and reports to Microsoft
every instance of access to a DVD by the user[9] is a troubling invasion of
privacy; and

6 WHEREAS, a closed-source proprietary operating system such as Microsoft
Windows cannot be modified by the user to accommodate specific research or
personal needs[10]; and

7 WHEREAS, excessive dependence of the University at Buffalo on a single
supplier of proprietary operating systems and/or application software renders
the University powerless to resist unreasonable price increases for software
licenses and other unreasonable demands such as license changes forbidding
benchmarking[11] or reverse-engineering for compatibility; and

8 WHEREAS, the use of closed proprietary document formats and information
management systems to store the work of faculty, students, and staff limits the
ways these works can be accessed and archived, and jeopardizes access itself in
the long term; and

9 WHEREAS, open-source, or "free" software provides an alternative to
proprietary operating systems and application software that is robust, reliable
and trustworthy, and provides a means for the University community to retain
complete control of its computer hardware and software, and to retain the
rights of Fair Use of information, and preserve the means to adapt computer
systems to specific research and personal needs; and

10 WHEREAS, significant savings can be achieved by the use of open-source
software, which has (in almost all cases) zero licensing costs, and requires no
involuntary upgrades such as are an integral part of the current UB Microsoft
Campus Agreement; and

11 WHEREAS, for the reasons enumerated above, the exclusive or predominant use
of proprietary operating systems and application software is detrimental to the
core missions of the University at Buffalo; and

12 WHEREAS, open-source software provides an alternative through whose use the
core missions of the University at Buffalo can be preserved, nurtured, and
enhanced; now, therefore, be it

13 RESOLVED that the Faculty of the University at Buffalo call on the
University to provide support for the use by interested students, faculty, and
administrators of the GNU/Linux operating system;
and be it further

14 RESOLVED that the Faculty of the University at Buffalo call on the
University to provide support for the use by students, faculty, and
administrators, of OpenOffice and/or other open-source productivity suites; and
be it further

15 RESOLVED that the Faculty of the University at Buffalo call on the
University to provide support for the use by students, faculty, and
administrators, of open-source alternatives to proprietary application software
wherever possible; and be it further

16 RESOLVED that the Faculty of the University at Buffalo call on the
University to implement a policy of promoting open document formats and
communication protocols wherever possible and, in the case of broadcast
announcements and other documents intended for a general audience, discouraging
the use of secret and proprietary formats (such as Microsoft Word format) in
favor of open formats (such as plain text or HTML) that are universally
accessible.

NOTES AND REFERENCES:

[1] See The Industry Standard, May 11, 2000:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,14996,00.html.

[2] "It was in this meeting that Microsoft executives said they intended
to "embrace, extend, extinguish" competing technologies, including Internet
standard HTML, McGeady [Intel Vice President and Government witness] said.",

ZDNet News, November 8, 1998, http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-512681.html?
legacy=zdnn.

[3] See, for example, Java World, December 1998,

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-1998/jw-12-injunction.html

"...the injunction requires Microsoft to stop shipping incompatible versions of
the virtual machine and to support the standard native-language interface (JNI)
in any versions it does ship. It requires Microsoft to stop shipping the
current version of its language development environments, to make the standard-
Java mode of its language compiler the default mode, to issue a warning to
developers if they enable the non-standard mode, and to include a note in that
warning that the Microsoft extensions they are enabling "may be disallowed by
court order" in the future."

News.com, January 22, 1999,

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-220539.html?tag=bplst

Specifically, the court required programming tools to be set by default to
disable Microsoft extensions to Java.

[4] US Patent Office, http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm. Search for
6330670. See also 6327652.

[5] From Microsoft Developer Network website, 2/26/2003:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-
us/wmrm/htm/understandingthesecureaudiopathmodel.asp

"In the Secure Audio Path model, applications cannot be used to modify packaged
music in any way. For example, when an application is used to intercept a music
signal, the signal sounds like random noise. As a result, applications used to
modify signals (such as an equalizer) cannot change the sound of the music."

[6] http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/palladium.html.

[7] Infoworld Jan 10, 2001

http://archive.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/01/10/01/011001opfoster.xml

[8] InfoWorld, July 12, 2002,

http://www.infoworld.com/article/02/07/12/020715opestrat_1.html

[9] ITworld.com 2/21/02

http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1471/IDG020221mediaplayer/

"Serious privacy problems in Windows Media Player for Windows XP" by Richard M.
Smith,

Details at http://www.computerbytesman.com/privacy/wmp8dvd.htm:

"Each time a new DVD movie is played on a computer, the WMP software contacts a
Microsoft Web server to get title and chapter information for the DVD. When
this contact is made, the Microsoft Web server is given an electronic
fingerprint which identifies the DVD movie being watched and a cookie which
uniquely identifies a particular WMP player. With this two pieces of
information Microsoft can track what DVD movies are being watched on a
particular computer."

See also "Microsoft WinXP Update spies on other PC software", The Inquirer,
2/25/2003, http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7980.

[10] For example, there is no real-time patch for Windows for experimentalists
and musicians who need

sub-millisecond latency. In contrast, there are such patches for Linux: see
http://www.ittc.ku.edu/kurt/.

[11] SQL Server benchmarks prohibited, ITWorld 4/17/2001

http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/136/IWD010417opfoster/

_______________________________________________
Lista Socios
Para DESUSCRIBIRTE escribe a Socios-request@listas.hispalinux.es
https://listas.hispalinux.es/mailman/listinfo/socios