[FSUG-Bangalore] slashdot article "Boycott Novell Protesters Manhandled In India"

[justin joseph]

James Mathew writes "This is an interesting story from Kerala, India,
where the ruling Communist Party organized a national conference in
its efforts to hijack the Free Software Movement, which has enviable
roots in the state. They got Novell to sponsor it. On the second day
of the conference, a few free software activists who displayed posters
against Novell were manhandled by the organizers and police — typical
of what is expected from them. Most of the snaps taken during the
scuffle were forcefully deleted by the organizers, after seizing the
protesters' mobile phones. Still they couldn't delete all. Here is
another low-by-blow account."







                  Some of the responses, in no particular order(
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/11/17/0120203.shtml )

"Free Software activists start a protest on private property, are
asked to leave by owners/organisers and forgo negotiation, instead
opting for point-blank refusal. This leads to a confrontation because
both of both
parties being excessively  stubborn.

Sounds like 50/50 blame  to me"

 "Thats not the point. There shouldnt be any freedom of speech
limiting withing groups which both support open and free software. I
know the organizers of the event didnt probably care about the free as
in freedom idea so much, but there was absolutely no reason to use
force. But again,this is India."

  "There shouldnt be any freedom of speech limiting withing groups
which both support open and free software.

 Why not? Open source and free software events have rules and agendas
like any other meeting. And participants have limited time to get the
job done they came for. If participants or protestors won't shut up
and keep disrupting the event, they should get kicked out by security.
It doesn't matter who it is or what message they are pushing, and it
doesn't matter whether it's in the US or India."

 "Sorry, but the Boycott Novell people are complete retards to begin
with. To my knowledge they don't actually produce anything for the
open source community, but they sit around and bitch and whine about
Novell who employs all kinds of open source hackers; including kernel
hackers, GTK and GNOME hackers, window manager hackers, Mono hackers,
accessibility hackers, open source artists, and more. Sorry if I have
very little sympathy for the situation. It's not that I think anyone
should be 'manhandled' under any situation, but these guys are the
most inconsiderate members of the "open source community" and it's
hard for me to really take most things they say very seriously."

"You know, the die-hard haters who come out of the woodwork every time
Novell is mentioned, dredging up the years old Microsoft deal, which I
predicted at the time would have zero impact on Linux and FOSS and
have been vindicated in that prediction - except for the haters.
These people really don't give a damn about Linux or FOSS - all they
care about is establishing that they're more "moral" than everyone
else by opposing any interoperability deals with Microsoft. The fact
that the average corporation couldn't care less and only wants some
assurance that their Linux deployment will work with their Microsoft
deployment is ignored by these morons. The fact that this allows
Novell to improve, however small, Linux's penetration into the data
center and corporations doesn't interest them either. The fact that
whatever Novell agreed to in the deal in terms of "patent protection"
is overwhelmingly irrelevant to any future patent cases (which so far
haven't materialized and are unlikely to - and unlikely to be won by
Microsoft when they do, as countless people have pointed out) doesn't
matter to these clowns either.   Only their juvenile emotional
well-being matters to them - and of course, damaging the emotional
well-being of everyone else who disagrees with their fanaticism.  Fuck
'em."

 "Lesson for next time: Use a phone with automatic blogging so the
photos are off the phone and on the Net before they can stop you."

  "Oh noes, it's the communist boogey-man! They must be ideologically
hard-core communists, worried about losing their sponsors and all (a
little ironic, communists with sponsors).  If you invited me over to
your house and I started protesting you, putting anti-you posters on
your wall, calling you a Microserf and generally being a douche then
you would well be within your rights to call the police and have me
removed. Of course, if the cops were heavy handed (they often are) I
could pin everything on a conspiracy by the "man".   I mean, if you're
going to make it a story, someone at least has to get exposed to high
voltage (hopefully while saying "bro")."