I have been saying this for many years: free software must not be associated with an ideology or political party. Doing that would:
- be an utter falsity;
- damage our ability to advocate.
I am not the only one with this opinion! As you may know, we'll have elections in Italy next Sunday and Monday, and the Italian Association for Free Software is now promoting two remarkable initiatives.
The first is aimed at voters: they are asked to sign an online petition. Voters are asked to declare they will vote for candidates who declare that they will promote free software.
The second is aimed at candidates, who are asked to sign a document. By signing this document they commit themselves to promote and vote laws that, among other things, 1) will bind the civil service to free software and open formats, and 2) declare practices that limit citizens' freedoms (such as the infamous Trusted Computing) as illegitimate.
A list of the parties that have at least one candidate signing the document is available, along with the parties that don't have any.
This is an initiative that every national free software association should replicate when their election time comes!
A few references about Trusted Computing
To get a glance of what "Trusted Computing" means and why you should care about it, you can read from the following resources:
- What's Wrong With Copy Protection (look for "trusted computing" in the page)
- Trusted computing: Users unable to override
- Trusted computing: Loss of anonymity