[cap-talk] [Off-topic] Correlating Bitfrost with Threats

[James A. Donald]

James A. Donald wrote:
 > > People who want to be free should buy their own
 > > @#$%^&* computers.  You are never going to free the
 > > masses, and trying to do so will just bring you
 > > grief.

David Hopwood wrote:
 > I thought the whole point of the OLPC project was that
 > many people can't afford to buy their own computers.
 >
 > I fully endorse Marc Stiegler's comment: "You always
 > take [the customer] seriously, but you try to give
 > him, not merely what he claims he wants, but something
 > that makes sense." Any engineer designing a system has
 > ethical responsibilities to that system's end-users,
 > as well as to the engineer's direct customers.

Unfortunately the end users of Bitfrost are in a condition that 
sometimes approaches armed conflict with the direct customers of 
Bitfrost, so what makes sense is likely to violate one's ethical 
responsibilities to end users.

The ethical solution to this problem, and the one Ivan Krstić is in fact 
applying, is to sell the direct customer what he wants and needs - the 
means to monitor the end user and control the end user's use of OLPC 
laptops, and make available to the end user the source code, so that the 
end user can in fact get what *he* wants and needs.  Most of them will 
not do so, but that is not Ivan Krstić's fault.