[Liverpool] Software freedom (problems at the University)

[Vladimir]

hello, dave!

i am absolutely not afraid to speak out about what i feel is right.
and it is glad to have you in this discussion, as you both represent the
computing services
of the university and the lug here.

i have just been to the computing services and they refused to adhere to
their own policy.

i have moved a macosx installation to another machine (a macbook pro in this
case)
and archived the gentoo installation. then installed the ubuntu 9.10 on the
macbook
(and people, everything worked almost out of the box, and i was
running a *single
boot*)
machine, powered by a fresh linux kernel in about 20 minutes.
so, i came to the helpdesk, after what the fellow there called rob ward,
saying:
 - hello, here's a young gentleman, vladimir, who wanted to speak to you

i pointed out that i didn't want to bother rob and therefore never asked to
speak to him,
after what this person once again repeated that "vladimir here wants to
speak to you"

then they asked me to email them my hw addresses so that they can register
them.
and .... they refused to do it 5 minutes later, on the grounds of the fact,
that the hardware
is apple computers and had a mac os x install originally on it.

now, how do you explain this? what shoud i do next, dave?

the lesson that i was referring to in my email was about showing that there
could be several
ways of bypassing their procedures. imagine - if i initially wasn't being
honest to them,
i would just call them and said, that this is an iPhone i am trying to
connect, quoting the hw
addr. that's it - job done. but no, i tried to explain that by no means i
will agree with the sophos
draconic EULA (http://vovka-j.livejournal.com/46165.html).
so now i will try to get the access to the network legally. using a linux
machine.
and then will be trying to change the discrepancies in their policy, the
misleading
information they provide on the web site and the printed out brochures,
also,
will fill in a complain about the Sophos EULA, that it should be removed
from the
distributed binary. i would install this useless anti-virus just to pass
through the
security check (following the guidelines) and then remove it without much
thinking
if only not this EULA. and the question here is not OS specific. it is the
question
of either computing services negligence (they distribute the binary which
has an irrelevant
requirement to agree with EULA) or the broader issue of discrimination of my
software
choices (in this case the choice being not to install the software that
requires everything,
including letting someone to my premises).
in the end of the day - why is a choice of food (vegetarianism), a choice of
which church to
go to on a sunday (religion) is more important than my ethical views on
software licensing?


vlad.


2009/12/17 Dave Love <d.love at liverpool.ac.uk>

> Vladimir <vladimir.jakubovskij at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > But I want to teach them a lesson.
> > I need a laptop of any sort for a couple of days - to change the mac addr
> so it matches the
> > hw addr of my macbook, to walk in there, register, close the lid of the
> Linux laptop,
> > open the macbook, and say - Hello, you've been framed :D
>
> You might be more careful what you say in public, no matter how stupid
> you think people in Computing Services and their rules are -- just a
> suggestion.  Merely annoying your BOFH is rarely a good idea, let alone
> posting something like that potentially in front of them, and I assure
> you they don't need lessons on MAC addresses.  If nothing else, consider
> that this sort of thing (archived) may not give a good impression of the
> group, and doesn't help any effort to improve support for non-Windows
> users in the university in case everyone is tarred with the same brush.
>
> --
> (Dr) Dave Love
> ‘E-Science’, Computing Services Department, University of Liverpool
> AKA fx at gnu.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Liverpool mailing list
> Liverpool at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/liverpool
>
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