[EM] Re: voting machines

[David GLAUDE]

Rob Brown wrote:
> Dave Ketchum <davek <at> clarityconnect.com> writes:
>>Agreed BUT:
>>
>>If someone writes usable code, AND makes it public, what stops someone 
>>else copying the code without paying those who did the work?

The main reason for not copying the code is copyright law.

You can only do what the licence of the code or what the author of the 
code say you can do with it. This apply to the code, the binary version 
of the code or any derivative work (it up to the judge to evaluate what 
consitute a derivative work) based on that code.

You assume that a line of code must be paid many time... this is only 
possible business model.

> One thing that would work is that the federal government contracts that the 
> code be written, pays the contractor, and then the government releases it into 
> the public domain (or GPL or whatever).  The government got what it wanted, 

Releasing into public domain is not really the best choice if at all 
possible... Releasing in GPL or other Free Software licence is possible 
but it is seems a very difficult process for the federal government to 
move contracted software into something like GPL (copyright transfert, 
...) but it is not impossible and has been done before.

> the contractor got paid, and if some other country wants to use the code for 
> their own system, so be it, it is in our interest that our democratic 
> processes be copied elsewhere.

It is the rest of the world democratic interest not to copy the various 
mistake that US is doing with DRE and other. If Fidel Castro was elected 
with kind of electronic voting used in the US... Washington would say it 
is a fraud.

Venezuella did use electronic voting to confirm/re-elect it's president. 
The vendor of the electronic voting system was apparently close to the 
opposition, the USA was supporting the opposition, ... Guess what, 
Washington does not recognise the result and want investigation.

The only problem is that in Venezuella, they were using Voter Verified 
Audit Trail (a paper copy of the vote stored in a ballot box) and the 
the paper result and the electronic result were compare in a few 
location to verify the accuracy of the result.

A former president of the US also confirmed the election were fair and 
honest and the result can be trusted. Obiously the Carter foundation 
should monitor the US presidential election... and have fun.

Who are we to judge on somebody else democracy?
Let's try to fix our problem first...

David GLAUDE

-- 
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