MEDIA ALERT: Red Hat to Lead the March on San Francisco City Hall to Fight for Intellectual Property Freedom

Michael Tiemann, CTO of Red Hat, will join Red Hat executives and other open source software advocates in a march to City Hall to lobby for the newly proposed Digital Software Security Act (DSSA). The march will thank California for being one of the states willing to stand up to Microsoft in the anti-trust trials and to ask them to take it one step further by backing the DSSA.

The proposed act will require state agencies in California to only buy software from companies that do not place restrictions on use or access to source code. The agencies would also be given the freedom to make and distribute copies of the software.

For software to be acceptable to the state, it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that the contractual condition for purchase and/or licensing must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license.

This law has three objectives; security and open standards, obtaining the greatest value for funds spent, and stimulation of competition within software development, support and implementation. It is in response to a number of pieces of proposed and existing legislation that limit civil liberties and programming freedom such as SSSCA, DMCA, UCITA etc.

Red Hat will join those marching for software freedom around the world; in Peru, in Germany, in the UK, in New Zealand and in Finland. Right now, the future of open software is at stake -- and Red Hat is leading the charge to fight for Intellectual Property Freedom.

More details on the DSSA can be found at http://www.redhat.com/opensourcenow/.

If you'd be interested in covering the march or an interview with Red Hat on intellectual property freedom please call:

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