The South PacificBoard

OWL recommends voting  AGAINST  the at-vote resolution, "Protecting Free, Open Source Software Use". The Delegate has been asked to cast their vote accordingly.

Please find below the Office's Analysis for an examination of the resolution and the reasons for the final recommendation.

The at-vote resolution "Protecting Free, Open Source Software Use" seeks to expand universal access to free and open-source software ("FOSS"). To that end, it requires member nations to allow all individuals unrestricted rights to access, run, edit, and redistribute FOSS, as well as to recognize basic copyright authority of the developers of FOSS.
The Office sympathizes with the goal of expanding and protecting access to FOSS, as this would allow individuals more opportunity to unleash their creativity and freely develop important new technology.
However, we fear that this purpose might be hindered by the proposal's active clause 1b, which draws FOSS, to a "limited" (but not further specified) extent, into regular copyright law ‒ while certainly well-intentioned to protect FOSS developers, this has a dangerous potential to spin out of control, right into the highly problematic issues with standard copyright law, which FOSS was principally intended to avoid. Furthermore, the Office is critical as to whether the proposal actually expands access to FOSS: While FOSS is explicitly defined to include "purposes which may be illegal in other jurisdictions", active clause 1a only grants universal access for "legal purpose[s]", thus effectively reserving member states the right to haphazardly ban undesired FOSS functionality, which would defeat the whole purpose of the proposal.

Thus, OWL recommends a vote AGAINST the at-vote resolution, "Protecting Free, Open Source Software Use".