On Fri, 2008-09-19 at 12:43 +0530, Anivar Aravind wrote:
My questions are Following
1.Is this event anyway related with Free Software Foundation?
FSF India has not been formally informed of this meeting or the formation of FSF-TN. We came to know only through the website
- This news is not announced in any Free Software Mailing lists,
like FSF-Friends, FSF-Tn(http://mm.gnu.org.in//pipermail/fsf-tn/) ILUG Chennai etc . It is not announced yet in gnu.org.in also. Why This much secrecy around this?
This meeting has nothing to do with FSF India. They have not informed us anything about the meeting, or even about the people who are organising it. I guess they are not interested in getting support from the Free Software community either.
3.. The above invitation text says "logo and caption for the Free Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu will be launched" in the function. Is FSF India decided to start regional FSFs? If yes why this is organising in a a secret maner?
There is no decision to start regional FSFs. They have used the logo of FSF India in their Newsletter which is downloadable. Their use of the logo is, actually, illegal. They have not even informed FSF India
- The Invitation text says "The objective of the event will be the
launch of the project for the development of a Tamil Version of the GNU/ Linux operating system", why there is a need of another distribution when tamil is well supported in most of the upstream distributions? . Let it be the work of Tamil Localisation groups.
This remains a mystery in view of the surreptitious manner in which they are organising the event.
- The contacts provided in the website contact page is not at all
familiar in Free Software Community. And There is no information on who is organising this event.
No one seems to know. We have sent mails to the known addresses to find out who these people are.
On a quick checkup with friends in Chennai, they says it is an event Organised by Communist Party of India (Marxist) . Thats why the secrecy.
That seems to be true. This is a CPM event and the objective god only knows.
I don't have a problem in a political party supporting free software cause. But If it is the case i am very suspicious on following points
- The exclusion of the Free Software Movement in Chennai in Organising it,
- Creating a body with power structure before Contributing anything .
I dont think a free software Foundation is not needed for releasing a Localised GNU/Linux Distribution 3. Secrecy in whole process of a Public event
This would appear to be part of an attempt to float a parallel process to take over the Free Software movement in the country. While I too have no objection to anyone helping the Free Software movement in the country or even independently promoting Free Software (as many groups are already doing), what this group is doing is really sabotaging the whole movement itself by causing confusion among FS supporters. This is unethical and could even be illegal (using our logo without our permission). This is very unfortunate.
Best