Hi all,
If we look at the pc revolution and how it spread after the IC and microprocessors came into being, we would see that the following had a great effect on the PC phenomena.
1 --IBM came into the picture and its methods of mass producing or handling the distribution of quality items helped thru proper procedures and quality control processes 2 --a media which worked complementarily to the PC revolution (and helped advertise the social phenomenon) 3 --spread of software and hardware which met needs of small businesses which could then feel the prestige of owning a machine which was equivalent to the large corporation's multi million dollar machines. This led to much needed money/capital coming in.
In the area of software for the common man and particularly software for small businesses which fueled the growth of the pc revolution by bringing in much needed money and absurd profits were the financial softwares.
If open source or free software has to go beyond the researchers level and not be milked by existing corporations like microsoft, sun, IBM, Oracle etc (who just copy the code at no cost) there has to be accurate and good knowledge of application softwares particularly for the rapidly automating small businessmen of India in the tier 2 cities etc..
We need open rating systems (and impartial websites which are not market driven) for existing softwares in the field of point of sale systems and financial software.
I came across these sites for rating such softwares (from the Toronto LUG mailing list) and maybe we could find others much better or complementary to them and have them put up on a wiki based website such as that of this group.
http://linuxfinances.info/info/miscpersonalfinance.html http://www.linas.org
++ also another suggestion-- our fsf website URL needs to be put/added to each email from this list automatically in addition to the existing footer as below
Kush _______________________________________________ Fsf-friends mailing list Fsf-friends@mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends