On Fri, 2007-06-08 at 19:44 +0530, Praveen A wrote:
2007/6/8, Mahesh M maheshmukundan@gmail.com:
I agreee with Sandeeps' view... Unless anything like a commercial institution come up locally, we wont be noticed. Govt works are completly strict. Its not a user group tat they would try to contact but an organisation tat is wel established.
We don't have anything against it -- How many times we have to repeat it?
Actually, it is the prevailing wisdom that is the culprit. The prevailing wisdom says that unless there is a commercial entity, things won't work properly. This is a result of another piece of prevaiing wisdom that people will not do anything without a profit motive. We have demolished the idea that creativity will not flourish without monetary incentive -- worse, that creativity will not flourish whithout exclusionary rights, without monopoly. Prof. Patnaik theoretically showed this to be false in his speech at the seminar in Thiruvananthapuram on 6th and Prof. Eben Moglen showed how this is false in real life. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who believe this to be true, including some people who themselves may not act accordingly. The adoption of Free Software in IT@School could have happened much earlier but for the belief that a commercial entity is needed for support.
"Hiran asked them to explain the difference between Windows and GNU/Linux and pat came the reply - GNU/Linux is free software! But then, Windows too is "free software", isn't it, I intervened. The kids were quick to point out that with Windows, you don't have certain `freedoms', like the freedom to copy!
Here is another incident about which I heard from a teacher. A debate was organised in a class about Free and proprietary software. The first person to speak happened to be a teacher. He said that whatever we get free of cost is bound to be of low quality and so on. The next speaker was a student. He just demolished the teacher's arguments and explained what Free Software is!
we were *not* talking to clueless `software engineers' from Bangalore
Well put!
Best