On Thursday 30 Sep 2004 2:11 am, Anand Babu wrote:
But to publish them on our official GNU web site, we should to seek RMS's advice.
let me exemplify. If I have recorded RMS's speach in a video and digitized in a propreitary VCD format and started distributing it since the video preaches free software philosophy, it may be OK. But if FSF does the distribution of that it is not OK. I dont want FSF to swallow pragmatism, it is fighting an ideological battle. It is not fair to drag FSF into it.
If technical solutions to encode the document in free font doesnt exist we could have searched for other options. our expert hackers suggested that this problem can be solved without bothering the author. So we wait till they send us the files. Meanwhile the book is already uploaded on several other sites as it is. Is there still a point for Sayamindu to spend his precious time to create a font to enable only this document?
I appreciate the author's interest to publish the book on FSF's site. What I dont is his impatience. I am not those reovlutionaries who will try to get to the end whatever be the means. I believe that MEANS IS THE END. It is just an illusion that there is something called an end other than the means and we need a means to get there. If we change our means we are already there. I dont mind compromising a principle here and a principle there in my personal life, but I dont want a public body to do this when there are other options. In the absence of any other options we can consider, and say that to public why we are doing what we are doing instead of being an Ostrich.
Nagarjuna