On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 6:47 PM, Arun M <arun@gnu.org.in> wrote:
FSF is not Free Software Movement. FSF and its sister organisations tries to
give leadership to free software movement.
 
Unfortunately, thats not what the community seems to understand these days. The leadership is expected to step ahead to lead the movement, but not to stand behind the people working for the movement and work as a body that says 'this-is-so-wrong-this-is-no-
right' and feel that the 'direction' is given.
 
Also note that being a sister organisations of FSF, FSF India has to
follow policies of FSF.

I spent some time finding these, but couldn't see anything. [probably i was expecting transparency ...oops]

Let there be 1000 more organisations to promote free software.
We just needs to be watchful of whether these organisations are
helping community or sabotaging it from with in.

I don't know if more organizations promoting free software would sabotage the community or not, but I feel that the kind of views the FAQs seem to put forth (which I must now understand is going to be different from what the board members/employees think/say) is going to sabotage the Free software community in India.

Words from Gitanjali coming back to mind.

"Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls"

Thats what he said then, and now today we say "Let there be 1000 more organisations ...."??
I know. This might not be double-speak as I used to think earlier.

Democracy cannot be achieved without democratic procedures. A movement like Free Software movement should be based on mass support and mass involvement. One can't deny that because, well, thats how its been working and thats how it will work too. What motivated activists like me to join and work for free software is the very fact that its a mass based movement. The charkha (which coincidentally is part of FSF-I logo) signifies the masses that used it to participate in the Freedom movement in India, which was again a mass movement.

"FSF" might not be "FSM" literally, but I hope FSF is not dissociating itself from FSM. Thats not leadership, thats gonna break our hearts.

-- Sarath M S