On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 6:02 PM, Arvind Kumar Chinniah arvindkumar.c@gmail.com wrote:
It is not my concern for not making you sit on the Dias stage. First you said you were not invited for the session organize. Then, you accepted that you were invited to hold a session under you. But this is not the actual talk of the discussion.
We are not in a descriptive manner explained about,
- Why the Kochi Conference had a protest against Novell, why cant that be
made when the lend a hand towards you (As you were already informed, the proof is the mail scraps at http://www.gnu.org.in/kochi-conference-communication ). Why on that day, why not before that?
It is answered already. It is because the organizers never disclosed the relevant fact to anyone, not even to those who are part of the organizing committee. They did not mention that on the event website. (all these points are repetitions.) THAT IS WHY it happened on THAT DAY, and NOT BEFORE THAT. So, you should go ask them why this information was surpressed?
You are asking several questions to us, since FSF India created a forum for transparent discussion. This conversation is possible and that is why you are asking questions, we are patiently responding to your queries. If FSFI does not believe in generating opinion why should there be a list like this where people can discuss transparently and understand each other.
- Why the Free Software Foundation is not considered to be a Mass Movement.
If its not, its not going to be a community. You spoil the real nature of Democracy (and in turn Freedom) in that.
Complete misunderstanding. Most of these are based on inaccurate expectations.
FSF was founded in 1985. What kind of hindrance did it create for not letting democracy or freedom flourish? On the contrary it took the lead in promoting and protecting these virtues. It gave the direction to the movement. FSM created tools that help create social networks to let this happen. It is therefore an enabler of freedom.
FSF supported the GNU project where people from all over the world participated and collaborated in a distributed development environments using mailing lists, cvs, web servers, list servers, chat rooms etc.
How can you say that doing such things spoils the real nature of democracy and then in turn freedom?
FSFs do not want to administer freedom movement, it wants to give a direction and support, and become a body to protect software freedom (when you find someone is voilating GPL, a country changes a policy and introduces software patents e.g.). And the body of FSFs include people who take leads in those movements. They may come from several other organizations/groups etc.
Political parties on the other hand want to administer social change, but we do not do that. They want power and control but we don't.
Free software movement is possible without creating any large political groups. The most important identity that we respect is the human being and that beings' freedom. When we have a large number of small groups at every part of the country (an FSUG in every town, district, we don't have them now.) FSM will flourish. FSFI will support their formation, provide them direction, give them infrastructure, invite the leads of such groups into the working group, generate consensus etc. and support each other.
We are doing it differently from other political movements, because we have a point to make here. The point is when freedom is granted to each individual, and they develop an ability to defend their freedom at all times on their own, there remains nothing else to govern. This is possible when knowledge is free, and the software that helps in creating, managing and distributing that knowledge is also free. Creating powerful groups even if they are democratic does not solve the problem (India and US are good examples of that, both are large democracies, neither of them respect or grant freedom.). That is possible in user groups, mailing lists, wiki spaces, chat rooms where people can have a dialogue. We need a large number of small organizations, and a network of these organizations, which happens automatically. This is how we grow. This growth is organic, and organic growth is sustainable. We want to catalyze the formation of such an ecosystem.
Let us all work towards such an organic growth, instead of creating one large network of FSF chapters. let me repeat, FSFs do not want to become a political powers, and does not want to govern. That will be self-defeating to the ideals of freedom.
Nagarjuna