On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 10:20 PM, Vikram Vincent vincentvikram@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings, My observations are at the end.
FSF-I was formed in July 2001. The I-Lugs existed years before that. Now FSF-I should have worked for the conversion of the "Linux" to "Libre" as done in certain groups. Why divide the Movement by promoting FSUGs etc? To take free software(free knowledge) to the last (wo)man in the most backward villages of our country we need people of different backgrounds. I don't think that differences on the issue of Free vs. Open should have been a devisive issue.
we do not force, we voice our views. In the case of Kochi ILUG, I did not force, they were already convinced. Kochi ILUG asked me to baptize, so I did it. Wherever possible we should keep talking, and when people are ready we can change it. If they do not change, what is wrong in creating a cleaner group with focussed objective. Every political action creates this division, and this is necessary for the identify of the group.
In some places like Bangalore there are enough people who stand for software freedom, and that is why fsug exists. But, we need to create such groups in other places as well. We should continue to participate in lugs, and whenever software freedom related issues are raised we must defend or voice our views.
Open vs free debate started after free was in currency for several years. they started telling people that freedom is not the issue and began focusing on practical aspects of free software. We do not deny that practical aspects of free software are not important, but they are secondary. Because, they come from the primary aspect of freedom. Take away freedom, the pragmatic aspects do not have value. They knew that freedom is the underlying aspect, but they masked it deliberately. That is not acceptable to us. Even if it takes a long time, we do not want to tell users to use free software by telling them about attractive cover which masks the underlying essence. If we do that people may not even see it. This is a fact. Most users who use GNU/Linux do not know the virtues of it, they use it for practical reasons. That is why telling them about freedom is becoming difficult. We want a sustainable social change, and that comes only when we convince users about the idea behind it. Then users will use free software come what may.
However, whenever we are fighting on some issues like, software patents, free document standards, etc. open source community and free software community worked together. Therefore we are not weakening the force when required. But, it is very important to keep the idea of free software at the core.
yes, we need people of different backgrounds. that is why we want to tell all groups the message of software freedom.
If you look at the history you will realize who created the division and confusion. So, if you are accusing FSF is divisive you are spreading a wrong message. Not only that, what you are doing is not in support of FSF, because you are questioning the core of FSF.