Sandip Bhattacharya wrote:
We need a watchdog in India to see the the freedom of software is maintained. Since the software is owned by the community, there is right now no formal body to watch for the software.
In democracies, it is "numbers" that matter. It is the pleasure of the majority that counts. Users will out number the others any day. In our community, the developers, users and others can easily work together without much conflict. Having an association of free software users could be very effective in safeguarding our rights and interests, but we need to have consenus among the various lugs, user groups and others here. Such an assn. could work on issues the way EFF does, along with promoting use of free software in a big way by co-ordinating events.
The other point of view might be that we concentrate on people "giving" only, rather than people "taking" and not "giving" back.
This is in fact a serious issue which needs constant attention and action. It is very, very easy to take free software, make cosmetic changes, and redistribute binaries as non-free software, in plain violation of the GPL or other free licenses. A mechanism to deal with such violations in a routine way by assns. or other orgs. should help.
But, as Arky points out, eduction about the philosophy should make such coercive legal action redundant. People could take and give with joy and celebration, and that alone goes well with the philosophy of love and sharing that is at the heart of our community.