Dear friends,
Oneworld.net is organising a meet of its NGO partners in early February. So, at the last minute (virtually) a thought struck me and I dashed off a mail to Delhi. If we are talking about the principles of freedom and development, wouldn't it make sense to talk about Free Software, GNU/Linux and related issues?
Jaba Menon called back from Delhi, and offered to have a one-hour panel, which possibly could be included to sensitise NGOs to the entire debate about freedom around software concerns. Needless to say, this has immense implications not just to software, but also to knowledge and information, and how we gain/lose from the entire framing of the copyright debate.
I'm copying this letter to friends in Delhi. Oneworld needs to put together a panel of 2-3 persons, who could speak for an hour collectively, and also field questions.
Raju Mathur, Tripta@Sarai and Sunil Abraham, these are the first three names that came to my mind. Could you'll help please? I know that Sunil is in Bangalore, but he has done useful work in helping NGOs shift over to software generally, and of late, in promoting Free Software.
Raju has both the technical and oratorial skills. Tripta is with an NGO herself (Sarai), and that too, one of the few that has been strongly pro-Free Software.
Am copying this message also to Karl, who is working on the international NGU project, meant to take Free Software to the NGOs. Please let's work together to make this happen. I would very much like to be in Delhi, but my writing commitments mean it is difficult to take time off without everything else collapsing here, since I work on my own. FN