Dear Friends,
G.U. Pope has translated kappam as tribute, which is money or equivalent paid periodically by one prince or State to another in acknowledgement of submission or as price of peace or protection. However, the word tribute sounds respectful, because of it also means mark of respect, and does not convey the sense of shame, humiliation, helplessness, and ignominy that is usually associated with kappam. Taxes are normally and ideally retuned to the people as welfare measures and common benefits, but kappam always ends up as luxuries enjoyed by a King. All states paying kappam deeply wish for freedom and fight for Swadesh sooner or later, in the interests of their people.
The East India Company was just a trading company when they landed in 1600 in India. Kappam and taxes soon followed. According to Montgomery Martin, who studied the drain of wealth from India in 1838, wrote thatthere wan annual drain of 3,000,000 pounds, and fairly conceded that `for half a century we have gone on draining from two to three and sometimes four million pounds sterling a year from India, which has been remitted to Great Britain to meet the deficiencies of commercial speculations, to pay the interest of debts, to support the home establishment, and to invest on England's soil the accumulated wealth of those whose lives have been spent in Hindustan. I do not think it possible for human ingenuity to avert entirely the evil effects of a continued drain of four million pounds year from a distant country like India, and which is never returned to it in any shape.'
England's debt to India is estimated at 5,000,000,000 pounds, at 1945 currency values. Add Rs.1,350 crores of British capital shipped out between August 1942 and July 1948 when India was declared Independent.
I hope we have learnt our history lessons right, and take RMS seriously when he says:
Our goal is to replace it (non-free softare) entirely. Free software is software swadesh -- not just for India, but for the whole world.
The resemblance between non-free software and British rule in India extends much further. Non-free software is a form of electronic colonization."
RMS is a Mahatma for the world. GNU Freedom may become the mother of all freedoms. As the author of calpp, working on legal procedures and proceedings with computer aid, I have no hesitation at all in saying that the GPL is the most valuable legal document as significant as the Bill of Rights, US Constitution, UN Charter, or our own Constitution, and is likely to create a much greater change and impact on society than any other legal document has done so far.
I just saw a message from RMS listed by Frederick Noronha:
if the Indian government hires one person in India to work with us, that could enable us to add 1000 more packages per year. We would appreciate the help.
Could we rise up to the occasion?
Regards, K. Ramanraj.
RMS is a Mahatma for the world. GNU Freedom may become the mother of all freedoms.
Please don't give me personally more admiration than I have earned. I can hardly compare with Gandhi, neither in courage nor (as yet) in results.
The freedom to share and change software, in and of itself, is less directly important to society than other freedoms that we are all aware of. At the same time, as society becomes increasingly dependent on computer use, it may be that we need freedom in using software if we are to preserve our other freedoms.
The freedom to share and change software, in and of itself, is less directly important to society than other freedoms that we are all
But the concept of sharing here, for the benefit of all, is unique. Maybe, the success of Free Software, should trigger similar initiatives from other dimensions as well, once the LOSS OF FREEDOM becomes all too pervasive and visible. Even at that point, an attempt to turn the clock back, would be impossible, and one need not be a pessimist to appreciate the futility of such an exercise.
aware of. At the same time, as society becomes increasingly dependent on computer use, it may be that we need freedom in using software if we are to preserve our other freedoms.
But the medium of transmission and most other components are out of our bounds, and are at the mercy of a few BIG PLAYERS. It would heavily depend on these BIG PLAYERS, to allow us to use the slowly but steadily SHRINKING SPACE.
These words, coming from you, RMS, show your closeness to the select FEW of ALL TIME GREATS.
CK Raju Thrissur
> The freedom to share and change software, in and of itself, is less > directly important to society than other freedoms that we are all But the concept of sharing here, for the benefit of all, is unique. Maybe, the success of Free Software, should trigger similar initiatives from other dimensions as well, once the LOSS OF FREEDOM becomes all too pervasive and visible.
The specific issues of free software--the freedom to share and change the software you use--can only possibly generalize to other kinds of information. (I believe that other functional works, such as textbooks and reference works, should be free just as software should be free.)
Beyond that, one can only generalize at a very basic level, such as that people should not be able to build up empires (in a very loose sense of the term) over other people.
-
CK Raju -
Ramanraj K -
Richard Stallman