Re: [Fsf-friends] [ifsa] The Free Software hardliner, the corporation, and the shotgun wedding - Fsf-friends

22 Jan 2008

2008/1/21, Ringo Kamens &lt;2600denver(a)gmail.com&gt;om>:
...
  I don't think it's an issue of strategy or
stages. Purely speaking, if
 we sacrifice our ideals then we will accomplish our goals faster. For
 instance, it would take much less effort for somebody who wants an
 anarchist or socialist revolution to go in and kill every important
 member of government. The problem is that they are sacrificing their
 values. If somebody really wants equality, respect, etc. then they
 can't go around doing violent acts. What happens after the government
 collapses? The masses haven't learned from the past and the new
 government will be just as bad as the previous one. If a revolution is
 caused by mass participation, the end result lasts longer and is
 better. This is the same with free software. If you say that closed
 source software is exploitive, if you say that it is wrong, then don't
 use it. Period. I say capitalism is wrong yet I buy some things. It's
 an issue of survival, but that same argument can't really be applied
 to your choice of software.
 Comrade Ringo Kamens 
Excellent points Ringo. Thanks for sharing this.

You can look at a glimpse of how we did it in Kerala what result we
got here
http://www.fsdaily.com/Beginner/Teachers_becoming_Free_Software_advocates_a…

Teachers are now advocates of Free Software, they are ready for
sacrifices for Freedom because they are taught to value Freedom over
convenience. The case in point is about printer drivers, many of the
commonly used printers (for example canon ip1000) does not have a Free
driver but one teacher responded to it like this,

"Of course there is some problems in Printer Driver but it can be
solved in the new versions"

If we want Freedom and software that works at the same time, you can't
reach there by starting at non-free software. But if you insist on
freedom you will get it. See what happened with java and flash for
example. We said gratis is not enough, we need libre and now we have
those. Instead if we wer content with non-free but gratis java and
flash we would not have the Free tools now. Same can be said about the
graphics drivers. When companies like Dell start offering Intel
graphics card because they work out of the box with Free Software
NVIDIA and ATI will feel the heat and would follow. ATI already
released their specs for some graphics cards.

Cheers
Praveen
-- 
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