Below is an excerpt from a debate that happened on BytesForAll (a network that some of us in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka helped set up). I think what Tapan Parikh says is fascinating. Am sharing it with you guys at FSF. We need to more effectively network NGOs (or not-for-profits, developers and ITforDevelopment circuits). As of now, we're working in concentric circles, it would seem. FN PS: Satish Jha is of digitalpartners.org. Tapan Parikh is a US-returned expat (in his twenties, idealistic, currently forming a team around the EkGaon, literally One Village, network).

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Free software is not about policy makers, not about heads of 100 million dollar "information service" systems, not about NGOs or Development or, even to a certain degree - about users even. It is about programmers.

I program in free software because I enjoy programming in free software. I like seeing the insides and the source code of the libraries I am working with and linking with. I like the insight I get from seeing other peoples code, being able to understand how it does (or doesnt) work. This is very important as this source code will end up being a large part of the application I eventually compile and distribute. And I prefer free over open source because I dont want any legal hassles, and Open Source is a vague enough concept so that I cant understand what I can and cannot do with that source. With Free Software, with GPL software, there is no such question. Call it a programmers view of safe sex.

The quality of the product is unquestionable. Seems a lot of people are, whatever Mr. Jha's reservations, choosing to use free software. Does www.digitalpartners.org run on Apache? If it doesnt, it should. As any of us with the brains and experience to know anything can easily tell you - IIS sucks.

There are many other examples. So all with the power to do so please choose, and choose wisely. If you look at the situation objectively, I am sure you will realize that in the year 2002 for the optimal solution of any companies business and other needs - a large part of that will be served by what we now call Free Software.

But dont presume to understand or impose outdated, skeptical and fundamental economic theories upon a system you fundamentally dont understand. Because to really understand, you have to start with the basic premise - first and foremost, free software is by and for programmers. All else is incidental, and we can see the power of the incidental even now, and this wonderful conference by the vaunted InfoDev falls into just this category - incidental.

(Sorry to be so late, I am a bit slow in connectivity nowadays.)

-- Tapan

On Sun, 20 Oct 2002 00:54:09 +0530 (IST) Frederick Noronha fred@bytesforall.org wrote:

On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 sjha@vsnl.com wrote:

...

open source is good, free software?????.... i am not closed to linux or open source. i am closed to "free". good that sunil has clarified his perspective and i am with that. open source- yes. free software as in free beer-- no!!

This argument is premised on a basic misconception of Free Software. Going by the reporting of Mr Jha below, one can see surfacing many of the fears of people grown on a generation of copyright-restricted software, loaded concepts like 'software piracy' and profiteering from blocking access to others information/code.

It's time to perhaps rethink fundamentals.

Below is a note from RMS (Richard M Stallman), the Founder of the Free Software Foundation. It was written in the context of the Washington conference itself, and I take the liberty of reproducing it below. If people like Stallman were around, perhaps there would be less scope for such a fundamental confusion of issues. FN

PS: There's a difference between Linux and GNU/Linux too...

PPS: I know young coders who have totally changed their way of thinking after reading Stallman's 2001 biography from O'Reiley. Trying to get a copy in time for his Nov 2002 visit to India (it might happen the same month that Bill Gates comes too ;-) -- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783 BYTESFORALL www.bytesforall.org * GNU-LINUX http://linuxinindia.pitas.com Email fred@bytesforall.org * Mobile +9822 122436 (Goa) * Saligao Goa India Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference

From RICHARD M STALLMAN

From rms@gnu.org ....

Tony Stanco invited me to speak at the conference in October, but I felt obliged to refuse. The reason is that it is presented solely as an "open source" conference. My participating in it would encourage people to think I am a supporter of the Open Source Movement. A number of other people from the Free Software Movement are also declining to participate, for the same reason.

Since 1984, the Free Software Movement has championed users' freedom to share and change the software they use. This is an ethical and social issue, not just a technical and practical one. We developed the GNU operating system so that users could have freedom.

In the 1990s, millions of users began using our free software, and many of them appreciated its practical benefits but not the ethical and social benefits. In 1998, some of them founded the Open Source Movement. This movement cites only the practical advantages of being able to share and change software, and studiously avoids presenting this as a question of right and wrong. This may seem like a subtle point, but actually it is a fundamental difference in basic values. As a result, the statements of the two movements are as different as night and day. (Contrast http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ with http://www.opensource.org/ and you'll see.)

The Open Source Movement has had a lot of publicity, which often labels our work as "open source". An article in New Scientist this year even said that I founded the Open Source Movement. The result of this confusion is that the Free Software Movement and its views are often hidden behind the Open Source Movement. We've learned to be wary of participating in events that would put the "open source" label on us.

I asked Tony Stanco to please make this event an "open source and free software" event, and thus make room for our movement as well as the other, but he said the event's sponsors were unwilling. Do you think you might be able to convince them to make room for us?

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html for more explanation of the difference between the two movements. By the way, the operating system isn't really "Linux", either.

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