7 May
2004
7 May
'04
11:09 p.m.
Hi Harish,
Great to have an enthu response to my mail from you.
On building the masses ... atleast we agree that masses need to be built.
Let agree to disagree. You build the mass your way, i will build it my way;
with mutual respect for the philosophy.;)
I repeat again and again. You and many others are misquoting me. I never
mean to say that Free Software is not good or it is not tending to be good.
Still,
Philosophically speaking it sounds great talking about the fact that
"promote the philosophy and good software follows" .... Its like saying
promote the brand name and products will follow. Sell promises the action
will follow. Show rosy pictures stuffed with philosophy, the dreamland will
follow. An idealistic society with FREEDOM for all and everyone will
understand on their own.
Social Change ... on its own. History is witness ... aggressors gain
resources, promote philosophies, accumulate knowledge and are remembered.
REST are a part of never existant idealistic society of Socrates. A
PHILOSOPHICAL MINORITY.
No friend, the actions speak louder than words. Give them free good
software, you will not need to support the philosophy. The philosophy will
travel on its own.
I will give you an example here ... Linux happened and people saw the
potential and RMS was able to push the philosophy, first in a very minority
community writing some "GOOD" software, then they were able to promote their
philosophy because of their work with some GOOD Software and attain wider
acceptance.
Lets agree to disagree here. I strongly believe that philosophies are duds
without followers and philosophies turn into mass revolutions only when
promoted to show an effect on masses. I am not saying Linux and other Free
software projects are not doing that; neither i have anywhere said that Free
software philosophy is flawed. Both can be promoted concurrently and you
cant ignore either of them. Still statistics dont support that philosophy is
seeping in. (I dont mean i dont understand the philosophy)
When this thread started, it was because there was this respected end user
called Mr Rammanohar Reddy (Editor, The Hindu); who genuinely tried working
with Linux and dumped it for Windows after 1 month of frantically trying to
set his Display of KDE right.
The moment i tried to put his mail across to the list ... we had responses
like "I dont Care" ; "Who cares till i am happy" ; to hell with what
Mr
Rammanohar thinks". What a way to promote a philosophy.
Another wonderful hilarious way is .. I am happy, my friend called Mr. NASA
and Mr. ISP is happy. Now i dont care whether kids are following it or not;
whether schools are teaching it or not; whether journalists, doctors,
lawyers and each one of them out there is using free software or not. I am
happy till philosophy is realised but i wont use good free software as an
agent to promote the philosophy. My question is friend ... then how will you
do it ... Come on lets do 10,000 road shows singing the philosophy. Lets see
how many switch. [ ;) though i dont mind doing 1 or 2 .. lol ]
Whenever i come across ancdotes and examples of being happy with Free
software, they are from our highly enlightened friends (FSF evanglists and
Open Source guys - Primarily techos). I am yet to see very happy masses.
Good Free Software is the ambassador for our philosophy.
Just to add to your experience with Laptops, 2 months back i bought a Sony
and got Linux preinstalled on demand; i succeded where you failed. But i
really dont care about my own experience or your experience with Linux and
free software because you and me are a MINORITY - a small drop in the ocean.
What is important is that the masses start thinking what you and me think.
The philosophy is not promoted by "I dont care" attitutes. A sad thing is
that from so many days we have been discussing this issue ... Everyone seems
to catch the FREE vs GOOD debate but manages to miss the point. The point is
that ..... An end user is not happy. Lets get togather and help him out. By
doing this we are not hurting the philosophy but supporting it by our
actions.
The RED HAT thing, i will explain again .. they are launching servers ...
price range $1000 to $3500. It just the start, then comes the services bug
in terms of more software. Though open source, completely open source. Is
this what Free sofware all about ... RMS please comment !! Who are they? the
Red Hat people .. how did they start? Who knows it better than RMS?
As per you billions will never be affected by "free/non-free nonsense";
Friend there are thousands of philosophies that are born and die every
single day, the ones who attain critical mass are the ones which evolve and
are fiercely promoted ... For how many more years are we going to hide under
the garb of saying ... "It is just a start" .... GNU project was launched
in 1984 .. its already 20 years ... Its not a start anymore.
ITS TIME TO GAIN CRITICAL MASS !!
hail fsf,
tarun
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8 May
8 May
12:08 a.m.
Tarun Gaur said on Fri, May 07, 2004 at 05:39:30PM +0000,:
I will give you an example here ... Linux happened
and people saw
the potential and RMS was able to push the philosophy, first in a
very minority community writing some "GOOD" software, then they
were able to promote their philosophy because of their work with
some GOOD Software and attain wider acceptance.
You got the chronology wrong here. The GNU project came first. Linus
released the kernel under the GPL later. The initial license on the
kernel was *not* the GNU GPL.
The moment i tried to put his mail across to the list
... we had
Well, you did cc to the list one of your mails in what appears to be
part of a long, private correspondence. You will appreciate that
people do not like reading others' private mails, unless the sender
asks that the mail be published or forwarded.
--
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,
'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road,
Ernakulam, Cochin-682018,
Kerala, India.
http://paivakil.port5.com
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
4:38 a.m.
I can't help it, I better get these out of the way,
- Curious, why do you keep switching to all capital letters at arbitrary
points. It doesn't add to clarity, but I keep interpreting it as you're
screaming.
- Why don't you continue responses without changing the subject line?
- Again, freedom is a noun. Freedom software sounds very odd
- The reason that email you forwarded aggravated many people, was the
way in which it was suddenly thrust in. A little bit of etiquette can go
a long way.
No one is misquoting anyone. Either your usage of words or tone seem to
mean or imply that free software as it is today is lacking. You keep
talking about, for instance,
- "improving" to attract the masses,
- asking everyone to see it as an end user as opposed to a hacker (I
safely assumed this meant, hackers to some extent are more familiar with
the internals, so can deal easier with software that is superficially
unfriendly),
- the end user is not happy, or
- plugging all the holes so that the business men will be comfortable
using it.
From these, among other things, some people will tend to make
assumptions regarding what you're trying to say. Maybe it is a
fundamental communication gap.
As I've explained in another reply on another thread (because my mail
client likes to sort it like that), I bought my computer a while ago.
Things have changed in the recent past. But none of that matters, it
isn't too hard to wipe a hard drive. I was just trying to portray the
hold monopolies can have on vendors, and consequently the mind share
they have amongst users. If a person hadn't seen anything else, they'd
be just as happy with GNOME, KDE, Mac OS, Windows, BeOS, or whatever for
basic needs when introduced to them. It's when all you've ever seen and
previously worked on is, say, Windows, you will likely go with the most
familiar even when handed a choice. Even at the extent of loss of freedom.
RedHat is doing exactly what free software from a corporate perspective
is all about. They sell entirely free software at large markup, purely
for the peace of mind their support offers to big companies. There is
nothing preventing you, an individual, who will not want to spend the
3500$, from obtaining any of it for free, studying it, modifying it,
distributing it, and of course, expanding upon it.
[ http://www2.uibk.ac.at/zid/software/unix/linux/rhel-rebuild.htm ]
They've done more than most other companies ever will for the growth of
free software. For years they've allowed anyone and everyone to download
the huge ISO images of fully free distributions fully free of charge,
for instance. Who pays for their bandwidth? How do they survive if they
can't charge for services and support centered around their products as
well? If you find it exorbitantly expensive, find another source for
your software. That is what choice is about. If no one buys it, they
will have to lower their prices or die naturally. Don't criticize or get
angry, just let your choices do the talking.
[ http://www.redhat.com/about/mission/business_model.html ]
If you give an average person a very good program that satisfies their
immediate requirements, they will use it. If it were free, it would be
free, if it weren't, then it wouldn't be. I have an old Mandrake box at
home which does everything my parents need, and which I can administer
remotely. Let's assume I haven't told them anything about the freedom
they're consequently enjoying. All they know is that they aren't paying
for it, it works well, and that while their friends get affected by
viruses and worms, they have no problems receiving email from their son.
Where in this was the philosophy communicated? If tomorrow the hard
drive were to crash, and the local computer man were to install Windows,
they will adjust to it and use it. I'm trying to indicate that
philosophy and social implications are bigger than just free software.
Give them good free software and they will use it, sure. The software
will travel on it's own. This, and the communication of ideals aren't
necessarily linked. They are using it because it's good. Give them free
software and explain to them why being free makes it inherently good,
and they will still use it. But more importantly, the ideals have also
spread.
I am willing to take my chances on another kernel stepping up to the
plate even if the Linux kernel hadn't filled a hole in the GNU system.
It might have taken more time to reach the level of adoption we see
today (or maybe even less if it were even more popular for some reason),
but it would have happened independent of Linux. Point being, there
would have been someone who valued all this (and was skilled enough) to
write things that worked to fill this void.
And all this about fierce promotion, gaining critical mass, mass
revolution and things like that. I really wish to know what it is your
aim for all of this is.
Harish | http://wahgnube.org/
4:42 a.m.
I can't help it, I better get these out of the way,
- Curious, why do you keep switching to all capital letters at arbitrary
points. It doesn't add to clarity, but I keep interpreting it as you're
screaming.
- Why don't you continue responses without changing the subject line?
- Again, freedom is a noun. Freedom software sounds very odd
- The reason that email you forwarded aggravated many people, was the
way in which it was suddenly thrust in. A little bit of etiquette can go
a long way.
No one is misquoting anyone. Either your usage of words or tone seem to
mean or imply that free software as it is today is lacking. You keep
talking about, for instance,
- "improving" to attract the masses,
- asking everyone to see it as an end user as opposed to a hacker (I
safely assumed this meant, hackers to some extent are more familiar with
the internals, so can deal easier with software that is superficially
unfriendly),
- the end user is not happy, or
- plugging all the holes so that the business men will be comfortable
using it.
From these, among other things, some people will tend to make
assumptions regarding what you're trying to say. Maybe it is a
fundamental communication gap.
As I've explained in another reply on another thread (because my mail
client likes to sort it like that), I bought my computer a while ago.
Things have changed in the recent past. But none of that matters, it
isn't too hard to wipe a hard drive. I was just trying to portray the
hold monopolies can have on vendors, and consequently the mind share
they have amongst users. If a person hadn't seen anything else, they'd
be just as happy with GNOME, KDE, Mac OS, Windows, BeOS, or whatever for
basic needs when introduced to them. It's when all you've ever seen and
previously worked on is, say, Windows, you will likely go with the most
familiar even when handed a choice. Even at the extent of loss of freedom.
RedHat is doing exactly what free software from a corporate perspective
is all about. They sell entirely free software at large markup, purely
for the peace of mind their support offers to big companies. There is
nothing preventing you, an individual, who will not want to spend the
3500$, from obtaining any of it for free, studying it, modifying it,
distributing it, and of course, expanding upon it.
[ http://www2.uibk.ac.at/zid/software/unix/linux/rhel-rebuild.htm ]
They've done more than most other companies ever will for the growth of
free software. For years they've allowed anyone and everyone to download
the huge ISO images of fully free distributions fully free of charge,
for instance. Who pays for their bandwidth? How do they survive if they
can't charge for services and support centered around their products as
well? If you find it exorbitantly expensive, find another source for
your software. That is what choice is about. If no one buys it, they
will have to lower their prices or die naturally. Don't criticize or get
angry, just let your choices do the talking.
[ http://www.redhat.com/about/mission/business_model.html ]
If you give an average person a very good program that satisfies their
immediate requirements, they will use it. If it were free, it would be
free, if it weren't, then it wouldn't be. I have an old Mandrake box at
home which does everything my parents need, and which I can administer
remotely. Let's assume I haven't told them anything about the freedom
they're consequently enjoying. All they know is that they aren't paying
for it, it works well, and that while their friends get affected by
viruses and worms, they have no problems receiving email from their son.
Where in this was the philosophy communicated? If tomorrow the hard
drive were to crash, and the local computer man were to install Windows,
they will adjust to it and use it. I'm trying to indicate that
philosophy and social implications are bigger than just free software.
Give them good free software and they will use it, sure. The software
will travel on it's own. This, and the communication of ideals aren't
necessarily linked. They are using it because it's good. Give them free
software and explain to them why being free makes it inherently good,
and they will still use it. But more importantly, the ideals have also
spread.
I am willing to take my chances on another kernel stepping up to the
plate even if the Linux kernel hadn't filled a hole in the GNU system.
It might have taken more time to reach the level of adoption we see
today (or maybe even less if it were even more popular for some reason),
but it would have happened independent of Linux. Point being, there
would have been someone who valued all this (and was skilled enough) to
write things that worked to fill this void.
And all this about fierce promotion, gaining critical mass, mass
revolution and things like that. I really wish to know what it is your
aim for all of this is.
Harish | http://wahgnube.org/
5:21 p.m.
Hi Tarun and others,
Due to lack of time i didnt go through all the mails on this topic.
Quick scan gives me the feeling that it is being dragged unnecessarily.
1. Tarun, you are right that we need to make free software easier for
general user. We are doing good work for that. I dont see any one has
any objection in furthering it.
2. We the users of free software should also take the responsibility of
helping people like Mr Rammanohar, where ever we can. It is not a good
idea from our part to say 'RTFM'. Lets try to help others, dont forget
that we are working for the freedom of sharing knowledge.
3. At the same time, we dont care abt people saying "i will use/support
free software when it is technically better choice". That show their
lack of commitment to the issue of freedom we raise, ignore them.
I can understand a person who is using non free software because there
is no alternative, while accepting that he is not doing the right thing
and trying to bring a change to his situation.
regards,
arun.
8:46 p.m.
Arun,
You wrote:
Due to lack of time i didnt go through all the mails
on this
topic.
Quick scan gives me the feeling that it is being
dragged
unnecessarily.
To some extent I agree with you. What began as a nice exposition soon
got lost.
2. We the users of free software should also take the
responsibility
of
helping people like Mr Rammanohar, where ever we can.
It is not a
good
idea from our part to say 'RTFM'. Lets try to
help others, dont
forget
that we are working for the freedom of sharing
knowledge.
To this allow me to add that we need to be a trifle more 'visible'
vis-a-vis deployments and implementations. A quick scan of the
mainstream media (nationwide) reveals precious little appreciation of
'GNU/Linux' as opposed to 'Linux'.
[snipped]
I can understand a person who is using non free
software because
there
is no alternative, while accepting that he is not
doing the right
thing
and trying to bring a change to his situation.
I think this is somewhat along the lines of what Frederick Noronha
wrote in his May 2004 column in LinuxForYou. We cannot change all the
people at the same time, but we do have to begin someplace. For a
start a lesser amount of 'RTFM' and a greater amount of sensitivity
could be a nice way to bring about Tarun's wish towards a 'majority'.
Regards
Sankarshan
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5 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Arun M -
Harish Narayanan -
Mahesh T. Pai -
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay -
Tarun Gaur