Hi,

Recently in a ilugc discussion thread John Leuner (Debian developer from Pretoria, SA, now working in India) suggested "Freeing the Mind : Free Software and the Death of Proprietary Culture" as a topic for Eben when he visits Chennai.

http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/maine-speech.html

That once is a beautiful and elegant speech indeed, my favorite now as well.

He answers most of the frequently asked questions about Free Software in a simple and elegant way which anyone could understand and relate.

Some quotes from that speech,

"Free software is the single greatest technical library on earth. I say that because free software is the only field where a person can go from naiveté, to the state of the art, in everything that a particular field contains, solely by reading material that is universally available at no cost everywhere the network exists. That is the single, greatest intellectual capital development program in the world."

Every single line is so beautiful and precise like this,

....to all forms of useful knowledge and information. The model is: ``Here; I think you need this: take it.''

It is one such gem of a talk which you want to book mark, print, by heart and keep coming back when in doubt.

Still amused at each single line of it.

Cheers Praveen