__ Explicit Note: These are *MY* own views__
Recently, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <gajo@softhome.net mailto:gajo%40softhome.net?Subject=%5BFsf-friends%5D%20About%20the%20preliminary%20draft%20i%20had%20sent%20in&In-Reply-To=> wrote about extending the reach of FSF-India. Directly connected with this, is the question of raising funds for FSF-India. The issue does stare upon our faces, and we ought not to skirt this issue. I putforth here, what strikes me as correct. Please do send in your suggestions. I am sure FSF-India, could deal with this issue in a better way, when this is done voluntarily by all of us.
1) Donations: This, the FSF-India invites through its web site. It should help if FSF-India also draws up and publishes a budget. Any donation from even a mere Rs. 10^0 to even > Rs.10^10 should help. We cannot underestimate the value of even 10^0, when the population of India is more than10^9, and if each Indian were to contribute just 10^0, FSF-India would have Rs. 100 Crores at its disposal. But, since that is flying too high, more pragmatically individuals may be comfortable with the idea of contributing anything from 10^2to6, and it would be nice if FSF-India, could give away CD's or a DVD of stable releases of top software from the Free Software Directory to donors. Corporates and governments who use and earn considerable profits from Free Software, could start at 10^5 and share whatever they could to promote FSF-India. We have about two dozen states, and if each could send as little as anything from 10^6to9, that should build a solid corpus. Please always remember that, when we part with our wealth to FSF, all of us end up becoming more wealthy!
2) Free Software CD's/DVD's: I have never seen a GNU/Linux box in Chennai. I have to place orders to shops in Bangalore if I want a GNU/Linux box. FSF-India could package and distribute Free Software CD's/DVD's along with printed documentation, through major book stores. This could generate revenue. For all that I know, FSF-India may be the distribution point for the whole of Asia. Now, that could also earn foreign exchange for India.
3) Posters: Our friend Rakesh Ambati, suggested posters of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace by Perry John Barlow. We could have posters of GPL under the GNU head logo [I would frame one for my office], and may be of St. iGNUtius RMS with his famous lines:
I bless your computer my child I'm saint iGNUtius of the church of Emacs. Emacs started out as a text editor but it became a way of life for many computer users and then a religion. infact there was an alt.religion.emacs newsgroup back around 1990. I don't know what it was used for because I never read net news. but so,emacs became a religion. we even have a great sism between two different versions of emacs. and now we have saints. fortunately no gods yet. To join the church of emacs you must repeat the confession of the faith three times. you must say, "There's no system other than the GNU. and Linux is one of its kernels." The church of Emacs has some advantages compared with some other churches because to be a saint in the church of Emacs does not require celibacy however it does require making a moral commitment to live a life of purity and then living by it. You must Exorcise the evil proprietary operating systems from all the computers you control. and then install a wholly free operating system instead. because wholly can be spelled in more than one ways. and then only install free software on top of that. if you make this commitments and live by it, then you too would be a saint and you too may eventually have a halo, if you can find one because we don't make them anymore Now sometimes people ask me "In the Church of Emacs, is it a sin to use vi?" The answer is that "Using a free version of vi is not a sin its a penance." and people sometimes ask me if my halo is really an old computer disk. this is no computer disk. this is my halo. But it was a computer disk in a previous life.
so, 'happy hacking' every one!
The ilugc has the full text of the above speech at: http://www.chennailug.org/rms-chennai.txt
The first line, "I bless your computer my child", touched my heart because the blessing comes alive with a load of GNU free software. I have removed the [laughter] tags that you will find in the link above. More ideas for posters are welcome. There is scope for audio tapes and cd's too: including the free software song by RMS, and other free songs that can inspire and relax us.
3) T-Shirts, Shoes, Footballs and a whole range of sports gear: Arun proposed Khadi Kurtas. I particularly request Footballs. Whenever we see somebody kicking well, we could send them a FSF Football and write "Wow, you kick so well! I am impressed. Please kick well so that we can together reach the goal". Some will use Free Software but refuse to promote it. They get free kicks! We could have a special offer on a pair of Footballs, where the purchaser pays for two at a discount but is delivered only one, and the other is sent to the deserving candidate for free kicks. This special offer could be called "Share your kicks!". Our OpenSource friends may promote a whole range of events based on the FSF sports gear: International tournaments, open matches, etc - oh! what fun it will be! But since sports gear cannot be copied like software, these efforts will bring home wealth to FSF coffers to promote Free Software. With the FSF sports gear, regardless of the players, we can always reach and win the goal of sharing the true spirit.
This is Christmas Season. We could send some Footballs to Santa Claus so that he could give away to children for free. But we should also watch out for entitites with the initials of Santa Claus who run after the balls they have given away for free all these years!
4) Free Computers Junction: Providing a junction for disposal of unwanted or discarded computer hardware and software that is still usable, could help people who need these for development efforts. This may be just a mailing list to start with. This is a kind of wealth, and could also be used by FSF-India, say in fairs for demo purposes.
Now, please contribute something more and add to the above fund raising.
but so,emacs became a religion. we even have a great sism between
It's spelled "schism".
You must Exorcise the evil proprietary operating systems from all the computers you control. and then install a wholly free operating system instead.
I suggest writing "holy (= wholly)" here.
if you make this commitments and live by it, then you too would be a
Commitment, singular.
Some other changes in punctuation and capitalization are needed. Where did this text come from? We should correct the master copy.
I have removed the [laughter] tags that you will find in the link above.
It's important for people to know this is a joke. Otherwise they might think I really believe in this as a religion ;-{}.
Perhaps smileys could convey it.
hi,
was reading through this thread and something cropped up. this is completely off-topic as of now and might also be irrelevant but then relevance (as my prof said) is relative.
was watching a fine program on BBC y'day evening (~1900 IST) with a panel of this year's Nobel laureates sitting down with Nik Gowing to discuss why science is not being appreciated by the common man and society in general - why for every keystroke i make i do not wonder about the efforts of comp-sci personnel, scientists and hackers and consider society blessed (this is my personal addition). what the panel and especially the chemists and physicists agreed upon is that the scientific community requires communicators - 'someone like Richard P Feynmann' who could bridge the gap and make the connection. they also agree that this will not make people more appreciative of scientists by forgetting the stereotypical image, but this will help make society scientifically aware and inculcate scientific spirit and perhaps (they hope) vision. simplistic ? perhaps, but it will be a start.
i believe that the raising of funds should not be an one-time effort only. it must be made into a sustained initiative aimed at encouraging donations towards the cause of Free Software Movement in particular and 'freedom' in general. to get this initiative going one has to look beyond Free Software enthusiasts and volunteers as these are believers (captive consumers) of the -ism. we need to look towards larger population of academicians from diverse streams, businesses (small and large) whose lives and motivations are affected by using 'non-free' systems and deployments. in order to successfully do this, we need communicators, we need personalities and we need faces. it may sound as an anathema but the moment people connect an ism to a face/person the personal involvement becomes easier. a successful propagation of ideas and efforts of the FSF/FSFI coupled with a process for accepting donations would lead to a better initiative at Fund Raising. let us be realistic, could the regional nodes take on the responsibility of generating donations from non-enthusiasts via roadshows and presentations ?
take a local case for example, in his local area tathagata banerjee (coordinator fsf-westbengal) has a cybercafe owner who uses licensed MS OS and applications for all his machines. finally fed-up with the 'support' received from local MS after he had to re-install in the event of a hard drive crash, this person desired to change over to something more robust and stable and having license conditions that are not 'freedom curbing'. i am glad to announce that tathagata has personally helped the migration over to a GNU/Linux setup with the deployment being done in phases. these are cases that need to be talked about as it touches at a very believable personal level.
we need to create that belief, we need to create an appreciation and we need to do it over and over and over again....
have a wonderful day warm regards
sankarshan
-------------------- Everything that has a beginning, has an end - free your mind. --------------------
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hi,
We must thank the author of this transcript for a few laughs.
cheers
arky
--- Richard Stallman rms@gnu.org wrote:
but so,emacs became a religion. we even have agreat sism between
It's spelled "schism".
You must Exorcise the evil proprietaryoperating systems from all the computers you control. and then install a wholly free operating system instead.
I suggest writing "holy (= wholly)" here.
if you make this commitments and live by it,then you too would be a
Commitment, singular.
Some other changes in punctuation and capitalization are needed. Where did this text come from? We should correct the master copy.
I have removed the [laughter] tags that you willfind in the link above.
It's important for people to know this is a joke. Otherwise they might think I really believe in this as a religion ;-{}.
Perhaps smileys could convey it.
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/
This is Christmas Season. We could send some Footballs to Santa Claus so that he could give away to children for free.
Do people in India pay attention to a Christmas Season nowadays? I thought India was still safe from the plague ;-}.
-
Rakesh Ambati -
Ramanraj K -
Richard Stallman -
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay