On Tuesday 04 January 2005 11:13, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
On Monday 03 January 2005 06:22 pm, Vinayak Hegde wrote:
In a country where drinking water and food are still major issues, contributing to free software is least of the troubles.
education, mapping resources, crop planning, watershed management, eliminating middle men in marketing, bringing transparency to administration, knowledge base development, sharing experiences over rural areas, disaster management - just a few areas, this and many more can be done efficiently and at low cost by FOSS - no, maybe you cant grow food on computers and write programs to make drinking water come out of floppy drives - but you can grow more food, distribute it more efficiently, tap more water sources, conserve the existings ones with FOSS. Remember knowledge is power and FOSS has immense potential to disseminate knowledge among the rural people
Well said. In fact the key to governance is open flow of information. This aspect is anthema to all organisation with hidden agendas, be it government, public or private. Poverty exist not because of lack of resources but because of bad distribution mainly caused by restricitions on free flow of capital and people. The moment u have someone controlling capital not belonging to him u have the the framework for corruption and wheeling dealing. Add restrictions on information flow in the name of national security - you cant photograph the dirty decrepit rly station - and u have the making of a Soviet style concentration camp country with grandiose monuments and speeches and other rubbish - N. Korea, Burma even India of the Indira days are examples.
rgds jtd