On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Rushabh Mehta rmehta@gmail.com wrote:
JTD,
I was just looking for a starting point before trying something new. There has been no follow up (at least on the mailing list) on the meeting at IIT. Also sad to note that you think the only use of FSF India is philosophical and there is nothing else to be done.
FSF does interventions at larger levels, where individuals are unlikely to make an impact. Which the website may not have much to say on. Meeting with the Education secretary is not exactly a flash mob.
Will post on this list as and when things move. Anyone on this list doing any advocacy / outreach work, please let me know.
best, Rushabh
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@rushabh_mehta http://erpnext.org
On 28 January 2014 at 3:20:44 pm, J T Dsouza (jtd1959@gmail.com) wrote:
On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 12:41 PM, Rushabh Mehta rmehta@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for the reply.
Replies inline:
It is very sad to see that the few people who are promoting free software are also tired and depressed.
Dunno where you jumped to that conclusion.
I have been watching these lists for quite a while. There hardly any projects / activity / events other than meetups that have started
recently.
Recently there was a workshop on Openstreet map at HBCSE There is a continous on going program on education at Khalapur under the aegis of HBCSE, using OLPC and 100% FOSS stack.
Earlier a meet at IIT on i dont remember what. Several FOSS mentorships ongoing at IIT.
I think we are barely scratching the surface as far as promotion of free
software is concerned.
You will always be scratching the surface. The FOSS ecosystem is massive.
Even the FSF India website is dated.
FSF is focused on Philosophy of free software. Afaik nothing has changed since introduction of gplv3.
Clearly new energy is required on
THAT is always welcome. There never is enough.
and revenue is also increasing year on
year, but it is still not enough. If
we divert attention in too many things, then we may lose the advantage
that
ERPNext has built up. Also, there is a lot to be done.
Business development is part of a business. Every state government spends tens crores on education. The smartness is in campaigning for FOSS with ones business goals in mind.
If you take funding from let's say the FSF, it would be wholly
unprincipled to project your company
/ services in such programs, unless you too were contributing
financially.
We are not taking or wanting to take any funding from FSF. Thankfully we are able to sell hosting services to the user community. Our goal was to voluntarily go to these organizations and not to promote our software but Linux Desktops, Office tools, Mail and Web Servers - the basic stack.
IF you dont have an interest other than altruism, that is fine. But if you do have an interest, it helps fund the costs of such work. I cant see the point you are trying to make, vis-a-vis your internal revenue statement.
This would be ideally done under the umbrella of Free Software
Foundation
of India (or if they are very religious/suspicious about us who have to earn our bread and don't live off grants, or there are too many ego-mountains to be climbed, then we could form a new group).
That one is a Pointless rant. Afaik, Nobody on this list is living off someone else's largesse.
Agree - its a rant, but I have mailed a lot of people individually, and from the response (or lack) I can clearly sense that we are "outsiders".
I can guess why from the contents of this mail why it is so. Besides this is the first set of mails I have seen from you on the list.
Either ways, its surely something for people to introspect - we need to pool resources if we have to fight commercial interests.
What commercial interests?. And pool what resources for what purpose?
Hand waving is all fine, but doing things like organising a workshop for let's say engineering students on the use of CAD software requires one to propose a specific program and required resources, clearly stating what YOU are contributing and what additional support you require from the community.
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