On 10/26/07, Siddhesh Poyarekar siddhesh.poyarekar@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/23/07, Vihan Pandey vihanpandey@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, check "Low cost software for visually impaired" http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/23linux.htm
i find this article to absolutely disgusting as ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION has been made of the GNU, or the Gnome Project both of which are responsible for the Orca project being there in the first place.
Lets consider the example of a laptop. A tech magazine is bound to cover aspects of the laptop such as size, processor, memory, storage, wifi, etc. This will give more or less full justice to whatever has gone behind the making of the laptop.
A fashion mag on the other hand will only talk about how *cool* the laptop looks, how it is a chick magnet, how eyeballs will follow it wherever you go (sony vaio?) and how 'everyone who is anyone' owns one and hence, you should too.
The point is that the article featured in "Rediff Money", so it's no wonder that the journalist chose to highlight the monetary aspect of the software. I understand that it is sacrilege according to you and many others that the mukti aspect was not highlighted; even I feel the free aspect should have been atleast mentioned, if not elaborated. But if you see the theme of the medium, you'll see why it didn't really happen the way you wish it should have.
The person concerned went as a representative of FSF India and thus should have left no stone unturned in making sure its ideals were properly represented. However the person concerned failed in doing so and i happened to point that out. Representing an organisation or even a school of thought is a big responsibility and must be handled with care that was not done in this case.
After reading my mail the person concerned responded by simply touting his experience and placing the blame squarely on the media and unilaterally absolving himself of all responsibility which IMHO is not the way things are done. You have to keep the media under check by making sure you are not misquoted or quoted out of context by demanding to have a look at the article before publication. Or you simply put pre-conditions to the reporter to mention the following (independently verifiable) facts before giving the interview. Apparently none of this seems to have been done in this case.
On me pointing that out the person concerned touted even more ``experience" including 5 years with the media. That statement raised a LOT of interesting questions most of which i put forward and am still awaiting a reply. The person concerned also implied that i had no right to ask these questions because of my age, which according to him was far too less to have asked those questions. Well if age and ``experience" is a pre-condition to ask questions then we probably ought to put an age and/or ``experience" restriction on who can ask questions on this list and who can't.
While you point does explain how this happened it does not change the fact that the a person made a mistake. In fact he still has not admitted he made one nor apologised for the harm done. Moreover if we are talking about ideals - it has to be consistent from publication to publication. If we send mixed ideals to suit our convinience - just so we get coverage - well IMHO, in that case we are not really being representatives of those ideals but cheap media attention whores.
Regards,
- vihan