On Saturday 21 Mar 2009, Debayan Banerjee wrote:
Also, there are similarities between FOSS ideeology and communist ideology and thank god for that. And there are difference too, and thank God for that too :)
Nothing can be further from reality than the above statement. Communists intentionally control the flow of every available resource, thereby creating shortages. This thus prevents everyone from using their abilities in the best possible way and abrogates control to the man in the middle. Once this happens you destroy everything. In the initial phase, robbing tom to feed jerry works very well. But pretty soon all the Toms are dead and you start robbing Jerry.
OTOH FOSS insists on decontrol, which makes available all resources to everyone. This automatically creates an economy of plenty. And allows - no encourages - everone to utilise resources to the best of their ability.
Communism is capitalism with a cruel twist - capitalism of shortages. And you can absolutely have a capitalism of shortages within a "free" economy. ENRON was responsible (along with a few other Bush cronies) for the worst power shortages in CAL - not Calcutta - California. The irony. FOSS is the capitalism of plenty. Capitalism of shortages benefits a few - licence and permit raj Capitalism of plenty benefits everybody.
Dont ever make the mistake of comparing FOSS to communism, they have absolutely nothing in common - save the communist FUD of helping the poor.
Having said the above, I must admit that the communists are the only bunch of politicians with an iota of cluefulness about anything, including a pile of rocks under the sea.
And if you read the posts on LK Advanis forums, you will want to commit suicide. This bunch is as fearful of openness as the commies. One of my posts was neatly mangled to imply that i was (at least partially) in agreement with their philosophy on security and "Hindutva".