On Wednesday 21 January 2009 19:41, vinay sreenivasa wrote:
This is the big mistake that people not familiar with IT (and FOSS ) make. It's not the price, it's the Freedom. One should stress that IT is crucially dependent on the software to achieve it's magic.
We completely agree. Governments look at cost in a big way and we have been try ing to get across the point that freedom matters and what advantages freedom br ings. However, while we do not stress on the cost angle, we cannot ignore it either. For eg.when governments can use Open Office and save lakhs of rupees on license fee for MS office, they should be going for Open Office and should not spend p ublic money on proprietary software.
I am talking of strategy and you are talking of brownie points. Cost is a brownie point - mine is cheaper by ten paise. Strategy is making the ground rules. With cost you are playing on M$ strength. They could subsidise until your grandchildren are dead. With Features again the same - they can add stupid trash features and your grandchildren will be playing catch up. Stability - got their balls Security - they are screaming in pain Freedom - they are dead DEAD DEAAAAD.
I might have a very interesting piece to put up in a few days on this.
So you got to talk freedom and link how THIS is the key to everything else. If YOU dont have the key you are a puppet on all counts. Freedom ensures that whatever you have now will be worth a million times more and create 10 million times more in the future. That is why we educate ourselves for 20+ yrs - to create a better future AND be in control of that future. Quite different from recieving trash hand me downs (search for the PL480 food program), whose subsidy is recovered by mining and trade rights.