The times we are living in, technology is developing at such a rapid pace and affecting so many aspects and it raises a lot of issues...

Most people do not have the time to even become aware of the issues involved, but that does not mean that it stops affecting their lives..It is just that they remain unaware of it..

In the case of computing, this has happened and almost everyone on this list is aware about it...and the question that has come up is- Is open source and free software the right way to do computing..What is so wrong about closed source?

In the case of DVD encoding where private studios decided in order to protect their business.. they simply divided the world into regions with numbers 1,2 3,4..And they encoded DVDs so that dvd sold for Region 1 would not play in another...and so on...What a mess they made..This is clearly a case of bad use of technology and should be challenged..and as it happened with the hacker who wrote the code so that he could simply play the dvd. ..the judge upheld correctly his right to do so.

I bring this up as an example.

Now marketing people who work for private business go to any extent, with huge resources.

They create the wrong impression on peoples minds. Therefore it is indeed important that wherever and in whatever way one can, one shares the knowledge about the principles that form the basis of this OS.. Give back to society what you take..in whatever way you can...

It is a big issue of our time and we should not ignore it.

Just putting in my two words... Regards, - Maz.

--- q u a s i quasiabhi@softhome.net wrote:

Is it not possible for us to keep the GNU/Linux advocacy separate from just enjoying GNU/Linux ? I mean, is it necessary that all people who enjoy using GNU/Linux should have an 'holy' agenda of spreading it ?