[Fsf-friends] :)

[Ramakrishnan Muthukrishnan]

 || On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 09:22:08 +0000
 || Tarun Gaur <gaur_tarun@hotmail.com> wrote: 

 gaur_tarun> Hi Friends,
 gaur_tarun> I understand and respect your confidence and am myself a staunch
 gaur_tarun> follower of FSF and open source. Infact the company where i am working

Tarun,

FSF is not connected with Open SOurce movement. Again fsf.org/philosophy is your 
friend.

 gaur_tarun> If you were at Microsoft or even IBM and giving statements like "I
 gaur_tarun> care a Damn on what Mr. Ram Reddy" thinks .... you know the result.

Didn't get you.

 gaur_tarun> No! You can be as flexible as you want and still be Flexible and
 gaur_tarun> diverse. And I am not decrying Linux, i know we are reaching there
 gaur_tarun> slowly but surely and we all know Microsoft is struggling to retain 2
 gaur_tarun> million Windows NT base.

 gaur_tarun> So, when the competetion picks up it is the BUYERS market and you have
 gaur_tarun> to be very agile to pick up a market share. And we have to behave very
 gaur_tarun> responsibly and look at the world from customer's perspective. We have
 gaur_tarun> a big resposibility here. Remember we are not a market leaders but
 gaur_tarun> intend to be. You like it or dislike it Microsoft is still there on
 gaur_tarun> 94% of wold's desktops. You know why .. because they dont ignore the
 gaur_tarun> suggestions of guys like Ram Reddy.

 gaur_tarun> Please do not look at this as a Developer, try looking at it as a
 gaur_tarun> business man or an end user.

Oh.. we just don't care. Atleast I just don't care. We don't need a Ram Mohan Reddy
or an Anand Parthasarathy to praise Free Software movement to "succeed" (if success
means "increase the user base or whatever).

Free Software is not a business movement, it is a political and social movement. If
you care for businesses and their "success", you better find your way out to 
opensource.org. They are friends of yours and share your thinking. For them just
opening the source is enough, they don't care whether one can study, copy, modify
and redistribute software. So.. good for parasites and businesses.

 gaur_tarun> We have have done a lot to reach here, lets not assume that we are the

Exactly. It is 20+ years of effort. Let us not sabotage it all. We care for freedom
not for businesses and user base.

 gaur_tarun> Please do not take this note as personal

Echoing the same from here too..

 gaur_tarun> Lets continue to improve, to end the note .. I am going to Mr. Ram
 gaur_tarun> Reddy's place this weekend and be sure we will win one more guy for
 gaur_tarun> FSF !!

Thanks. But please talk about Freedom and (hence) the benefits it brings to masses
like better quality, reliability, security, not to mention the eye-candiness of
GNOME and KDE. Freedom and free information is what's all about the FSF philosophy.

cheers
-- 
    Ramakrishnan