[Fsf-friends] The Flow of Time, Life and Freedom

[Ramanraj K]

The luggies at ILUGC sent "Happy GNU Year" postings.
I freely copy and modify the same, to wish you all -
A very Happy, Prosperous and Eventful GNU Year (:-))  
During the course of this year, you should be able to freely use
.^.Calpp to track your events and prosperity, and
give me feedback if it made you happy ;-)

.^. Calpp is an acronym for computer aided legal procedures and 
proceedings.  Now, simply because it sounds like something to do wholly 
with the law, please don't ignore it.  Development of free software has 
in many ways been influenced by the law - including copyright law, 
corporate ambitions expressed in tightly worded licenses, lawyers, 
courts and legislatures.  Charles Babbage had a long innings with the 
British Parliament.  My fortune for one morning was:

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
Mr.  Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?'  I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage

[Source: fortune, usually at /usr/share/fortune/fortunes ]  More about 
the life and works of Charles Babbage are available at 
http://fourmilab.ch/babbage  Any study about the history of computers- 
both hardware and software would take us back to 1830's, the times of 
Charles Babbage.  While at http://fourmilab.ch , one may also read 
"Hacker's Diet", by John Walker, and that would be a healthy way to 
start the New Year.

The GNU Project history documents the travails of RMS with copyright 
licenses, and how FSF has overcome the  helplessness of people whose 
hands were tied by restrictive licenses.  FreeBSD and NetBSD were 
literally born out of the legal conflicts between freedom to share 
software and the frustrative restrictive corporate licenses.   Free For 
All documents the free software history in an interesting narrative, and 
is available at:  http://www.wayner.org/books/ffa/

The law has played an important role in the development of free 
software. I guess it will continue to do so.  I set out to just mind my 
business with Calpp, but it has taken me to strange new areas like 
artificial intelligence.  When I wrote once to RMS about Calpp, he replied:

 >If this includes implementation of human-style common-sense
 >reasoning,  you may have tackled a problem that the Artificial
 >Intelligence field  has been struggling with for 35 years.


After that, I knew, that Calpp is required for AI.  The systematic 
storage of laws - both man made, and our discoveries about the rules 
governing nature - are required for AI to work well for us.  My 
immediate desire is to use Calpp to let law flow through free software, 
but if it paves way for robust AI, it should be another welcome 
development in the free software world, again with aid of the law!