[Fsf-friends] What should friends of FSF India do?

Krishna Pagadala krishnaact@yahoo.com
Wed Jan 28 22:59:11 IST 2004


"Vision"(1) of FSF is stated as
"Broadly, FSF India will strive to ensure that free
software is strengthened in all respects so as to form
a genuine, credible and viable alternative to
proprietary software for every kind of application."

"Goal" (2) of FSF India is stated as 
"Our goal is to ensure the long term adoption of free
software, and aim for the day when all software will
be free."

In poster (3)
"And the right to explore how similar freedoms can be
attained and shared in all branches of knowledge."

I find 2 and 3 above interesting, especially 
"aim for the day when all software will be free."
"shared in all branches of knowledge."

  Making all software free means educating the public
about the problems with copyright laws. And therfore
an awakened public might get the laws changed.
  Having sharing of knowledge in all branches of
knowledge means that we have to expand the process of 
educating the public beyond software and talk about
the harm done by building walls around knowledge.

  However I see a narrowing of thought when it comes
to vision, "FSF India will strive to ensure that free
software is... viable alternative to proprietary
software"
  I see this narrowing on both the lists. The only
person consistently saying that all software should be
free software is RMS. 
  
  Since free software (as great as it is), compared to
the amount of software developed every year is a drop
in the bucket (if not ocean). Another way of putting
it is, iff tommorow all software becomes free
software, we will see an increase of the size of free
software by atleast 1000 times.

  For the above reason, I think that not only should
we be talking about why free software is better, but
also talk and reason about why *all* software should
be free.
  Any comments? Is my reasoning flawed in any aspect?

Thanks
-Krishna
To Reflect, to Inspire and to Empower
http://www.employees.org/~krishnap/

(1) http://fsf.org.in/philosophy/purpose.html
(2) http://fsf.org.in/
(3) http://fsf.org.in/graphics/FSFIndiaPoster.pdf



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