[Fsf-friends] Re: [ILUG-BOM] Tally and GNU/Linux

[Nagarjuna G.]

On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 03:28:51PM +0530, Philip Tellis wrote:
> Sometime Today, NG cobbled together some glyphs to say:
> 
> Finally, I don't believe in boycotting distros that provide non-free
> software.  That would be just as fascist as boycotting all free software
> as viral.  Each person is intelligent enough to make their own choice.
> Our job as free software advocates is to educate people and not to force
> them to do our bidding.  If someone chooses to make the wrong choices,
> we have to think about whether we want him on our side or not.
> 

when we ask someone to boycott, we dont force with a gun point.  we
inform them of the dangers and campaign.  Ultimately,  it left to
the users.  When Mahatma called for boycotting British goods, it was
an expression of protest.  If free software community doesnt protest,
freedom is never possible.  This is a relentless job, because there is
always someone who wants to take away our freedom.  A protest will
make the distribution company think twice before signing agreements
with proprietary companies. 

My worry with Tally is that unlike even the proprietary databases like
Oracle, (where the data is always available for you to take out of it,
since the data is encoded in a standard), the data in Tally is
entirely in a private form.  I think that no country should let any
company do business if export to an openstandard is not possible.
This is a very serious issue.  Who else will take notice of this and
alert the users if not lists of this kind?  Just informing people is
not enough, we need to generate public opinion.  Protest is one form
of doing this.

Nagarjuna