[Fsf-friends] The Charles Assisi article

Vihan Pandey vihanpandey@[EMAIL-PROTECTED]
Sat Sep 2 17:00:10 IST 2006


i totally agree with Nagarjuna, in fact i think all of us ought to send a
piece of our minds to toieditorial at timesgroup.com .

This is what i've sent them :

==================================================

Hello,
          This is with reference to Charles Assisi's article on the 31st
August, 2006 titled "No free lunches for me" in the Business and Technology
section.

I don't think Mr Assisi has understood anything about the Free Software
philosophy at all. He call's himself a capitalist but forgets that one of
the cornerstones of capitalism is a free market with no place for monopoly.
Every individual player has a right to enter the market and the price and
quality of their goods and/or services offered and/or rendered along with
market conditions decides the success of a player. Any attempt to over ride
this simple rule is unethical and illegal(remember "certain" anti trust
cases).

The Free Software philosophy gives such a transparent and fool proof
business model wherein one has the required freedom in software usage,
modification and re-distribution. It is true that you cannot make as much
money via sales alone in Free Software, however the service, support,
customisation, integration, and solution providing is the place where people
profit from. Moreover these are generally bundled with sales to give a
"comprehensive solution". This is the trend all over the world at this time.
Thus you have ethics and profit existing in a natural harmony.

Mt Assisi also mentions "When somebody tinkers with it two things happen.
Firstly while the kernel may be mine, what finally emerges may not be mine,
what finally emerges may not necessarily be mine. In fact it may turn out to
be a highly evolved version of what I had originally thought up. The
collective is always better than the individual. But by thinking something
up and offering it to the collective to improve upon, I stand to loose my
lively hood"

The Free Software philosophy respects copyrite. Any work(software,
documentation, or even artwork) done is always credited to its original
author. Any successive revisions made by others are credited as well. The
fact remains that the world knows who the original author(s) is and
acknowledges that person(s). That would essentially

To quote an example, Einstein's work on relativity changed the way we look
at classical physics(attributed to Newton's work). Did that make Newton look
like a looser? On the contrary people still admire Newton's work. Einstein
himself acknowledged the fact that without Newton's work on Mechanics and
Calculus there wouldn't have been a Special or General Theory of Relativity.
Another irony here is that Calculus itself has been first traced as long as
Archimedes(200 B.C), and Madhava of Sangamagrama(1300's) later improved and
further researched by Issac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and several
others.

To be a little brash, it seems pretty unlikely that if these genius' existed
around the same time they would be "loosing their lively hood".

Oh yes, and if he does want his software tinkered with or fixed but doesn't
want to do it himself, he can hire a Free Software developer to do it for
him for a fee. If he doesn't have the money he could get some people(who
also have the same requirement) together in a community and then pay the
developer for this community software. This is exactly what Free Software
stands for, a community of people collaborating and co-operating to achieve
the greater good.

I do agree with him that we live in a cynical world and most people want to
be selfish out of choice or circumstance. But encouraging that attitude is
not going to make things better, which is exactly what Mr Assisi is doing
here.

In today's world the only way we can exist is by some direct or indirect
dependence on others. Hence a community spirit is what is needed to foster
this. Free Software gives this ideal. To share ideas, jokes, poetry,
feelings is that not the basis of us interacting with one another at all?
The fact it also becomes implicitly true for sharing knowledge as a whole
and that is the essence of being human.

Regards,

- vihan

================================================


More information about the Fsf-friends mailing list