[Fsf-friends] Hall of Shame

Sandip Bhattacharya sandip@[EMAIL-PROTECTED]
Mon Mar 12 14:13:59 IST 2007


> 
> Even if these acts are shameful, I still do not support the "Hall of Shame" rhetoric, but if the Govt Departments are working for Public they must open their code using General Public License. 
> 

You misunderstand the Hall of Shame "rhetoric". It is not about which
site uses what technology to provider services. HoS is about not
discriminating against users of these services. Critical websites like
governments should be accessible by all, including users of FOSS
software. That is all about our "limited" mission.

Whether a government site should proprietary technology or FOSS software
is a different debate, and is not related to the Hall of shame effort.

BTW, I personally believe that FOSS software is not everything. You need
to have FOSS content also. So even if we have FOSS software which is
good, but not FOSS education material, what good would the software be
to an education drive? Look around the education area, you would be a
huge amount of teaching material already in place for these proprietary
software. I don't blame the education drive too much right now for their
decision. They can't help their students *now* by deploying FOSS and
waiting for years for the teaching material to appear. The good thing is
that there are many localized drives in India who are developing good
teaching material. I believe Kerala was a pioneer in it, but I don't
have any references to it right now. Once we have a worth 10+2 content
in place, it would be difficult for any government to justify ignoring  it.

- Sandip



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