[Fsf-friends] An Ethical Question.

[Krishna Pagadala]

Short answer. Yes. As long as we remember that the end
goal is Freedom, co-operation, sharing  and community.

Long answer.
Ethics is not black and white. In this case, the most
important question is By providing such binaries, are
the solution providers encouraging participation in
the FOSS ecosystem. OR are they encouraging
participation in the propritary ecosystem.

In this case it seems to me that the GNU/Linux
solution providers are encouraging adoption of FOSS
ecosystem.

"And then you begin to experience what I know people
are experiencing here and I certainly see in the
States. Which is once you have moved somebody from IE
to Firefox for security reasons, and from Word to Open
Office for economic reasons. It then turns out that
they are living in a free software environment, and
you come along one day, and remove the operating
system and put a new one underneath and they don't
even notice that its happened. So that the gradient of
fear of technological change, which was the real
guarantor of the monopolies market power is being
overcome."
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lecture_at_Multimedia_institute_MAMA/CARNet

http://mod.carnet.hr/hr/carnet/drustvo_znanja/eben_moglen.wmv
The video is unfortunately in proprietary format, can
somebody change it to open format and publish the
same.
 

Years from now, OpenOffice will be seen as the most
important contibution to the FOSS world. Because it
encourages participation in the FOSS ecosystem more
than any other application (yes including mozilla).

-Krishna




--- cvr3 at river-valley.org wrote:

> A specific question which many Linux solution
> providers keep asking me.
> 
> The question relates to the client side applications
> NOT the server.
> 
> When Linux business solution providers go to Govt.
> organisations they
> are confronted with the bleak scenario of all the
> systems being under
> M$. Since their solutions are "standalone" and built
> with Linux libraries
> such as GTK, QT etc. they need invariably Linux OS.
> Since the
> organisations are reluctant to change their existing
> M$ platform just to
> accommodate their solutions (even though they liked
> it) they are loosing
> that business. What I am asking is that under these
> circumstances is it
> ethically and morally correct for them to create M$
> binaries of their
> solution using windows versions of GTK and QT
> libraries and install them
> on the M$ platform, and there by getting the
> business order.
> 
> Already FSF is releasing all their libraries such as
> gcc, gtk etc for M$ too.
> 
> Please think as if you are a business man providing
> free software
> solutions to make money to run a free software
> business.
> 
> --
> Rajagopal CV
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Fsf-friends mailing list
> Fsf-friends at mm.gnu.org.in
> http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends
> 


=====================================
Misinterpreting Copyright by Richard Stallman http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html
"Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought by Eben Moglen
http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.html                                 




























































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