[Fsf-friends] [ifsa] The Free Software hardliner, the corporation, and the shotgun wedding

Praveen A pravi.a at gmail.com
Tue Jan 22 11:33:30 IST 2008


2008/1/21, Ringo Kamens <2600denver at gmail.com>:
> I don't think it's an issue of strategy or stages. Purely speaking, if
> we sacrifice our ideals then we will accomplish our goals faster. For
> instance, it would take much less effort for somebody who wants an
> anarchist or socialist revolution to go in and kill every important
> member of government. The problem is that they are sacrificing their
> values. If somebody really wants equality, respect, etc. then they
> can't go around doing violent acts. What happens after the government
> collapses? The masses haven't learned from the past and the new
> government will be just as bad as the previous one. If a revolution is
> caused by mass participation, the end result lasts longer and is
> better. This is the same with free software. If you say that closed
> source software is exploitive, if you say that it is wrong, then don't
> use it. Period. I say capitalism is wrong yet I buy some things. It's
> an issue of survival, but that same argument can't really be applied
> to your choice of software.
> Comrade Ringo Kamens

Excellent points Ringo. Thanks for sharing this.

You can look at a glimpse of how we did it in Kerala what result we
got here http://www.fsdaily.com/Beginner/Teachers_becoming_Free_Software_advocates_as_GNU_Linux_finds_its_perfect_home_in_Keralas_schools#comment-2413

Teachers are now advocates of Free Software, they are ready for
sacrifices for Freedom because they are taught to value Freedom over
convenience. The case in point is about printer drivers, many of the
commonly used printers (for example canon ip1000) does not have a Free
driver but one teacher responded to it like this,

"Of course there is some problems in Printer Driver but it can be
solved in the new versions"

If we want Freedom and software that works at the same time, you can't
reach there by starting at non-free software. But if you insist on
freedom you will get it. See what happened with java and flash for
example. We said gratis is not enough, we need libre and now we have
those. Instead if we wer content with non-free but gratis java and
flash we would not have the Free tools now. Same can be said about the
graphics drivers. When companies like Dell start offering Intel
graphics card because they work out of the box with Free Software
NVIDIA and ATI will feel the heat and would follow. ATI already
released their specs for some graphics cards.

Cheers
Praveen
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