[FSF-India] GNU/Linux in Schools

[Pappu]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 07:24:03PM +0530, R Sai Kiran wrote:
> 
> I mean, some of the members of the list may have objections in including 
> stuff whivh is not 'GPL'ed. But, I  think that any Linux distro which 
> does'nt have, say, Pine, is BAD (just a personal opinion, I *love* Pine). 
The answer to this can be found in any of RMS's speech on free software.
People who have objections in including non GPL'ed stuff (me for eg.)
do have valid reason for that. The primary objective here is freedom 
and not utility or fancy features. As RMS says, If we set our eyes on
a goal, and work towards it, we will finally (may take a long time)
reach it. But on the way, if we see some temptations and change our
direction, we will never reach our goal (which is freedom). 

If we get addicted to at least one non free software, and can't live 
without it, all the free software can't help us. For eg: take the 
above quoted fact. One person can't avoid using a non free software
called pine even when there exists free software like mutt that provides
similar functionality. 

So how can we help some one out of the non free world by giving them
alternate non free software to use. Recomending pine instead of 
outlook express is simply switching wendors of non free software. This
will boil down to just anti microsoft sentiments and won't help 
any one achieve freedom. 

Please note that the goal of FSF and GNU project is not shutting down
microsoft. So if we consider that it is bad to use Internet explorer,
it is equally bad to use netscape communicator (not mozilla). 

> 	Yes...the main purpose is to spread the philosophy. But, we
> should'nt directly attack from the philosophy point. 
Why >>attack<< in the first place? If people don't understand the
word freedom, we can ask them to read their 10th std history text
books. I once again stress that the mission is not to convert all
windows users to GNU/Linux users. The mission is to tell people
about FREE software and help them to start using FREE software.

bye,
pappu.