[FSF India] A draft letter focusing on freedom

[Khuzaima A. Lakdawala]

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Here's a draft of a letter which can be sent to the WB
government. With slight modifications, this letter can be used to
address any government planning a tie-up with any proprietary software
company.

Also, with slight modifications, this letter can be sent to editors of
various newspapers. Please note that most newspapers give priority to
printed letters either posted to or dropped at their offices.

- Khuzaima

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Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=draft-letter
Content-Description: Draft of a letter opposing the use of proprietary software

We, the members of the Free Software community in India, are deeply
distressed to learn about your Government's plans to base your
complete e-governance infrastructure on a Proprietary Software
company's products. The company in question is Microsoft (India), a
wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation based in Redmond,
USA.

The history of Microsoft has shown that it has nothing but contempt
for its customers' rights. When you become a Microsoft customer, you
surrender certain rights which are otherwise guaranteed by the
constitutions of most democracies of the world. Since the Government
has the duty to protect its citizens' constitutional rights, it would
be unthinkable that your Government is about to surrender some of
these rights to this multinational corporation.


We urge you to consider our arguments presented in the rest of this
letter in favour of adopting Free Software rather than Proprietary
Software for all your e-governance and in fact all your Information
Technology needs.

In the rest of this letter, we will be referring to the term
"Proprietary Software company" and "Microsoft" interchangeably, in the
hope of conveying that all the ills and demerits which plague entering
into a relationship with Microsoft also apply to any other Proprietary
Software company.


1. Proprietary Software companies take away your freedom to access and
modify the source code of the software or to modify the software in
any other manner. This is akin to an automobile manufacturer selling
you a car and telling you that it is illegal for you to open the
bonnet and look at the engine's inner working. And that it is illegal
for you to hire a private mechanic to service the engine. And that it
is illegal for you to modify the car in any other manner. Would your
Government buy a car with such restrictions?

When applied to computer software, the above restriction has some very
grave repercussions. In case of a flaw in the software (all computer
software has flaws; and even more so with Proprietary Software) you are
at the complete and total mercy of the Proprietary Software
manufacturer. You do not have the option of hiring software engineers
who may be capable of fixing the flaw. You do not even have the
guarantee that the flaw will be fixed. All you can do is wait for the
Proprietary Software manufacturer to fix the flaw (if at all) and
release an updated version at a time of its own choosing. And then you
have to pay for the entire updated version rather than just having to
pay the cost of fixing the flaw.

The other repercussion of the above restriction is related to
customisation. Proprietary Software companies take away your right to
customise the software as per your needs. It is unthinkable that a
project as vast as state-wide e-governance can be accomplished without
continuous customisation as per the changing needs of the Government
and the people. Although a Proprietary Software company may initially
supply you with a customised version of the software, you are again at
the mercy of the company for any subsequent customisations that may be
required. The Proprietary Software license forbids you to hire capable
software engineers to do the customisation. Instead, you must request
the company to provide the required customisation, offer large amounts
of money unrelated to the task at hand and *hope* that the company will
undertake the customisation work.

Thus, the restriction on access to source code and modification of the
software in any form, *permanently* binds you to the Proprietary
Software company in a completely one-sided business relationship which
has you at the complete mercy of the company. Considering that an
e-Governance infrastructure is a public asset and that the company
in this case, Microsoft, is a multinational corporation with profit as
its sole motive and with no respect for its customers' rights, the
above restrictions by themselves should make your proposed relationship
with the said corporation unacceptable.

Free Software does not have the above restrictions. All Free Software
comes with full access to source code and with full permissions to
modify or customise the software as you deem fit.


2. Proprietary Software companies have propagated the idea of software
as a material object. They completely disregard the fact that the
ability to access, copy and modify information is in fact the greatest
boon of the Information Technology age. As a bizarre consequence of
the Proprietary Software industry's idea of software as material
object, obsolete copyright laws, which predate the IT age, are applied
to software making it illegal to copy Proprietary Software. Besides
the obvious economic ramification of the Proprietary Software company
charging for each and every copy of the same piece of software, this
also criminalises the otherwise absolutely innocent task of making a
copy for another person's use. For instance, this makes a criminal out
of a person who wishes to help his neighbour by copying and giving him
a piece of software which he (the neighbour) needs for accomplishing
some task. Proprietary Software, in effect, takes away an individual's
freedom to do what he wishes to do with his software.

We strongly feel that the State should have nothing to do with a
business model which criminalises its citizens' innocent activities.

Free Software does not place any legal restrictions on copying and
distribution of software and, in fact, encourages the modification and
redistribution of software for the betterment of society.


3. Most Proprietary Software uses "patented" technology and
proprietary, non-standard, file and data formats. Some even forbid the
reverse-engineering of their file formats, let alone
reverse-engineering of the software itself. This is a grave risk with
many repercussions.

Proprietary file formats again put your Government at the total mercy
of the Proprietary Software company. This implies that the stored
data, which is otherwise the property of the Government, can only be
accessed by the said Proprietary Software. This is totally
unacceptable. At any given time, at the whims of the Proprietary
Software company, you can lose your right to access your own data.

Proprietary file and data formats are an impediment to the smooth and
efficient exchange of information. It places undue hurdles in the
process of exchanging information between diverse computing
environments.

Proprietary file formats are, by definition,
non-transparent. Transparency should be the bedrock of an e-Governance
infrastructure.

In contrast to Proprietary Software, Free Software only uses open
standards based file and data formats compatible across diverse
computing environments.


In addition to all the primary advantages of Free Software vis-a-vis
Proprietary Software listed above, there are many other *derived*
advantages such as security, reliability, stability and last but not
the least, affordability.


References for further information on Free Software:

http://www.fsf.org
http://www.fsf.org.in


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