[FSF India] Freedom to Gaurd my back & to advise others to Gaurd thiers

[Vivekananda Prabhu]

Hi,

This is further to my posting on "OS is as dangerous
as MS" & subsequent postings.

I am not pressing for a world-wide "Prevention of
Non-GPL licences" law, nor am I asking for a law to
prevent people from leaving their doors open when they
go out or to prevent people to commit suicide

My intention is just to warn others who may not
understand the full implications of their decisions to
use MPL/BSD & variants

If any licence is OK & the basic freedom, why do "Open
Source" people cry fowl when MS uses this "Freedom" to
publish Shared Source/Closed Source software? Aren't
they breaching MS "Freedom" to do so?

I am not against people making money.But what these
"Open Source" guys say is "It is alright if VA,
ArsDigita, Caldera make money by writing closed
source. But it is wrong if MS does so". If this is not
plain hipocrisy what else is?

BSD was no lesser technolgically than Linux in it's
time. It gave us TCP/IP, Kerberos & what not. But why
did it remain an under dog to it's offsprings Solaris,
SCO etc.?

Because of it's weak licence Sun, SCO etc. could
easily steal any new technology from it without
contributing their innovations back to it. So BSD
always lagged behind these proprietary companies. It
also lead these companies to develop incompatible
proprietory features which ultimately fragmented Unix
market & gave a lee-way for MS to capture the Server
market.

If Linux had been released under BSD licence it would
have met the same fate as BSD for all the technical
superiority of Linux for the very same reasons.

I am not a "GPL zealot" or "GPL fundamentalist". I
also don't hang RMS photo in my study room. Give me
any licence that gives me same protection as GPL does
(legally) & I have no qualms in using it. 

It could always be argued that GPL is un-enforcable in
India. Then there is also nothing to prevent people
from modifying their copy of MS MFC develop software &
sell it. Just because 10 robberies happen in the city
daily despite all precautions & secuity, I am not
going to leave my front door open when I go out.

If making money is the only issue the average computer
user won't give a damn shit whether MS, VA or Red Hat
makes it. If cost is the only issue he/she will not
use Linux when he/she can get pirated copy of MS
software for same price (which he percieves to be more
user-friendly whether someone agrees or not). If
technology is the only issue it doesn't matter to 80%
of computer users who use MS Word to type letters & MS
Excel to manage finances.If security is the only issue
Apache was broken into recently (go read the article
in their web site).

What matters to me is the Freedom to modify the
software in anyway I want without limiting the choice
of other applications available to me (I or anybody
else how ever brilliant cannot write every concievable
software even if they write all thier life time). I
want source code to all these apps so that I can
customize them.For that I want my favourite Free
software to have a significant market share. I don't
just want this freedom now, I want it for all
posterity. I don't want it to fragment or be an under
dog to proprietory software & lose it's market share.
That is why I recommend GPL

After reading my posting if someone decides to use
MPL/BSD or MS shared source licence or Closed Source
licence I don't give a damn. I also don't give a damn
if someone decides to leave thier front door open or
decide to commit suicide

But please don't question my Freedom of speech to warn
others to gaurd thier back by branding me as a GPL
zealot

Regards,
Vivek




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