[Fsf-india] IT Policy Govt of Kerala

[ramakrishnan]

> as the one which comes with proprietary software, he is not going to
> buy it. The *problem* is he is not even *aware* of the freedoms being
> denied. Our foremost task should be to educate him about the
> *existence* of these freedoms instead of presuming at the outset that
> it is "impossible" to try.

To add a minor but important point to this para, I would like to quote the story of elephant
that Tony Stanco recently quoted:

A visitor to the circus once notice that a huge elephant was chained by 
the leg to a short spike in the ground.

He couldn’t understand how that little spike and weak chain could 
control such a huge elephant. 

Surely, he thought, if that elephant wanted to, it could easily break 
free.

Perplexed, he asked the elephant’s trainer, why the elephant just didn’t 
break away.

And the trainer said, the elephant doesn’t know any better. It doesn’t 
know it can easily break free.

And that is because when the elephant was very small, they chained the 
elephant up the very same way. 

At that time, the little elephant tried and tried, but the chain and the 
spike were strong enough to control him.

After a while he got tired of testing the chain and spike and just 
stopped forever.

So, later when the elephant is fully grown and could easily break free, 
he just never tries.

He has been trained to not break free. And at that point, the little chain on 
his leg is all that’s needed.

--
Ramakrishnan M  <rkrishnan@debian.org> | http://people.debian.org/~rkrishnan/