[FSF-India] Misrepresentation

[Radhakrishnan CV]

I would like to invite your attention to the article at

  http://www.freeos.com/articles/4259/

which is titled "The Open Source Guru is going to India", authored
by KG Kumar.

This article raised mixed reaction among all of us, because we cant
help believe that KG will title the article in this fashion, for, he
is well aware of the philosophical differences between the Free
Software and Open Source movements.

And a careful reading down the article where KG says:

<quote>
While granting the user these freedoms, the GNU GPL defends them by
saying that no one is allowed to take them away from anyone else.
Any published program, which incorporates all or a substantial part
of a GPL-covered program, must itself be released under the GNU GPL.
The GPL ensures that no person or community can privatize the
community's free software.
</quote>

makes it clear that KG is well aware of the meaning of freedom as
envisioned by FSF.

Everyone knows that Open Source movement permits to privatize the
software released under the Open Source licence. This is a major
difference between the two movements and obviously Richard Stallman
doesn't agree with the Open Source movement's permissiveness to
close the code at any point of time. You can now imagine the extent
of falsification by calling Richard Stallman as the "Open Source
Guru".

Today, KG was at pains to explain his position in the FSF-India
mailing list, when many subscribers pointed this anomaly in the
article title.  Indeed, KG told us that his title was "An Indian
avatar for the Free Software Foundation", which was changed to the
present one by your editors.

You will appreciate that doubts have been raised about the
intellectual honesty and integrity of KG and more importantly,
confusion existing now about the two movements has been perpetuated
in the minds of the reading public. We have been painstakingly
clarifying the philosophical positions of FSF wherever we have a
chance to do so.

The action of your editors therefore, deserve correction (they might
have innocently done without recourse to the subtle differences
between the philosophies or might have been carried away by youthful
journalistic tantrums), a brief note in the article will be of great
help to clarify the mishap.

With best regards,

-- 
Radhakrishnan