[Fsf-india] Freedom, affordable costs

[v sasikumar]

I think there are two points all of us have to keep in mind: one, that 
everything is not black and white, and two, that we all make compromises all 
the time. In questions like this, I am not sure there can be definite, 
correct answers, only opinions. Organisations will have to adopt either the 
majority opinion or that of a great leader, if there is one. Since the former 
is more acceptable in a democratic society, the only way is to make mistakes 
(not deliberately!) and learn from them.

The freedoms offered by FS have several implications and low cost is 
certainly one of them. There is no point in hiding this fact. Another is the 
freedom to use one purchased package on all the machines in your 
organisation, without being afraid of being penalised. Either of these  
aspects can be attractive to a given individual, apart from the other 
freedoms. In other words, why one chooses FS over PS could be different from 
person to person.

If the objective of FSF is to propagate the concept of freedom in software, 
then it has to get more people attracted towards FS. However, I am not sure 
that we are going to eradicate PS from the face of the earth, since there 
certainly are many people who are not much bothered about the ideology, and 
would rather pay a good price to get the kind of thing they need, in a 
situation where FS and PS are in open competition. The best we can hope to 
achieve is to make FS widely popular and at least force the PS companies to 
recognise it as a formidable competitor.

Too much of insistence on using only free software could also, I feel, be 
counterproductive. In my case, for instance, I use Lyx, which is not free. 
The only alternative before me is to go back to PS, since I find that the 
kword I have is not able to meet my needs, and I just do not have the time to 
learn TeX. So should I use Lyx? I think I better use Lyx rather than go back 
to MS Word or Lotus WordPro. This "is" a compromise. But is this compromise 
not better than the alternative? Do not all of us make such compromises since 
the alternative is worse?

V. Sasi Kumar