[ILUG-BOM] my take on todays seminar (was: please explain Open source & free software)

[Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe]

Sagar wrote:

<a lot about his impressions on freedom>

Well, what do you guess, I agree with both - RMS and you!

What you are talking about is the freedom of choice, and the Free Software 
Movement is trying to promote the freedom of "use" (for lack of a better 
word) and it is just one way to establish the freedom of choice.

There are other ways too - like creating proprietary software that provide 
you with many options of doing something that you want to do. But that is 
possible only when the different softwares adhere to standards and promise 
to interoperate no matter what. But that doesn't seem to be happening very 
well, the basic reason being that all the companies and not just M$ are 
trying to lock people in on their way of doing things. By deliberately 
introducing incompatibilities, they restrict the freedom of choice.

This problem does not arise with free software, because here the user is 
king. The direction of software is not dictated by only a bunch of 
companies for whome the money is more important; instead it is controlled 
by the community at large. I always feel that the big companies are rarely 
involved in software development because they want to enhance the standard 
of living - they are here simply because it pays richly to be a software 
company, and they have a tendency to lose sight of the users' freedom, be 
it of any kind. But the free software movement does not have this hang-up.

>i hear him vehemently saying, requesting,
>pushing, forcing, psyching people into using only
>GNU/GPL'ed software.

That's a strong accusation to make ... I didn't see any vehemence in his 
speech - he just keeps encouraging people to use GPL'ed software.

I think he explicitly told people to think about it and make their own 
choice. And then he said if they decided to follow GPL, the should be very 
committed to it and also make sure that they let everyone know about their 
choice.

>Besides, if there was one thing I hated, it was
>bashing MS.

He didn't bash M$ just for the heck of it. He identified it as the 
immediate enemy. Again he explicitly mentioned that it was not just M$, it 
was the whole tendency of restricting use of software through license 
agreement.

SameerDS.


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