You may have heard about the ടിയനന്മെന് സ്ക്വയര് massacre of late 1980s. But do you know that most of the youngest generation of that country is almost completely unaware of such an incident? You also know that that country is aggressively more expansionist than ours. Yet, don't you find it odd that while the separatist movement in our country takes centre stage in the world, we don't even hear a whisper from that country? Their psyche is so actively manipulated by the regime that its citizens have resigned to themselves. Blocking a few websites is the least of their worries- if they are even concerned.
The point I am making is, we sure can protest violation of freedom anywhere in the world. But there are places where even the right to express or even to live don't exist. Software freedom matters only to people who live out their fantasies in rare peaceful corners of the world. The best we can do for the rest is to whine for them. But more often than not, it ends up as a battle of ideologies among ourselves. This ofcourse is not to dissuade you from expressing your thoughts in this forum. But a recent bad habit I am seeing in the forum is people suddenly becoming ill tempered when discussing topics not related to free software - even on matters we actually agree! Remember the M$ bribe thread? Any topic is worth discussing as long as members discuss it dispassionately, other than for practical purposes. I actually love discussing topics like these, but I am actually scared of people blowing their head off on such issues. Many of the members of this group are people who I know personally. And these threads are the place where we interact. It is painful to see such flaring emotions in a place like this. I usually hate writing damping messages like this- but sometimes necessary to calm people down, and sometimes to somehow stop flame wars. I hope you understand- I really hate to see the mods being called to intervene again. I would love to see this discussion continued, but only if there is certainty that this won't degrade into another flame war. Regards, Gokul Das On Jul 10, 8:22 pm, Jikku Jose <jikkuj...@gmail.com> wrote: > In my perspective it is the most important freedom of a person that is being > breached in China !! And I think that the seriousness of the issue will not > be concieved better than a genuine open source enthusiast. And also in my > opinion such a discussion won't by any means be diluting the purpose of the > forum. > > I wanted to address this issue in this forum to point out something: .. Even > thought such pathetic rules are being enacted to such a wide population we > (remaining part of the world) are not able to do "ANYTHING", so isn't it > perfectly possible to make a rule by some stupid government like China that > its citizen's can only use a particular technology/OS for instance? [And > shouldn't we be able to do something about it?] > > 2009/7/10 Visakh <gokulda...@gmail.com> > > > > > Hi, > > > On Jul 10, 6:55 pm, Jikku Jose <jikkuj...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > But somehow I thought most of the users in the group would like to > > discuss > > > about this issue !! And as Mr. Santhosh mentioned this about freedom .. > > > which I think is the essence of open source ! > > > Well, There is nothing we can do about it, is there? Except may be, > > provide some proxies. But by now, the chinese would have taken care of > > that as well. > > > At any rate, none of it is related to free software or its > > philosophies - rather, it is about civil rights. Is there any point in > > continuing this? Remember that even free multimedia (creative commons) > > and open hardware doesn't come under free s/w philosophy. > > > Regards, > > Gokul Das --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ "Freedom is the only law". "Freedom Unplugged" http://www.ilug-tvm.org You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ilug-tvm" group. To post to this group, send email to ilug-tvm@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to ilug-tvm-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For details visit the website: www.ilug-tvm.org or the google group page: http://groups.google.com/group/ilug-tvm?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
