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>>>>> "Sandip" == Sandip Bhattacharya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Sandip> On Saturday, 24 Sep 2005 12:39, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sandip> wrote:
>> Call is social responsibility, call it a *"request from the
>> community"*
Sandip> Sounds more like dictating a social *duty*.
>> This, however, is from the view point of a community versus
>> corporate - where the community is the large amorphous mass
>> (whose collective resources base is large but individual
>> resource base disparately distributed) and the corporate are
>> the proprietory privateers (who have even larger private and
>> unshared resources) whose sole motive is profit, wherever it
>> may come from and whatever the cost. So is there a
>> responsibility with that freedom , to access code, to make
>> profits etc and my uneducated question is are they giving back
>> from where they have taken -
Sandip> Somehow there is this difference in attitude between Free
Sandip> software folks and the *BSD guys that keeps irritating me.
Sandip> Our main idea is to benefit the *community* right? By the
Sandip> community, for the community ... that is what we would
Sandip> want to say, right?
Sandip> So what is this antagonism towards people making money or
Sandip> people with wealth who are using this software? Why do we
Sandip> care? As long as the community keeps getting better and
Sandip> better over time, we have accomplished what we have to.
Sandip> When you use words like "responsibility" or "giving back",
Sandip> you *are* talking about strings attached to using Free
Sandip> software. If there are such strings, put them in the damn
Sandip> licence, otherwise nobody has the right to interpret the
Sandip> licence or its "spirit", whether they are Free or closed
Sandip> source software people.
I agree with Sandip: making money from FOSS is perfectly legitimate
(dammit, I do it myself!), and you cannot ask the user of a software
for anything beyond what the software license enjoins him/her to do.
However, we're digressing a bit from Pankaj's original questions,
which were purely about foss.in. foss.in claims to be a community
FOSS event. Pankaj, I and a number of other people whom I've talked
to seem to believe that both these adjectives are open to question.
1. Can you promote FOSS (note: this is different from ``Promote
Linux'') by promoting proprietary software?
The term FOSS espouses both the Free Software (freedom) and Open
Source (technological, commercial) views of software. If it were a
purely OSS (Open Source Software) or Linux event, there would be no
issues; however, the moment you bring the Free Software part of FOSS
into the picture you are implicitly acknowledging that the freedom
aspect of software is at least as important to you as the technical
aspects. In those circumstances promoting proprietary software
contradicts the stance that you claim to have taken.
2. Until one has a clear idea of how much money is going into whose
pockets, calling the event a community event is completely wrong.
Despite a lot of searching, I have not been able to get a clear idea
of the status of the User Group in Bangalore and Linux Bangalore --
are either of them community or do they represent a single entity --
which is the reason the foss.in promoters need to clarify and set the
minds of the community at rest as soon as possible. If that is not
done the only conclusion that I will be able to draw is that the event
is masquerading as a community event while actually being a means of
making money for a single entity.
I didn't see Atul Chitnis' response to my earlier queries in the
thread he had jumped into earlier. Either he's busy or he considers
these questions not worth answering. However, I believe that both
questions are important to the Indian Linux community and need to be
addressed.
Regards,
- -- Raju
- --
Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/
GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F
It is the mind that moves
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