Re: [LI] Message from RMS.

[Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Dec 04, 1999 at 04:46:46PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>  Arun> It doesn't work that way in practice - because of selfishness.
> 
>         Really? So there is no code being given away? there is no fee
>  OS? There are no free CD's given away at trade shows and to LUGs?
>  Does not work that way in practice? I must be living in an
>  impractical world ;-)
> 

My statements still hold good. Free OSes make up a miniscule percentage
of the OSes in use. Even in the wettest dreams of Linus Torvalds and
Bob Young, they're not gunning for more than 15% of the market.

That's analogous to the amount of money I earn and the amount I donate.

>  Arun> If I have Rs 5 in my pocket, I'll keep it there so that it is
>  Arun> accessible only to me, as opposed to making it freely available
>  Arun> to someone who is needier than me, to whom the value of Rs 5 is
>  Arun> more than it is to me. Effectively an example of Raj's
>  Arun> "increasing the wealth" argument.
> 
>  Arun> However, when the difference in needs crosses a threshold,
>  Arun> philanthropy kicks in and sidelines selfishness. Lots of people
>  Arun> contributed to the Orissa disaster fund for example.
> 
>         I think there is a subtle contradiction here. 
>

Which is ?
 
>  Arun> You may point out that I'm talking more about money here and not
>  Arun> freedom and accessibility. But in practice, they're so interrelated
>  Arun> that you can't talk about one without the other. There are several
>  Arun> examples of making lots of money, by denying certain freedoms.
> 
>         I think the free software movement has proved this thesis incorrect.
> 

What "movement" ? I repeat a quote from an earlier posting on this list

Here is an interesting thought from a FreeBSD Vs Linux thread
on the net:

> Has anyone considered that now might be the time to stop associating
> ourselves with the open source "movement" -- or any movement, for that
> matter, and simply present ourselves as a viable peer of the commercial
> operating systems? Presenting ourselves as the production refinement of
> the research that finished in the 80's at Berkley seems a much better
> (and salable) spin than presenting ourselves as 'more open' than Linux
> or squabbling over licensing and the desktop.


>         Tell me again why I spend about 25hours a week on Debian,
>  instead of billing more hours at my hourly rate (it is not as if I
>  can't get the work). 
> 
>         Tell the people whose work we all use daily who wrote the code
>  under DFSG free licences why all that is so very impractical.

Perhaps you got indoctrinated with all the GNU politics from RMS. I was
at some point too - and I don't consider myself particularly gullible.

I use free software because it is convenient and does what I want. It
may not be the best thing around - but it's cheap, I can learn from it
and I can modify it to suit my needs.

I don't have any greater agenda or a religious belief that this is going
to change the world. And I don't spend 25 hours a week coding for any
operating system - I just do it as a hobby. I sniff out for interesting
things and some times, I spend considerable amounts of time doing something
(to the extent that my folks start screaming at me), not because I want
to change the world, kill Microsoft or wipe out closed source software,
but because I enjoy it.

	-Arun