Post by Dinesh ShahDear Depankar,
Post by dipankar dasThe people that are writing 'linux[sic]' can put forward a reason. And you are
just feeling? Why don't go to some 3-paise romance societies: they will
appreciate a lot your idiotic talk-smart stance.
No personal attacks please. And please stay on the topic.
It is easy to say 'sic' is sick. No admirable poetry this. This only
diverts the attention from a serious discussion.
Collect all your favourite free software applications and go to their
web sites and note down on what operating systems (and kernels) they
run on. It will strike us all to see that most of them (actually
almost all of them) are either ported, or were always ported to almost
all the systems (including the proprietary systems). And then check
what makes that portability possible? And then check again, what
makes this portability and distribution possible with software
freedom?
The application layer of our operating system can be regenerated on
top of other kernels and operating systems not only today but in
future too. You may want to get a glance of that from
http://www.debian.org/ports/, though this is not comprehensive enough.
I see no reason why I should think of dispensing what is not
dispensible, and see no reason why I cannot dispense what is
dispensable. And then, I see no reason why this activism to discredit
a creditable and indispensable contribution.
If the name 'Linux' was defined with the semantics of software
freedom, this name issues wouldn't have arisen. People would have
embraced it. On the contrary what we saw was active and vehement
dissociation from it. That is the reason why GNU finds it difficult
to exclusively talk of Linux, so they talk about it inclusively. GNU
project adopted Linux with open arms, and promoted it with as much
fervour as it did with other projects of their own. They acknowledged
it everywhere. So, the GNU community feels betrayed when the
community at large speaks excluding the name as well as their
ideology.
We wish this symbiosis is sustained as well as acknowledged. How else
to do that than GNU+Linux?
Regarding the idea of earning money: I am not repeating what is
always said that free software business model is service oriented.
But, what is often missed : It is unethical to make money by selling
what is not sellable. It is unethical to make what is eminently
copyable code into non-copyable code by technical means.
Proprietary software sells an artificial decoder and says it is their
service. They seperate code from decoder for doing this. Free
software says, artificial decoders' service cannot be equated with
human decoders', and hence we should not have a price for software
decoders. If we don't resist this temptation from business interests,
let me warn you, IT will invent more and more software services, and
will replace humans. That society will have only mega software
governments who will create software slaves (and rule them too) and
turn you and me also as slaves. In that society only a minority of us
will be part of that and the rest will be exploited.
Since the knowledge of how to create an artificial decoder is no
secret, for it is computer science, it cannot be made some industry's
exclusive property. The only way to keep it with people forever is to
do the way science is done. Computer science is no different from
other sciences.
So, if you make a useful CAD application, sell it. Give warrenty to
those who give you more money, to others give the applicatiion without
warrenty and you can still charge them minimally or if you wish give
it away gratis. You don't loose in this game, since your useful
application will make you immortal, and your warrenty service will
make you rich. You can see how ethical this plan is if you realize
that the current propietary software applications that are sold to
desktop users do not carry any warrenty (read the fine print), and
they are still asking you money. This is unjustififed. They do sell
warrenty to industries, not to you and me.
Also, counting who is majority and who is minority doesn't tell what
is good. The point is to change the numbers.
Nagarjuna