Dear Friends,
I have been noticing the thread for some time and I wish to
speak a bit. In the beginning let me ask for an apology : I am a
Lecturer, so given the opportunity to speak takes me well past the time
barriers, so please be patient enough in this v-e-r-y v-e-r-y long mail.
I have many things to say.
1. The first point to say is : nothing can be obtained FREE. This is not
a custom of these days : if one looks through the pages of history then
one has ample evidences of this. You HAVE to spend SOMETHING to get
SOMETHING, else get back to the bush and starve to death.
Why shall membership fees retard members ? Do they come here
because it is really FREE ? I hope the LUG was formed with the following
as one of its objectives : to make it possible for some like minded
people to come in and share their views, possibly solve some problems of
common interest and make others know about it. If it is so then why does
a small amount of membership fees deter these like minded people to come
forward, especially when it is well known that however novel our
intentions may be, to get hand to resources (be it books, journals, CDs
etc) one has to spend money ? In the past such patronage was given by
the king and thus apparently it was possible to have such meets without,
quite apparently, making them who meet to bother about these mundane
details. But who shall bother if the kings are removed AND the meets are
to be organized ? Obviously, those who meet. And in this case, naturally
since their intentions are NOVEL, they shall arrange, for once and for
all, some NICE algorithm so that not with MUCH FRAY the meets may be
arranged without any hassle and their intentions to meet are fulfilled.
Fine, so much so, for those who are interested. But how do these
people propagate their ideas ? In this respect, let me make it clear
that it is pointless to meet on a common frame and discuss some issues
without making any effort to propagate the fruits of the meet. The best
test of an idea is in its propagation and the conversion to disciples.
Earlier men acknowledged this and no one ever thought of this as kind of
"politics"; but in this fray of affairs we are often misled to this
conclusion. To meet, to propagate is the only ideal of a living being;
to stand still is the mark of death.
Now, without enough collected resources they cannot reach out to
others to convince them of the band that they have been practicing so
long. And when the question of sharing comes, especially to those who
are new and needs to be converted before some REAL sharing can be done,
many more problems crop up, and one major of them is : what if the
"guinea pig" turned out to be a vandalist ? To avoid this issue a
natural check (especially, in the absence of the mighty king patronizing
the effort and having a vigilant eye on such "vandalist" "guinea pigs")
has to be given : let only the "guinea pig" have "restricted access" to
the resources at his own cost, which is obviously now called MEMBERSHIP
FEE. The group gets a little assured by this restriction as well as gets
benefitted, at least financially, to keep up with its collection of more
and more resources so as to make both (the process of sharing and surer
conversion) much more effective. Thus membership fees serve dual purpose
: one, saves the interest of a group in accessing sharable resources to
share and propagate and two, to get a guard against people who can come
in with intentions conflicting with those of the group. I hope these two
are NOT quite malicious.
2. Why should a third party, who has solely opened up a shop to sell,
get away with his profit in the name of a LUG, and why should the
members of a LUG impose such restrictions or even approach such third
parties with such peculiar requests ? I do not see this to be connected
in any way with the interests of a LUG. If on the other hand the third
party is willing enough then as a member of the same LUG we can be
grateful (YES, I WISH TO USE THE WORD : GRATEFUL) to him for his
kindness and in the process also see to it that in giving us such
gratuity the third party does not repent (in fact, gratification does
not end with its acknowledgement, it is only a part, it is incomplete if
the act to which we are grateful are not safeguarded against malicious
misuse). In our terms this translates to ensuring the third party of
exactly the members of the LUG and thereby guard him off those who can
take cover under this.
But this safeguard calls for an excessive amount of
paraphernalia and care and the introduction of which brings in therefore
another reason to justify the membership fees to ensure such a care
also.
3. The idea of OSS is hardly related with FREE; in fact it is an
unfortunate identification. It basically stands for the following
driving idea : knowledge is free (in the sense that everybody should
have easy access to it) and in its essence, therefore, should be easily
permeable to every layer. Thus knowledge should not and cannot be under
the clutches of such policies as copyright which retain a closure to the
access. (Please correct me friends if this is not the essence behind all
those like OSS/GPL etc; actually this is reflected in most other
branches of pure knowledge like mathematics, physics etc, and there are
many great minds in this revolution. All of them, unknowingly, have
helped to emerge a new generic philosophy throughout the world One may
refer to the stiff opposition of independent elite groups from Europe
and America against the Gatt resolution. If one is patient enough, let
me state that a reference to the Gita over here on knowledge, its kinds,
nature, propagation and usage shall not be too much out of the way.)
If this is so, then OSS does not demand propagation at the cost
of starvation. "easy access" does not definitely mean FREE ACCESS. but
it surely means a nice way to make the resources available to those
interested, at not too much involving costs.
In all these terms therefore, I do not think why a membership
fee, possibly proportional to the individual resources, should be a
deterring factor or a contradicting factor to this LUG.
Partha Pratim Ghosh
Rev. Goreaux Centre for Higher Mathematics
Department of Mathematics
St. Xavier's College
30 Park Street
Calcutta 700016
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