Hello,
On Mon, 09 Jun 2008, Sarad AV wrote:
> they have the numbers. that puts them right where they want. they
> can dictate now.
The tyranny of the majority! :-)
> As long as we don't have the numbers, what we say
> is only a ideology. there isn't much we can do about it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is certainly not true. Since there is a mukta O/S and a mukta
network to connect to we do have a choice and we can exercise it.
> What are we going to do about? what do you propose?
Answer:
>> That is, unless you regularly backup all _your_ data from
>> gmail to a local disk.
You can at least do this. Backup your data. It _is_ your data and
external USB storage is not too expensive. Incremental backup does
not use too much bandwidth. Write some pipe or plugin to do this and
make it a floss project.
> I don't think it would be a good move from google's side. if google
> screws everyone, everyone screws google. but i don't know how
> business can work and it may turn in their favor.
To violate freedom, Google or any other "public service" provider does
not need to turn the screws on everyone; they need to do it only to a
few people. Let me explain with examples.
1. There are many more MS users (at least one order of magnitude) who
exchange documents and e-mail than non-MS users. So MS _can_ and
_does_ make life difficult for all non-MS users by using proprietary
and undocumented formats for documents. Don't even get me started on
"IE-only" web sites!
2. Blu-ray is a technology currently not supported (AFAIK) on FLOSS
platforms. Suppose that data distributors tomorrow decided to support
only Blu-ray since _most_ users do not use FLOSS?
In both cases, the majority of users are not affected. Only the
"eccentric few"! So it is important that we support freedom for
_everyone_, not just for the majority of users.
Some other solutions:
A. It is possible to setup pooled community servers and services. I read
about a group called SAGE (Australian System Administrator's
Group?)[1] which does this.
B. Avoid monopolies. If your friend uses Gmail then insist on using
Yahoo! and complain loudly if the two services do not co-operate.
More choice is mostly better!
Other people on this list might come up with more suggestions.
Regards,
Kapil.
[1] Not to be confused with the free mathematical computation package
called SAGE.
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