On 11/12/06, Aparna Appaiah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Piracy plays a major role here in India. People prefer hiring and copying pirated CDs of movies, songs etc. The same thing holds for Windoze as well. I believe awareness about FOSS will increase the moment people are made to pay for their copies of proprietary software.
dear aparna, I entirely agree with you but I just have an extention to this which slightly differs from your point of view. you say that people will realise the value of foss when they are made to pay for the non-free softwrae. right, well said! but why should people not pay for free software? I think free software must be charged quite well. firstly consider the following statement: "on 15th August 1947, India became free". does that mean that from that date, we get every thing in india without paying money? mukt or muft main farak hain. secondly, some gentelman on this thread I believe said that indians think that when some thing is offered for free, it has some thing wrong with it or is low on quality. sidesh was that you? I think it is perfectly right. so while people must realise that non-free softwares cost huge amount, they should also realise that free software must also be paied for although no one is forcing. it is the duty of programmers like me to charge for such software. and why not, more often than not free software is transparent and also of better quality and then if you aught to pay for some thing that takes away your freedom and give you all crap ware (e.g. windows), one should realise that free software developers also have a stomach to be filled. Krishnakant. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
