2007/3/12, Kenneth Gonsalves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
when government writes software with our money, they should be forced to release it under a f/oss license - that is my contention. They havent.
As long as the user of the software (who bought it or paid for the development) have the basic freedoms, it is Free Software. This is different for a service, like google's services. When google uses Free Software to offer a service it Google who are entitled to the Freedoms and not the users of Google service. Now there is Affero GPL ( http://www.affero.org/oagpl.html ) which says if the software is available for public use then the source code should be avilable to its users. In GPL version 3 there is an option for developers to turn this on. Are you supporting this? In the #2 the software is developed for Government of Kerala and if they have all the Freedoms then it is Free Software.
> >> the opinion that the authors of the PDF in question have tried to >> give an impression that free software is flourishing in the state. >
And I think that is correct as well.
and why werent the licenses specified?
These are all custom software and I guess the Government of Kerala might be owning the copyright (at least that happens in many of the services companies, the companies assign copyright to clients).
why didnt the authors investigate this?
Ask them.
Isnt it practically the sole objective of FSF to concern itself with software licenses?
are you kidding? http://www.fsf.org/about I didn't see it mentioned there.
I dont move in such exalted circles, but somehow i got the impression that he was interested in seeing that all software is shared - I could be wrong
Every computer user should be Free to use, change, and share the software. In this case the user is Government of Kerala and if they have these Freedoms then it is Free Software. Every users is Free to share but not required to share. Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign
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