krishnakant Mane wrote: > secondly there are so many commertial companies who take up corporate > social responsibilities and under that typical thing they do is to > provide computers to schools which they adopt. > I will give one example. > mahendra and mahendra has adopted 25 schools for handicap and 40 usual > schools in small towns. and I am very happy to inform the list that I > being their adviser have got them convinced to *only * use free > software and they have already started to implement it for the > handicap schools in nagpur and mumbai and rurki. and they have > already found it satisfactory. >
That is great. However I feel their decision to use Libre software may have to do more with costs than freedom. They must have saved lakhs of donor rupees on legal OSs and Office suites. (25+40) * 10 computers per school = 650 computers. 650 * Rs. 12,000 = 78 Lakhs. Just an estimate. Anyway it is a good thing. > such things can be made to happen. > the moral of the story is that it is not our responsibility to provide > infrastructure, it is our responsibility to show the way to freedom > and make people understand the truth. > The point I was making is about Microsoft spending crores of rupees to donate computers to rural people and the opposition to this initiative. In poor countries it is a dicey situation where help is pouring in but one group does not want it to happen ( For good reasons of course ). And it is not drug money or some blood stained wealth thats pouring in. For the general public it is just a software giant doing its bit for society. In poor regions, such initiatives are difficult to oppose unless there is an alternative arrangement possible. My choice would be that the Govt. makes it mandatory for all hardware donations to be independent of riders on software that can be installed on them. Legal experts could site some clause about not allowing MRTP in education. Last time we met, Nagarjuna had mentioned about school syllabus having to be independent of brand identities. Then let the donors (anyone) decide whether they can operate under this rule or want to back out. That will also help the public get a better understanding of the benefactors. As an organization, FSF India could prod the Govt. into making this rule. We can write a letter with all our signatures and send it to the PM and other Ministries. We could all meet at HBCSE to sign this letter. -- Regards, Rony. GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
