On Thursday 26 Mar 2009, T Jayarajan wrote: > JTD wrote: > > Wrong. Foss does not aim to take somebody's work and make it > public. > > > Foss aims to let developers make their work available to the > > public while retaining full rights for the developer. > > And for the record the state is by no means the public. > > For communists also, state is only an apparatus for oppression. No > difference, even when the communists are in power! > But I can't figure our the difference in 'taking' or 'allowing' the > software to be public. The aim is to make it 'public', so not much > difference.
Huge difference: taking = someone else picking up my stuff and handing over to Ratan Tata Giving = me selling to Ratan Tata > On 'retaining full rights for the developer': > Think of a developer, who works for a proprietary software firm. > Does he get any rights on the software he produces other than the > wage? Mostly no. But he choose to do so and hence it is his problem. A third party with holy intentions is not required to "fight" on his behalf. > Marx has written much about this situation. He called it as > 'alienation of product from the worker. Communism is for ending > this alienation. So, what is the difference between FOSS and > communism, on this aspect? Neat. And how do you propose to achieve this?. By banning prop software? > By the mathematical theory of probability also, monopoly is not > possible. That's why, with elite concepts FOSS came into > being.That's why I called FOSS spontaneous. Foss came into being because Companies were preventing users from modifying and or reusing code. In the case of software and computers it is relatively easy to obfuscate the working mechanism because of the need for conversion of human readable code to machine readable code. The "monopoly" and it's mad prescriptions and tactics came in much latter. It was about alienation of users from products, not about workers from products. Further both workers and users have an option now. The government has to mandate use of FOSS because 1) They are using PUBLIC MONEY and must use the least cost product. The cost must also include the costs incurred by the general public in using the government infrastructure. 2) Use of FOSS by government, does not preclude use of prop software by the public they. But use of prop software precludes use of FOSS software in very large number of cases 3) As KG points out, the "reinvention of wheel" costs must be factored in 4) Permanency of public data precludes storage of data in closed formats -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
