On Wed, 2009-08-26 at 18:51 +0530, Vikram Vincent wrote: > 2009/8/26 justin joseph <[email protected]>: > > On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 6:23 PM, narendra > >> how to test - "FOSSCOMM" want or not !! (I vote for yes !!) > > I vote yes. > > Yes - vote
There are three only votes so far, but all say yes. So I am sending a draft letter. Maybe, we can now discuss whether this letter may be sent or not. Best -- V. Sasi Kumar Free Software Foundation of India Please visit http://swatantryam.blogspot.com
As you know, Microsoft has announced the new version of its operating system, namely, Windows 7. If your company has been using the Windows operating system on your computers, as several companies are doing, you will soon have to migrate all your computers currently using Windows XP or Vista to the new version of Windows because Microsoft will soon stop supporting the earlier versions of its operating system. That is, it will stop providing bug fixes and enhancements for Windows Vista as they have already done for previous versions of Windows. You will also soon stop getting drivers for new printers and peripherals, making it difficult for you to continue using your current operating systems so that you are forced to purchase licences for the new version of Windows for all computers used in your organisation. In addition, the new Windows may come with restrictions such as DRM, possibly preventing you from exercising your legitimate rights, in spite of the fact that India does not have a law similar to DRM law of the US. We are sure that you have experienced a similar situation before, when Windows versions changed or new versions of the applications (such as MS Office) you were using made the previous one obsolete and you had to purchase the new versions. This is what is called "vendor lock-in", whereby people are forced to depend on one company for a product. One consequence of this is that people have to keep paying the company whenever the company releases a new version of the product and sometimes have to invest on related things too. For instance, most people who were using Windows XP had to upgrade their hardware to accommodate Windows Vista. In the case of computer software, this has also meant that users are denied of freedom in using, sharing, modifying and redistributing software. We write to you now because you no longer need to remain locked-in. You have the option of migrating to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), like GNU/Linux. FOSS operating systems have several advantages over proprietary systems such as Windows. For instance, GNU/Linux is much more secure and stable. Viruses are virtually unknown in GNU/Linux, which saves a user at least the cost of anti-virus software and the time and effort in keeping the computers free of viruses. FOSS is intrinsically more secure because thousands of programmers worldwide get to see the programs in their raw form (what is called source code) so that security holes are quickly detected and fixed. System crashes are very rare and maintenance activities like virus scanning and defragmentation are unnecessary so that up time and efficiency are very much better. There are several vendors who can give you the product and maintain your systems, so that your costs are kept low. And you can run the system even on your older hardware. What is more, all FOSS applications support open standards for saving files. For instance, Open Office supports the Open Document Format, which is an open ISO standard. On the other hand, proprietary software mostly uses proprietary standards that are not open, so that files saved in those formats can be cleanly opened only with the same applications that created them. Further, FOSS applications have more or less the same set of features that proprietary applications have. For instance, one can use Open Office for all purposes for which Microsoft Office is being currently used, and it can even open MS Office documents or save in those formats. The web browser that is growing fastest in popularity, namely Mozilla Firefox, is a FOSS application. There are email clients, instant messaging clients, image editors and so on that are available as FOSS that are as good as, if not better than, proprietary applications for the purpose. In fact, a number of companies and other organisations in the country have already migrated to FOSS or are in the process of doing so. We, therefore, recommend that you make use of this opportunity to migrate all the computers in your organisation to FOSS, instead of to the new version of MS Windows so that you permanently solve the problem of upgrading your software (and possibly your hardware) every time a new version of the operating system or applications is released, and also get better performance from the computers.
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