On Saturday 04 Sep 2010, parminder wrote: > [snip] > We want governments to bring out public software policies, which will > inter alia mention that FOSS is the most appropriate software > licensing model. I dont think any government is going to name its > overall software policy as FOSS policy, since no government will > make it an absolute law that only FOSS would ever be used by the > governments. However the looser public software term is something > they can work with, because the term 'public' is highly nuanced, and > yes, when required, flexible, which is always required when dealing > with real life larger social and political realms.
OK, then the FOSS movement and the "Public Software" movement are clearly two different things and should not confused with each other. Public software may be able to use FOSS and FOSS resources, but the reverse seems unlikely -- as far as the FOSS movement is concerned, public software is, as you said, just another use of software like business software or social software, and does not need any special handling (apart from the efforts being put in to popularise FOSS in the sectors you mention anyway). I for one am perfectly happy with this state of affairs, as long as the two movements don't end up treading on each others' toes -- FOSS concerns itself purely with the licensing and development model of the software, while public software concerns itself purely with the use and effect of the software. > [more snip] > I wonder, when we are so strident vis a vis violations of freedom and > openness in non-networked digital environment, the general manner in > which the term software is used, how this list never discusses what > is happening to the openness and freedoms on the Internet. How > Google sold alway the principle of network neutrality (NN) just last > month, because it saw itself losing out in the mobile Internet > environment. How facebook is free (of data download charges) on > Airtel , and the rest of the Internet needs to be paid for, which is > NN violation, how DoCoMo is giving a boutique of a few select > services on the Internet for Rs 50, which again is a gross NN > violation. With cloud computing taking over, in which directions do > our FOSS struggles go? Because this is the Free and Open Source /Software/ list. These issues are important, and fora for discussing them exist. This just happens to not be the right one. OK, let me restate -- there are probably enough people here who are interested in those issues (just as there are enough who would be interested in public software), I just don't recall seeing anyone bring them up. Regards, -- Raj -- Raj Mathur [email protected] http://kandalaya.org/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
