On Friday 10 Sep 2010, A. Mani wrote: > An article on PSW > > http://www.ilug-cal.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=16 > 5&Itemid=36
Excellent analysis. However, I'd find the argument more convincing if the author didn't bring political ideology into the discussion. For instance, there's no point in bashing MNCs in this context, and it may alienate some people who would otherwise have helped clarify the divide between public software and FOSS. Similarly, discussion about the benefits or otherwise of BSD don't belong in an article analysing public software vs FOSS -- BSD is a FOSS licence after all. The biggest hurdle I see is the discussion of capitalism towards the end. Please note that Open Source Software has been created as a concept to help promote open software in a capitalist environment. The reasons for using open source software are meant to appeal to businesses, not to idealists. So the author could always distinguish between Free Software and Open Source software, and bring capitalism into the picture in that context; in the context of FOSS, however, capitalism is as relevant or irrelevant as any other political ideology. Request the author to make the article more powerful and incisive by removing digressions that have no direct impact on the central thesis. [Clarification: I personally believe that capitalism (or any other -ism) is irrelevant to FOSS anyway, but that's beside the point here.] 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
