Raj Mathur (राज माथुर) wrote:
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.
Raj, thanks for this line. The concept of public software has been
created to (inter alia) help promote FOSS in a public institution
environment .... you also mentioned this in an earlier mail of yours.
I will write again to some of the arguments on this list little later,
when I get sometime. While some of the inputs have been very useful
(such as the clarification from RMS that FOSS need not be published,
which reduces scope of arguments for public software to be non FOSS),
some are based on misunderstandings (eg - that public software has been
conceptualised to promote proprietary software, which is quite untrue),
.... but more later...
Guru
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
_______________________________________________
network mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
