On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 5:29 PM, Vickram Crishna <[email protected]> wrote: > Today, the world's leading economic power happens to be a country that > professes to be communist, while in fact practising and leveraging most of > the rules and processes that characterise classic capitalism, including some > of its classic abuses (currency manipulation, for instance). Just yesterday, > one of its leaders informed our government that they envy our leadership in > the area of IT, or software (of course, perhaps his exact words were > mistranslated, or am I being too cynical?)
If you are referring to China, then they do not practice 'classic capitalism'. They have a strong public sector and have been partly conquered by MNCs. They are much ahead in FOSS and are more self-reliant in IT. > The point of this background is that labels often cover up or obscure the > detailed context in which things actually happen. It is for this reason that > it is in fact important to be clear while critiquing or espousing something > as important to the future of free software, or FOSS, as this new concept > that has been curiously entitled 'public software', exactly in which context > such new licensed software will work. Some people have objected to the > possible pejorative context in which the word capitalism has been used, but > I put it that the pejorative nature in fact refers to specific excesses and > abuses of capitalism that have led to the very creation of the free software > movement, in reaction. All the labels have detailed descriptions and given the context, there should not be problems in interpreting them. Economics is not an irrelevant subject. > It is much better to 1. > define the licensing environment clearly, clause by clause, 2. define the > terms of modification and subsequent reuse, with particular regard to > software that will be distributed for general public use, just as free > software often already is (in fact, I see no reason why, for such instances, > the term public software may not simply be substituted by free software). Specific implementation environments do matter and 'FOSS' has a bare minimum of principles. It will almost always be necessary to specify more and not less or at the same level. The Indian state is a plutocracy, in which policies and principles may be freely compromised according to the whims and fancies of big companies. In this context, specifying up to the implementation level may ensure something at least. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
