<snip>
I think the major intension behind forming open source community should be to motivate open source concept in the weaker section of our society. Do not you think that? I strongly believe that open source communities have got lots of social responsibilities. And we must play major role to accomplish it.
</snip> I am not sure I completely agree with that statement. IMO, the intent of free software communities should be to promote free software. And that includes students and developers too. I certainly agree that free software and free software communities can certainly be a catalyst in the progress of the "weaker" sections of society, I maintain that promotion of F/OSS in the "weaker" sections of society cannot be the main/only focus of F/OSS communities. <snip>
And by rule whenever something is available for free even government can not purchase the other. In such cases, why can not we force government to accept OpenOffice? Can we put the legal petition in the court of > law in the favor of OpenOffice?
</snip> The question is whether the government pays for MS Office at all. Doesn't Microsoft have a system in place where they make their software available to governments and schools for free? Also, I believe that forcing the government to use OOo is against the spirit of the F/OSS idealogy. If we assert our right to not have anyone tell us what software to use and how to use it, IMO we cannot force anyone to use a particular piece of software. Also, to be purely practical, do we have the resources to enter a legal fight with the government? My Re. 0.02. Kaustubh -- Kaustubh Gadkari [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- ______________________________________________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List: ([email protected]) List Information: http://plug.org.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plug-mail Send 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for mailing instructions.
