Subject: Free Software Company From: Radhakrishnan C V <cvr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2000 10:39:02 +0530 (IST) |
What I am giving below is off topic but relevant to everyone associated with free software. I hope most of you might have heard about Richard M. Stallman (RMS) and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and the free software movement ignited by RMS. An intense discussion is going on at freedevelopers@xxxxxxxxxx for the formation of a Free Software Company entirely owned by the free developers world wide (100,000 developers expected) to safeguard the moral, social and ethical foundations on which FSF was built up, to provide appropriate monetary compensation and quality life to a free software developer he deserves in all the fairness and to fight the merciless commerce of the proprietary software corporates. These being the primary objectives, Tony Stanco <TonyStanco@xxxxxxx> (an associate of RMS, who moderates the list) describe it in the following way: 1. Proprietary code is the enemy. It must be destroyed for developers and the world to be free. Open source is an ally. 2. Developers can be paid salaries and/or stock options to work on free code without violating the core principles of free code. 3. Mergers and acquisitions of proprietary companies are not objectionable in defeating proprietary. 4. A company of free developers, by free developers, for free developers is an acceptable vehicle to achieve the ends of free code. 5. A requirement in the certificate of incorporation that all code owned by the company is licensed under GPL or other tying to FSF is appropriate to ensure that the core principles of free software are observed going forward and to protect from slipping back to proprietary. 6. A democratic, free developer run corporation does not require special safeguards to protect ordinary world citizens. As one of the developing nations, in India or in any developing nation, where automation has just started, Free Software Company and FSF have plenty of implications. 1. In the first place, our poor economy cant afford to the fancy prices of proprietary software (maybe due to the foriegn exchange conversion magic). 2. Free Software can meet any objective, functionality that is claimed by the proprietary. 3. The huge man power resources generated in each and every place of higher academic learning in this country get a chance to contribute to the free software movement, while he earns a substantially increased income comparable to his counterpart in any proprietary corporate, as an employee of the proposed company. The discussions tend to provide the standard wages in India as in any part of the world. That will surely solve the disturbing problems of migration in many an Indian family. 4. There are plenty of requirement for software in this country for meeting its target of total automation for which each and every government or other agencies stand for today. Free software can meet their objectives on sound moral, ethical and social foundations than any other proprietary corporate. A Case Study: ------------ The Govt. of Kerala has formed an IT mission to automate the 1000 and odd Gram Panchayats (the lowest unit of elected body at village level) of this state. It is a massive and aggressive project to bring details of all the citizens of this state into a huge database, each Panchayat becoming a resource center for the government and at the same time act as the information exchange medium between the public and the government. This is an ideal project for the free software movement. The government have earmarked around Rs. 800,000 per Panchayat for using proprietary software and related development as initial investment and Rs. 150,000 as annual recurring expenses. While this came as a proposal, the Linux Users and TeX Users Groups came forward to negotiate with the government to do the project at a cost of Rs. 150,000 per Panchyat as initial expenses and rs. 20,000 as recurring expenses. But we were turned down, just because, we were considered to be a group of free thinkers, whom no responsible government can rely upon. Had there been a corporate entity with FSF objectives to compete with the proprietary agencies, the public exchecquer would have saved millions of rupees, the developers in this or neighbouring states would have got employment. Still the project is not finalized due to the media stir we raised and the seminars of users groups wherein the government nominees were special invitees. To make matters difficult for the government, the Cochin Linux Users Group came up with a viable, stable, functional software model which the political bureaucracy cannot overlook or deny. The final decision was postponed and still lingering. That means we have not lost the race, the global Free Software Company can still fight it out once it is formally incorporated. Tens of thousands of projects are in the offing which we all can undertake. This is the case in many other countries world wide. There are a quite a number of posts in the freedevelopers list similar to this from West European countries. Therefore, if you believe in the non-exploitative future of your country and the world at large and if you believe in the objectives of free software movement, you are always welcome to make the Free Software Company a reality. It requires the developer in you, not for free, but for a standard compensation as in any other proprietary corporate. Why don't you subscribe to the discussions by sending a mail to: freedevelopers-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxx with a word `subscribe' in the subject line? You are not alone, but you are going to meet/associate with some of the greatest minds of this era in this movement. And remember, Free Software Company is going to be the greatest event in the history of Internet and every country should have its fare representation and share. Comments are welcome. -- Radhakrishnan XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
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