The software that we use (whether it’s a simple word processing one or a complex web server administration toolkit) has been trapped into an endless battle of proprietary ownership. The proprietary trend started in the early 1970s, and from that time, the users of software are prevented from sharing or modifying software programs. A decade later, proprietary software has started to rule the personal and enterprise computing world and its domination in the market still continues.
Thank God, we have Mr. RMS, our beloved Richard M Stallman, who started the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985. FSF promoted computer user’s rights to use, study, copy, modify and redistribute computer programs and RMS zealously campaigned (and still campaigning!) for breaking the rigid walls created by the proprietary software owners.
My extensive use of open source technologies and my sincere admiration towards copyleft has made me a die-hard fan of RMS. His ideology is quiet simple. Computer users should have the freedom to change and redistribute the software that they use. The “freedom” allow us run, modify and redistribute the software. FSF will help you to do so, and it will be the national agency for the promotion of the use of free software, i.e. software distributed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) or other licenses approved by FSF.
I read Stallman’s essay on “Releasing Free Software if You Work at a University” and this blog is a mere inference of that essay. There are certain barriers that prevent us from releasing our software under the GNU GPL license. We need to change our mindset towards our view of looking the software as an opportunity for increasing revenues rather than contributing to knowledge.
I am also aware of the fact that it is a difficult task to change the mindset of the people drastically. The best way to do so is to develop the applications with the help of tools released under the GNU GPL. But from where all these things are going to start? I firmly believe that the academic institutions are the key to do this rather than the corporate companies. The corporate companies are here to increase profit. The institutions are here to promote knowledge and foster research. They should ideally take the torch from the FSF and I believe that they can play the lead role.
As of now, very few academic institutions are supporting the GNU-GPL copyleft license. The University of Texas has a policy by default, releases all software developed by it members as free software under the GNU General Public License. As far as our country is concerned, Indian Institute of Technology in Hyderabad has a policy in favor of releasing software under GPL.
According to Mr. RMS, the Universities have a mission to advance human knowledge and in doing so, they can motivate their faculty and students to leverage the development of free software. It will be well and good. At times the institutions release a software with “free of charge, for academic use only,” which would tell the general public they don’t deserve freedom, and argue that this will obtain the cooperation of academia, which is all (they say) you need.
RMS says that all these are dead-end proposals. He raises a simple question to everyone who is against his policy. “What good is it to make a program powerful and reliable at the expense of users’ freedom?” We need to respect the user’s freedom, and your proprietary licenses will never do so.
I am sure that the FSF is going to play a lead role in creating a new culture and there are good signs already as our esteemed scientist and former Indian President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam has advised the defense scientists to go for open-source software for software security, rather than be stuck with insecure proprietary software. Secure applications are the need of the hour and with the known vulnerabilities, proprietary software can never be the choice of those who build robust applications which are fool-proof. FSF India too, is focusing on taking free software ideas to schools, colleges and teachers.All I can say is, let’s join the momentum and spread the culture to the nook and corners of our country. Lets make a road less traveled as a national highway!
2 comments:
I believe in the philosophy that "there is no free lunch". So going by your views, you have quoted the thoughts of the GNU GPL activists. There is nothing wrong in that, provided there should be a protocol in sharing free content.
At this point I would like to remind you of the torrent phenomenon. In torrent, there are leeches (those users who are having a specific part of a huge file) and seeds (those users who are having the entire file). Whether you are willing or not as you are downloading from the torrent, you are also uploading as a leech and after downloading fully you may continue as a peer as well. That's the reason why it is a rage at least among the youth and movie buffs.
So give before you take or take and give something back, that is the whole philosophy about.
Still I have encountered some ftp sites which allows you to upload a content of file size X and download content from it with file size 2X.
The bottom line is that the remuneration and the motivation of the contributor should be clearly defined. If we have that clearly cut out, then we can expect an even bigger swarm of free source developers to join the bandwagon!!!
The biggest impediment in the growth of FOSS is that drivers could not be found for some crucial hardware as for as this layman is concerned. Moreover the installing applications are cumbersome in some of the FOSS. It these two points are addressed then it will be a field day for FOSS. Till then it has to take second fiddle only.
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