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>>>>> "Tarun" == Tarun Dua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> first of all, an excellent response from tarun dua on the
>> draft.
Tarun> --Thanks LL
>> IMHO FLOSS is beyond any mess that any bureaucrat, government,
>> or corporate can make.
Tarun> That is dangerous thinking!!! Look what a mess GOI
Tarun> bureaucrats made with regard to Internet. All this coz' of
Tarun> just a few high profile fraudulent DNR squatting cases
One of the biggest arguments against LinuxLingam's proposal appears to
be that any tax collected from non-FLOSS sales will not be utilised
properly.
OK, let it not be utilised properly. Let it go into the general tax
pool and help reduce Jaswant-ji's budget deficit. Or put it into
making/enhancing the FLOSS Lab that the Ministry of IT had proposed
some time back. Or let it be used for the enhancement of the
downtrodden, fighting crime and removal of inequality that our
government does so effectively (yes, the sun rose in the west this
morning). Whatever.
The proposal actually has two facets: Excise or tax as a disincentive
for deploying and/or bundling proprietary commodity off-the-shelf
software (COTS) and as a way of generating revenue for promoting
FLOSS. I agree with the first part -- makes perfect sense to me for
the government to give incentives for hardware and software vendors to
promote the use of FLOSS, prevent foreign exchange drain and generally
better the lot of the users. I don't necessarily agree with the idea
that the generated revenues would be appropriately used to promote
FLOSS in other ways, but that doesn't prevent the government from
going ahead with the first part.
Suresh made an important point about FLOSS competing on its own
merits. Agree with that too, but that's not really happening, is it?
If FLOSS were competing on a level playing field I'd say the hell with
LinuxLingam's proposal. However FLOSS doesn't have chief ministers
fawning all over the richest man in the world when he comes to India
to promote it. It doesn't have $42 million to donate to a Shiksha
project to use FLOSS exclusively. Nor does it have a BSA or NASSCOM
guarding its gates, threatening end users with dire consequences
unless they use legal software only. This proposal becomes quite
relevant in the current scenario, given that the scales are heavily
tilted in the favour of proprietary software.
BTW, please snip replies to a reasonable length.
Regards,
- -- Raju
Tarun> [snip]
- --
Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/
It is the mind that moves
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