tarun, you've done it again. another excellent response from you, quite
vitriolic, quite emphatic. i like it. my responses follow
On Sunday 16 March 2003 06:57 pm, Tarun Dua wrote:
>Look what a mess GOI bureaucrats made with
> regard to [heavy snip]
okay . . .
> Consider the following scenarios.
>
> 1. FLOSS has funding available to GOI sponsered project ( now this the
> Official GOI-FLOSS project ).
> The way the government works . This gets entered into the list of approved
> vendors/lists/ and huge number of paper databases all over the country in
> Educational Institutions.
who says this is the way it works. it is not a govt tender type of thing. the
project gets posted on a savannah or sarovar or whatever, and funding is
there to buy patents to re-release them, to hire talent, and if the talent
sucks, the free community will make sure enough eyeballs pop the poor talent.
[snip]
> Even if Linuxlingam decides to fork it. The govt. departments who merely
> follow the written word in toto without
> applying an iota of intelligence more to fulfill the rules than for a
> purpose will use the same project from the GOI-FLOSS thus working to
> curtail freedom not increase it.
not necessary. as long as the GOI uses FLOSS, it does not matter whether they
use openoffice or a GOI-office. the job gets done. and if the job does not
get done, some top level bureaucrat will scream at some bottom level
bureaucrat to get the job done, and the bottom level bureaucrat will adopt
openoffice or abiword or koffice to get the job done.
example: the govt finally discovered owning ambassadors is a costly,
unreliable investment, so gradually the new sleet of cars is moving towards
maruti esteems etc.
>
> 2. FLOSS funding is cornered by elite institutions , research institutions
> who don't understand what is a bazaar -- they make cathedrals out of it.
but they are not the only ones.
FLOSS funding buys patents to release it under GPL. floss funding is used to
make elite insititutions like the IITs develop core FLOSS software, etc. it
is impossible to make a cathedral model once you follow a bazaar model. the
history of the FLOSS movement shows this. the road from the cathedral will
eventually lead to the bazaar.
>
> 3. FLOSS funding starts to get channeled by GOI agencies for NGO's--- FLOSS
> becomes an epitome of corruption in India-- Corporate funding dries up.
> FLOSS is dead.
why? because even in extreme terms, the indian govt killed it? heck, the
indian govt can't own the whole of floss. they can at best kill anything
launched by them as a solution for indian problems etc. most of floss is
already ready otherwise. the rest of the relatively saner world continues
developing floss, and the survivors of the GOI-nocide download floss and
continue using.
FLOSS can not die. it can be transformed, evolved, forked, migrated,
[snip]
[heavy snip]
> FLOSS will have to unbundle the associated services and pay service tax.
> Opens a pandora box.
> Bureaucratic busy bodies too will assume things are not fluid and fix up
> things should happen in this particular way and one find oneself filing
> FLOSS FORM-XXXA(IX) for proving that this component is service and that is
> software
soon the madness will subside when people realize or gravitate towards
'software is not a product, but a service' and if this does not happen, then
people will prefer to install software which costs zero price and is freedom
based, and only charge for service. again, i trust the common intelligence of
those outside the govt will choose the path of minimum resistance for
themselves.
>
[heavy snip]
> Taxing doesn't discourage but increases clamour of various Lobbies, Special
> Interest Groups, for a huge
> number of complex exemptions etc which will ultimately reduce the
> collective strength of the Free/OSS community which is very fragmented.
floss wont go for these exemptions etc. the non-free guys will go. floss will
say "raise the taxes to 10,000 % if you wish, because people will have a
choice of getting floss at zero price, and well, you figure the math."
> Not does it make you look towards free alternatives where none exist due to
> the small size of the bazaar.
no pain no gain. the pain becomes the mother of invention. innovation comes
back to the software industry. people buy non-free software for the interim
period while others develop freedom-based alternatives since there is a
desparate need for those from those who wish to save on taxes and improve
bottomlines and get away from 'piracy' which will get a tough crackdown.
[snip]
[heavy snip]
> Anything suggested by government will end in failure like so many other
> laws( we have too many ) which have been worked around with the connivance
> of corrupt people who man it.
okay. let it fail. but even in its failure, it will leave a lasting
impression on people on the merits, the needs, and the cause, for adopting
freedom in software. because the rest of the world is continuing its
development.
[heavy duty snip]
>
> > FLOSS will still attract a service tax in india. so no conflict.
>
> These are all assumptions !!!
> The reality is different.
> Very difficult to implement :-
> FLOSS pays service tax.
> Commercial Software pays Excise.
well, non-free software companies wanna charge for software like a service.
so it won't be that complicated.
all will pay service tax inevitably. some will pay excise on selling software
as a product as well.
>And then we may have whole new class of Software Valuers /
> Software Actuaries who will pronounce the value of Software/Service parts
> based on precedents and like quoting from
> various sections/sub-sections/by-laws to deteriment of FLOSS.
nope. a small-time engineer can charge a professional service fee of rs 150
for a service call on floss, and raj can charge 15,000. tax accordingly. much
likje what happens with dentists, artists, and all who charge for services.
no independent evaluator till date has been needed in any non-software
industry to evaluate the cost of a service. a hotel can charge their fee, and
the local dhabha their fee....
[snip]
>
> Thats what Soviet Union used to think.
> The real Communism is all but dead.
> Nothing wrong in being rich.
it is ironic how any deep discussion of FLOSS usually ends up talking of
communism. and even comparisons are made.
but what amazes me, is no one realizes capitalism at its extreme, is just
like communism, and communism at its extreme, is just like capitalism. two
sides of the same coin. so let's get out of that discussion.
let's stick to non-free and free software, and not try to label them by such
terms.
> There will always be such huge differences in incomes with or without
> FLOSS. Because you can download TD-OS for free or you can still get it from
> my Rs. 200 billion TD-FLOSS dev center for a small sum of Rs. 300 million.
> Depending on the application you have for TD-OS you may choose to pay me
> Rs. 300 million. So TD grows rich while LinuxLingum continues to give away
> free TD-OS CDs at TDUG meets every month.
sounds reasonable! hey come on, that's what GPL is all about. and with that i
mean the freedom of price, you can charge, or you can keep it zero priced. no
issues. and the huge differences of incomes keeps that communism/capitalism
debate out of the pi
>
> Worse given the precendents of Governments around the world messing with
> Technology
so the best governed country will win. law of survival.
[heavy snip]
>
> There are better ways to help educational institutions than taxing Software
> ( FLOSS or otherwise)
> Help them migrate to FLOSS systems. LAP( a Linux-Delhi project for Linux in
> Education) has laudable objectives.
well, please offer your help to LAP. and you'll see what it leads to, i've
walked this path with the others on this and similar projects. check out the
ground realities. hopefully you[ll come back with six guns blazing and
demanding the govt impose this excise tax to get started.
[grin]
your points on ethics are well taken. but before you go further, note how
ethics on all the points you mentioned take a higher ground automatically
with FLOSS, and a lower ground with non-free software. i rest my case.
:-)
LL
ps: please respond in smaller emails, to keep the postings short, sweet.
================================================
To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe in subject header.
Check archives at http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd%40wpaa.org
