Hi Vinayak,
On 09/30/2010 09:05 AM, Vinayak Kulkarni wrote:
Hi All
According to Richard Stallman (.. whom I personally respect), 'User should
experience a freedom to use the software'. But I think that the freedom they
wanted was quiet right at their era, because computers were used by mostly
technical people. So that category of people required free and open source
software.
...umm, ok.
But in today s world even common public is also using the computer I mean
Non-Technical personals also using the computers for their general work. And
more importantly, Thing about software that it is Free or Paid does not
matter to them (.. mostly all of them use pirated copies of the software).
They are more comfortable with that.
Hmm. Firstly, you are making a (very common) mistake of confusing 'Free of Cost
Software' (which we call Freeware) with 'Free Software' (which we promote and
sometimes call Free/Open Source Software). These are 2 different things. There
exist Free software that comes for a price too.
Secondly, while I might agree that non-technical users might not require access
to the code for the software they use (ie: the freedoms 1,2 and 3, as Richard
Stallman calls it[1]), they most certainly *need* freedom 0 -- ie: The freedom
to run the program, for any purpose.
This freedom is often understated in our community because it seems so obvious
that we take it for granted.
However, think about this a bit -- what can you do with a old copy of
DOS/Windows 95/...or any other software. Can you install it on a low powered
system to revive it ? Can you donate your old software CDs to schools or other
places that might need it ? No, since doing so would be illegal !
Another scenario is assume you have some software that does function X but you
realize that it would be useful in a different situation to perform function Y.
The End User License Agreement (EULA) of most proprietary software would make it
illegal for you to do that.
Practical examples of software that does not give you freedom 0 are everywhere:
- Apple restricts the use of your iphone/itouch/ipod within their software
- Various media players restrict what can/cannot be played using things like
encoding and DRM (I am speaking of 'software' limitations and not hardware ones)
- The kindle restricts access to, in fact deletes without your knowledge or
consent, books after you paid for them
These are things that even non-technical users are concerned with.
A little over a month ago, I replied to a similar thread on ILUG-C. Here is an
excerpt from it ...
Most proprietary software is 'licensed' to the user under something called the
'EULA' (End User License Agreement). If you have ever installed any proprietary
software, you would have seen the EULA and clicked the 'I Accept' agreement to
install it. It is a good exercise to try and read these EULAs.
Think of these EULAs as a 'rental' or 'lease' agreement. Although you pay money,
you are not 'buying' the software, you are 'leasing' it because, you don't
really 'own' the software ! Since, you can't do whatever you want with it -- for
example you cannot share it with anyone, or you cannot use it on more than one
system or you cannot change it to suit your needs or you cannot resell an old
copy of it or you cannot even make a 'copy' or it for backup purposes. Doing any
of these might be illegal.
The entire post is here:
http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/pipermail/ilugc/2010-August/060028.html
I encourage you to read it (the entire thread too, confusion and trolls
notwithstanding :) ).
hope that helps clarify things,
cheers,
- steve
[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
--
random spiel: http://lonetwin.net/
what i'm stumbling into: http://lonetwin.stumbleupon.com/
_______________________________________
Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List
