For those of you reading this in Goa, don't miss Dr Anil Seth's article in Gomantak Times (Goa, 13 Dec 2002 Page 5) titled 'Learning from an alternative role model'.

Quote: It was very inspiring to listen to Richard M Stallman (RMS) at Goa Engineering College recently....

We may not be able to emulate RMS, we can still do a lot for free software. Free software is extremely important for India given the low usage of software technology in our country. Not to mention, we can change the rules from "how much money has been lost by the software industry by sharing" to "how much money society has saved by sharing software".

For people not convinced by that idea, I would like them to think about water. We see a lot of ads of mineral water. The mineral water industry pays a lot of taxes and provides a lot of employment. The more our municipalities are unable to provide safe clean water, the more the mineral water industry flourishes. Hence, it is economically undesirable to have free, safe drinking water flowing from our taps! Are the municipalities actually helping the society by not providing drinking water? There is nothing wrong about selling mineral water, though most of us would agree that it is unethical to bottle tap water and lable it as mineral water....

This article is interesting. It should be circulated in full. Dr Seth, could you please send me the plain-text version? Thanks.

For those who don't know him (if you're reading this outside Goa), Dr Seth is a veteran member of our GNU/Linux group in Goa, and a US-educated scientist of an early generation which went there in the 'sixties and 'seventies and then returned to work out of India.

Dr Seth, could you also agree to join our Project Resource Centre network, a list that aims to link up young programmers and students with technical gurus who can guide them to take up challenging and socially-useful IT projects?

It is at: _______________________________________________ prc mailing list http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc

FN