On 12-Mar-07, at 3:51 PM, Praveen A wrote:
when government writes software with our money, they should be forced to release it under a f/oss license - that is my contention. They havent.
As long as the user of the software (who bought it or paid for the development) have the basic freedoms, it is Free Software.
so does the user of the software in this case have the basic freedoms?
In the #2 the software is developed for Government of Kerala and if they have all the Freedoms then it is Free Software.
do they have them? Everyone knows that *if* they have the freedoms it is free software. My question is: do they have the freedoms?
the opinion that the authors of the PDF in question have tried to give an impression that free software is flourishing in the state.
And I think that is correct as well.
you are contradicting yourself. You say 'if they have the 4 freedoms it is free software'. But you dont know if they have. So how can you say it is free software?
and why werent the licenses specified?
These are all custom software and I guess the Government of Kerala might be owning the copyright (at least that happens in many of the services companies, the companies assign copyright to clients).
Isnt it practically the sole objective of FSF to concern itself with software licenses?
are you kidding? http://www.fsf.org/about I didn't see it mentioned there.
i see it mentioned in points 1 and 3 above
I dont move in such exalted circles, but somehow i got the impression that he was interested in seeing that all software is shared - I could be wrong
Every computer user should be Free to use, change, and share the software. In this case the user is Government of Kerala and if they have these Freedoms then it is Free Software. Every users is Free to share but not required to share.
again you say 'if they have the freedoms it is free software'. No one disputes that. But do they have the freedoms?