Kamaleshwar Morjal [कमलेश्वर मोरजाल] wrote:
On 10/18/07, Manoj Srivastava srivasta@debian.org wrote:
On Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:07:22 +0530, Unknown unknown@unknown.invalid said:
I beg to differ. Snorting cocaine also gives a short termfeeling of energy and creativity, but is detrimental in the long run. Conspiring with software hoarders, who hoard software and knowledge for profit, and buying the cool-aid, is not of any long term utility.
Agreed. _No long term utility_! The value and wealth of knowledge might eventually get lost in the long run. But going by that philosophy, people should start teaching their kids at home because all educational institutes, coaching institutes, private tuitions, schools even, are also amongst those who sell knowledge, charge a fortune to teach a kid basic maths and alphabet that can be learnt at home!!! So. Is sending your kid to school equivalent to *conspiring* with hoarders of knowledge? [i think yes, coz if you teach your kid upto second grade and want to get him into the third grade in some school, you don't have much choice, and i visualize it exactly as using a closed software with their indiscernible policies and EULAs, but don't we utilize that _service_ from the schools (that are mere vendors today)?]
Hoarding of knowledge means you don't give access to it except on your terms. Schools and tuition classes follow openly prescribed curriculum and the text books too are openly available. So the school is only providing a service that we are well capable of providing, ourselves.
However, today as knowledge gets digitised, it is the software company that acts as the provider of the tool to access this knowledge. If the software company uses restrictive practices to prevent everyone from using the access tools, like charging heavy prices, changing data formats every year and demanding ransom for opening the locks to the data, then such practices come under hoarding of knowledge.
Another example of knowledge hoarding would be the pharmaceutical giants who are sitting on patents for life saving medicines and sell the medicines at astronomical prices. If they release the details of the drugs, other companies can make generic versions of it and prices would be very low, but they don't want that to happen. They are hoarding knowledge even after knowing that millions could die simply because they cannot have access to their medicines.
In case of the mechanic, the vehicle itself is open to study and you can repair it yourself if you study it. And if you don't like one mechanic, you can go to another. Here there is no restriction on who is allowed to touch your vehicle except in warranty. The only way hoarding of knowledge may take place is if the vehicle has some sealed black box parts that can be opened or replaced only by company authorised centres and they charge a bomb for it or out of the blue say that the part is no longer available and that's the end of the journey for that vehicle.