On 10/18/07, Rony gnulinuxist@gmail.com wrote:
Kamaleshwar Morjal [कमलेश्वर मोरजाल] wrote:
On 10/18/07, Manoj Srivastava srivasta@debian.org wrote:
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.
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Hey thanks a ton. Was enlightening and i realize that i picked the wrong analogies. But i really wonder if i would/should stop all interaction with another computer user only because he is a victim of a software hoarder, by chance or choice or may be need! who knows? Or should we work towards supporting all the formats, that allow such interaction without any legal hassles at least! That seems to be a matter of personal preference! Anyways, this thread provided me with some more insight into the FOSS world and people dedicated towards it :) Nothing more to say on this thread, i guess. Signing off. :)
Regards.