On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 08:40:09PM +0530, Sameer D. Sahasrabuddhe wrote:
On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 08:24:06PM +0530, Sachin Nair wrote:
If you are gong to talk about large corporations then am sorry I was talking about the SSI unit. My fault, I should have specified. 90% of the SSI's operate on pirated software. Ideology in these parts, exists after money!
<snip> > There is a manufacturing unit specializing in certain mechanical > components of machines. They make extensive use of Tally(accounting) & > AutoCAD. They use pirated copies of software, lack the monetary > horsepower to buy the real thing. Even if they did, they as of now don't > see ay real value in converting when things work just fine. You tell me > how do I convince them to convert? Or why should I ask them to convert?
This is precisely the reason why open source ideology fails (Dont think that open source has no ideolgy). The reason why we should use free software is not because of economic reasons. Since open source business ideology cant answer this question without bringing in the FSF arguments.
We ask such a company to use free software not to save money alone, but to be FREE. To get the freedom to repair the software they use, to get the freedom to use it for any purpose etc. What I would say is to spend money if necessary (say employ good free software experts in your company) and gain this virtuous freedom. What we should tell the company is that free software is economical is accidental, and not necessary.
That is the reason why we cannt ask companies to switch to free software for the economic reasons alone, such as TCO. The TCO concept belongs to another paradigm and not to FS paradigm.
You hit it right on target with these two paragraphs. Are we as a community capable of leaving idealism aside and answer this hard-headed pragmatist question? I believe listening to Open Source guys instead of Free Software in this matter can be a great eye-opener.
I disagree here because of the reasons mentioned above. Open Source guys/girls have no answer in this situation unless they tell the company that see it is worth spending because you also get source code. That is when everyone realizes what is the crux of the matter.
If we want our beloved GNU to spread in a place like India, then the SSI sector is the one to be targeted - its a huge market with a reach that can indirectly take us to every school, home and office in this country. A similar thread had started when I had posted an account of a conference on Linux some time ago, where people from the Ministry of IT, Red Hat, IBM, TCS etc had made presentations.
Every sector is important for GNU. SSI, NGOs, schools tactically yes.
Today the govts falling prey to the cost argument. Govt should say we opt for free software because this will give the country self-reliance, and not because is is economical (it is worth repeating this golden message, so tolerate my reeats.)
Nagarjuna