Re: [LIG] [draft] open letter to indian finance minister
Linux India has been formed for Foster the growth of Linux in India
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From: Arun S. <ar...@sh...> - 2003-03-09 19:00:23
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On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 03:52:28PM +0530, LinuxLingam wrote: > 1) Commercial software (C.S) is a big cash drain for both the Indian > government and Indian corporates. It could also be a big cash gain, if the govt promotes the sales of commercial software made in India and sold abroad. > 2) Almost all commercial software are non-free. That's a damning indictment of the GNU argument that "Free Software" can be commercial and profitable. > > 3) these freedoms are important for a developing, poor, country like India, > where every citizen, organization, and state, dreams of harnessing the > opportunities offered by IT. > If Microsoft were to be an Indian company and provided free copies to all citizens of India who legally pay zero taxes, would that address your concerns ? > 4) these freedoms also significantly curtail strong anti-competitive > behaviour in the software industry. There is no significant software industry in India. It's mainly a service industry. > > 5) countries like China are moving away from non-free software to > freedom-based software. India has no such significant, clearly-defined > initiative in place for adopting freedom based software. > "Freedom based software" ? I don't know what that means. Microsoft software also seems freedom based to me. Of course, it's Microsoft's freedom, not their end users'. > 7) a large and significant percentage of commercial software is usually sold > as bundled, OEM software. end-users find they are *forced* to use such > software, since their requests to buy machines with such software uninstalled > is usually turned down. That would be a good one to go after - I support tis. But I don't know what that has to do with taxation. > > 9) Commercial software companies are usually quite rich. Not taxing them > allows them to hoard their wealth even more and give them more implicit power > to quash their competition in commercial software and in freedom-based > software. > Consult with RMS. He claims that money has nothing to do with freedom. [ hint: If you make the link between money and freedom too strong, you end up in communist territory, which is politically costly. ] [ The rest of the arguments regarding the financial benefits of "freedom based software" snipped ] In summary: I share the goals and some of the observations in LL's draft above - viz, Indians are being ripped off by the software industry, inspite of their software expertise. But not the solutions proposed. If you forget about ideology for a moment and think in terms of Rupees and Paise, an Indian citizen will benefit most from commerical software (not just services) exported out of the country. In that context, I submit that "free for any purpose" (public domain and non-copylefted free software) software should be central to government policy. FLOSS should be supported as a means to develop a strong, technically competent developer base, leading to a export oriented commercial software industry. -Arun disclosure: my new email address is arun at FreeBSD.org |