http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=They+preach+free+software,+but+practise+Mac,+Microsoft&artid=SFCQlXHmOpc=&SectionID=1ZkF/jmWuSA=&MainSectionID=fyV9T2jIa4A=&SectionName=X7s7i|xOZ5Y=&SEO=

Any comments?

Free Software movement, always (from inception) was meant to be “as a social movement” and its domain was always “human readable software code”.

Again, the goals and scope of FSF has been spelt out in plain English at
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

In a nutshell FSF movement, encourage the developers to release their code in a open non-restrictive license and encourage the users to use software that are licensed in GPL (or akin) license which preserve their freedom of software usage. So it is the moduli development and modulus operandi of software that is key focus of the “movement”.

Rather than making an unsubstantiated statement like “back to the point where free code no long matters”, I request you to kindly explain where according to you the FSF movement has gone out of focus. Then probably we can have a meaningful discussion.

So, What exactly is FSF?

Kenny, could you post the proposal online whenever time
permits. Mainly because, prima facie I cannot find a link between
campus blogging and free software, mainly due to two reasons.

a. My understanding is that Blogs and Code (software) are two
different entity. True, one supports the other (however, more
injectively than surjectively in the blogging to software function
map), but the idea of blogging directly being related to free software
movement appears more amorphous to me.

b. Your blog and derivative works follows a license with full
copyright restriction, so cannot be treated as representative for a
work based on a free license.

These two points should not be treated as negative criticism to your
work. However, I am quite curious how your proposal would have fitted
under the scope of such a conference.

While I also personally worry about bureaucratic or cooperate
manipulation of peer-based movements, and acknowledging that there
have such attempts in the past, the hearting fact is that major and
main stream licenses guard well against such vandalism. The major
form of vandalism I have seen happening is to use free software
bandwagon to promote and up their political mileage. Maybe like how
the politicians in Mumbai were quick in erecting billboards with
images of martyrs own who died in terror attack along with their or
Modi announcing reward for the slain ATS chief. This is a taint in the
characters of politicians, rather than free software movement. So
redirect your ire towards the perpetrators (if any) rather than the
victim. One thing you are missing is that stage where movement take
places is not in a promotional function, but it is where the actual
development takes place.

A participant (as opposed to organiser) using a proprietary software is
a perfectly valid scenario. I would be appalled if something contrary
happened. Free software movement is meant to be a voluntary
movement. So if some one wants to use PowerPoint as opposed to Impress
at the expense of their freedom, it is their personal prerogative and
it is a sign of freedom that such participants can get away with it,
albeit some fiery comments and ridicule.

Thus as the poster says,
“Is Free Software a Technology, not really, Its a social movement.”
It says that free software is not only about technology but it is about the movement about freedom that the users should have. And Free Software is technically superior as millions of eyes are watching the code. That is the only meaning and no one is here to hijack any movement just with a poster.

And as Sunil said, Kenney is more related to Free Software, yeah but how can you expect a stall to be alloted to a single person, you could have got place for a laptop and yourself in some community stall.

And in my “personal opinion” I dont think that blogging is Free Software or it has any relation to free software. Expect the fact that it is online media, or free speech.

And Smart City and SBT and all were sponsors of the event and that is why they got stalls. If you had been a sponsor you also would have got a stall.

One interesting demographics that are comfortable with using Ubuntu and related stuff are interestingly enough, middle aged and older people with little computer experience. They seem to have no problem learning about the quirks of it. However, all they use is firefox for some browsing and then maybe use a few document editing.