Technology in todays world is not just a comodity of comfort or some secondary thing which comes after food clothing and shelter.
The way technology impacts the daily life of humans, we now can compare it to a "third brain ".
Human civilisations have always been knowledge civilisations and there is nothing new about the ability of humans to acquire, express and share knowledge.
Infact the birth of civil societies lies in the fact that humans have a very special ability of communicating information or sharing knowledge.
What has changed though is the way we share knowledge.
Today reading and writing information is done mostly by means of Information Communication Technology (ICT).
Computers in all their forms have given a new dymention to our ability to learn and teach, to do work in a much efficient manner and at unimaginabally high speed.
thus ICT raises the human creativity to infinity.
This technological change has not just brought new possibilities of doing daily work fast and more efficient as well as accurate, but if used properly ICT can solve many problems which we could not imagine to solve without it.
However with the great advantages ICT has brought, it has also created another possibility, a possibility of some power seekers to misuse it and under the name of "doing business " impose the power to restrict the technology users.
Technology in the hands of such individuals and organisations is a powerful tool to deny freedom and control the users to make them do any thing desired for what ever cause.
Such people develop what is called as the proprietory software.
Proprietory softwares are used by many people today, but they are unaware that while a few functional aspects are in their control, they don't have any real freedom to use it the way they want or make changes they want.
Not stopping on these set of restrictions, the proprietory softwares complemented by similar digital standards also curtail the way we store and display information.
This means that our third brain, the brain made of ICT is ruled by some one whom we don't know or may not like to trust.
It goes without saying that almost every thing we do including the major tasks of our daily life happen through digital technology.
It is this major aspect which the developers of proprietory software exployte and keep the users helpless (because they can only do what is allowed) and devided (because they can't share the software or its code ).
Given that this is how proprietory technologies work and given that software is the most important component for instructing the computers exactly what to do, this proprietory softwares are a dangerous crysis to the digital society and the freedom of humans.
To solve this problems Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org was established in 1984.
The gnu operating system was developed and later on linux kernal started to be used with the OS and now gnu/linux is the most popular, high-quality, stable, secured and very user friendly free software in the world.
On the fundamentals of free software initiated by FSF, many new softwares are developed every day and due to its vary nature of free as in freedom, we also get rapid bug fixes and updates for such free softwares.
Unlike proprietory softwares which totally restrict users to a few functional tasks, free software not just provides better functionality in most cases, but also provides the freedom to use the software for any purpose on any number of computers, the freedom to study and modify the software and freedom to re-distribute and share the original or modified versions of a certain free software.
On this blog we will discuss need for free software and how this need gave rise to a successful revolution which now influences not just technology users but also the politics and research, study and entertainment and any thing that involves technology.
I will list many developments and experiments which i have encountered and would share my personal experiences including those in workshops I take or developer meets I attend.
So watchout for more on this blog.
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About Me
- krishnakant
- I am a free software advocate with a software engineering background. I am a technical adviser to many government and non-government organisations. I believe in sharing knowledge and love to travel a lot. I love teaching particularly programming and knowledge representation with human computer interface. I am a great fan of Gulam ali and Mehendi hasan. I love indian classical music.
10 comments:
should corporate industry opt for free and open source software solutions?
i think until and unless in the corporate sector suffer a huge they might not - but definitely a day comes where there will be policy changes then there will be no other way other than FOSS
next regarding business any ways now GPL3 has come out so any one who has to use FOSS means they have to contribute. so they will start contributing.
next for any beginners i mean those who want to start business they can easily do so by looking at the code and learn to do modify and what not --
the greatest advantage is the community which never let these FOSS go down
very soon Sun Microsystems Open Java is getting released is an indication that even corporate world have realized the importance and also
As Sun will be acquiring Mysql yo ucan imagine how much importance the corporate world is about FOSS
regarding business when you have free software you have lot many people using it and hence you have lot of business to do and lot of deveopers also to support , contribute and what not
yes your thought that "should corporate industry opt for free and open source software solutions'
is already happening
great days ahead for FOSS always!!!!!!!
yes that's right,
java is becoming open source, very well said.
I had just missed that point and it is just the matter of people becoming aware of free software and that it is not free as in free of cost (which java has been for quite some time ). but java now will be free as in freedom.
and java and mysql will be a very potant and great combination for large scale databases.
postgresql is already doing it on practical level.
I totally agree with whatever krishnakant has said about the open source and free software philosophy.Th kind of transparency which we will have with the help of free software will be having a tremendous amount of impact on the business as well as the political arena.
Talking about the business and the corporate world the use of open source software means a hell lot of transparency and also opening of lots of opportunities for the small and developing businessmen.We can expect many budding programmers ready to tap in their knowledge which may lead to many path-breaking technologies.
What it means here is that properietary software or technologies are only profit-oriented.They only think of making money by any small chance they get(read licenses fee).This results into hampering of the enormous talent pool which is waiting for just an opportunity to show what they got.
Think about the number of engineers India produces every year..the number of engineers
getting employed in big-shot software companies...the money spent on training these engineers...which includes using copyrighted properietary software..acquiring licenses..then the tech.support they charge for..blah..blah..
But in case of the open source softwares the cost of getting original software including the licenses is very small as compared to their counterparts..and they are giving you the same high quality output which you claim that you get by using the properietary stuff...in some cases better than that..so the performance factor...its not compromised..
I think corporates should surely go ahead wit the open source softwares..they will get a huge talent breeding ground...which indirectly means a lot of business opportunites
hi,
While the comments about free software are completely valid they are still half the battle, the other part is 'open hardwrae' still that is not there, the battle is still half-won :( . I just hope we can get the 'open hardware' guys also on the bandwagon & then there is possibility. Invite those people to also share the limelight then only something can be achieved.
just a couple of days back we had a huge seminar on free software and curriers.
interestingly enough, most students were knowing about gnulinux (well actually just "linux").
but now they all sea to realise the value of freedom.
the only problem I found was that although there is no dirth of jobs available for free software hackers, it is not evident in the job advertisements etc.
we already know so many big companies using free software but I wonder why do they never talk about it so often.
Is it that they feel it will give an unprofessional impression about their company? or what else could be the reason.
what ever it could be, but students were very happy to actually know the welth of currier opportunities in the field.
I will blog seperately about that seminar and many more but this is some thing amaising that students are now realising the real truth.
I am a common man (ex-serviceman and a farmer) who uses FOSS with out any IT knowledge. I am a home user working with the support of smc-discuss & ilug-tvm for any help. I was using MS for more than 7 years and change to FOSS is not a problem to me. Instead I am fully satisfied on it too. For eg. I am publishing OpenOffice.org spread sheets which can be saved/published many type of files. Kerala is an eg. to India for 100% school education in FOSS and Kerala State Electricity Board working under FOSS. (Govt. of Kerala have to be appreciated for this). However we can hope that the corporate sector will come soon to FOSS from proprietary soft wares.
Sorry for any mistakes in my English.
right now I am at the insight lab for the visualy challenged people.
I had a very wonderful experience teaching and learning from the people in the lab about free software accessibility.
The kerala government seams to be very serious about the project and NGO's are looking at the possibility of finding big employment opportunities for the blind computer literate community which is very talented as well.
Since all are very comfortable using the screen reader on the gnome desktop in ubuntu, the possibilities of opening more opportunities is now a reality.
Indeed many like Mr. Sundar have already got employed in high tech companies.
Sundar is an employee of IBM. This is an example of what is possible for visually impaired people.
I have been conducting workshops for master trainners for last one year and I see the positive fruits coming soon.
your thoughts on free and oeen source software is truly relevant. But, it takes much patience and effort to make the public aware of the advantages of free software. Much support will be needed from those who already uses open source software.
I appreciate you for giving wonderful information about free softwares.
insight is a project for the visually challenged.
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