Composed By (Maninder Singh)
(With inspiration from Dr. Maninder Singh@TU, Dr. Seema Bawa@TU, Mr.Vishal Verma@Bivio Networks and Mr. Niyam Bhushan)
Before Reading this article, just think of the coffee or tea you have in the morning on the bed or may be tea time in the evening to get with your friends or family. How sweetly you prepare and serve tea to your loved ones... But just imagine from the wildest corner of your thinking; what if someone in this world claims a patent and copyright over the method of preparing tea and sues you for using his method without his permission???? Sounds illogical ?? But is it not exactly the same the properiotry giants doing with us? Can you legally 'share' a proprietary software setup CD (remember that piracy is illegal) with your loved ones? Can you ask for the source code of a very popular software tool so that you can experiment for your research interests? I am afraid, you are not !! The whole funda of 'sharing' (sharing the knowledge and sharing the goods... both) fails here ! And yet they talk about creating an economy where knowledge is shared !! Just give a thought to it now if you have never given it before.
This whole story revolves around two main keypoints: Usage of "Copyleft" software (which are not copyright) to save the national monitory treasure and Creation of software whose source code is available to all, with credits to the original author to enable the real Knowledge sharing among the people. It is not bad to purchase the software licenses but where does the rational thinking goes?? We being the residents of a developing country.. see the irony- We have money to purchase license of a properietry software (for which copyleft alternative is availabe); we are ready to spend thousands and lakhs on the software funding but we do not have money to lay down road to a distant village; the government thinks twice to fund the building of a school. Ceilings in many governement schools are still cracked and water oozes out in the rain and children are managing with such an uncomfortable "study environment". There are a number of other needs of money and we are spending it like anything in purchasing licenses when there are equivalent alternatives (even better) are availbale. And then they say, ours is a 'developing' economy !
Lets see the other aspect of the story now. For the development of a knowledge economy we need to share ideas, we need to merge the intelligence powers of different people across the globe to find new dimensions and explore those unreached heights of thoughts which will pave the way towards a new science era for the . But the big irony is that we ourselves are refusing to unleash that path and the new heights by creating/purchasing the proprietary software and ignoring the advantages of Open source software. Above all, dont you think this is inhumane and against the moral of humanity to keep the culture of "Not Sharing"?? Despite the fact that the research is only possible if source code is available and source code is available only in open source software, why are organizations still not aware that how important it is to nurture and permanently adopt the open source software. There are a plenty of new opportunities in the open source software era. I do not mean stop using other software at all but I mean we need to start using and creating open source software as well. Money can buy everything we know, but it can never purchase the human values back once they are gone (by 'not sharing') and it cannot buy the super power of intelligence formed from the merging of different people's intelligence which if put on research can do wonders !! And we can create a better world where the knowledge is really free and distributed without the legal boundaries !! Won't you love living in such a world?
The time to think about it is now! Lets move towards real knowledge sharing economy and every single person can do a lot about it. To know more about open source, visit this link: http://www.opensource.org
- Maninder
maninder.tiet@gmail.com
This whole story revolves around two main keypoints: Usage of "Copyleft" software (which are not copyright) to save the national monitory treasure and Creation of software whose source code is available to all, with credits to the original author to enable the real Knowledge sharing among the people. It is not bad to purchase the software licenses but where does the rational thinking goes?? We being the residents of a developing country.. see the irony- We have money to purchase license of a properietry software (for which copyleft alternative is availabe); we are ready to spend thousands and lakhs on the software funding but we do not have money to lay down road to a distant village; the government thinks twice to fund the building of a school. Ceilings in many governement schools are still cracked and water oozes out in the rain and children are managing with such an uncomfortable "study environment". There are a number of other needs of money and we are spending it like anything in purchasing licenses when there are equivalent alternatives (even better) are availbale. And then they say, ours is a 'developing' economy !
Lets see the other aspect of the story now. For the development of a knowledge economy we need to share ideas, we need to merge the intelligence powers of different people across the globe to find new dimensions and explore those unreached heights of thoughts which will pave the way towards a new science era for the . But the big irony is that we ourselves are refusing to unleash that path and the new heights by creating/purchasing the proprietary software and ignoring the advantages of Open source software. Above all, dont you think this is inhumane and against the moral of humanity to keep the culture of "Not Sharing"?? Despite the fact that the research is only possible if source code is available and source code is available only in open source software, why are organizations still not aware that how important it is to nurture and permanently adopt the open source software. There are a plenty of new opportunities in the open source software era. I do not mean stop using other software at all but I mean we need to start using and creating open source software as well. Money can buy everything we know, but it can never purchase the human values back once they are gone (by 'not sharing') and it cannot buy the super power of intelligence formed from the merging of different people's intelligence which if put on research can do wonders !! And we can create a better world where the knowledge is really free and distributed without the legal boundaries !! Won't you love living in such a world?
The time to think about it is now! Lets move towards real knowledge sharing economy and every single person can do a lot about it. To know more about open source, visit this link: http://www.opensource.org
- Maninder
maninder.tiet@gmail.com
