Recently, I came to now about tie-up between VTU with Microsoft, to develop curriculum, help in student's project and help in research and development.
Immediately, the FSF enthusiasts raised alarm and came up with the open letter. Well, I got this information from my Guru's blog.
Seriously, I was upset at the contents of the letter. It though seemed like a desperate move by the fsf enthusiasts, it seemed as it came out of a retaliation towards imposing of some rule. It looked like typical political behavior.
On why, I mentioned it as hypocrisy:
- The statement "We have recently witnessed the devastation caused in the global economic domain and its effect on the Indian economy by following the principle of complete integration into the global economy and the lack of protection of interests of India's needs. ", has nothing to do with free knowledge dissemination. The recent crisis was seen because of un-regulated financial engineering in the US of A. No economy can survive alone without global integration. No economy can be monopolistic in this age. A simple example is, if all the BPO, in India close down, though it will increase unemployment in India, it will create more crisis in the developed countries, because, the cheap service that the Indian BPO industry provides, cannot be obtained in the developed countries. We are lucky, that the BPO industry has generated employment opportunities. The day, the BPO service becomes expensive, this corporates in India, themselves may outsource the BPO services to other developing countries where the service would be cheaper. Hence, economy cannot survive without global integration. Further, SEBI and RBI are powerful enough, to protect India from inconsistencies in the global economy.
- "India needs to become intellectually self-reliant and this is possible only when we start identifying local problems and create solutions for these local problem statements", to this, please explain the scope of the local problems. The scope is not restricted to curriculum in Universities. I bet. But, the scope definitely includes, what the educational system imparts in the growth of a student from school to university.
- On the statement: "Intellectual self-reliance, which is an essential step towards economic self-reliance, can be achieved by ensuring that our education is not a subject to market forces.", I again emphasize that, `Intellectual self-reliance' does not guarantee `Economic self-reliance'. Economy of a country can never be decoupled with the economies of other countries. What will happen, if there are no `knowledge consumers' and only producers?
- The statement: "What sort of technology ensures the uniform development of society? Technology that conforms to the concepts of Free Knowledge and free (or open) standards and which is non-proprietary would qualify. ", if one sees the number of branches that the linux kernel has spun off, in the last 5 years, one would never resort to fsf, because there are too many branches to integrate and universalize the development.
- "We want our students to be free to explore technology, learn from it and then apply this knowledge to develop India's economy. " As easy as said. I repeat, "if there are no knowledge consumers to the knowledge that we produce, how will the economy survive."
- The term `vendor lock-in` and `the economy'. The simple rule is that the economy is driven by business. Business is driven by customers. To ensure that business runs seamlessly, the corporate will do a analysis on what to use, which vendor to use etc. To be frank, the mindset of people is such that, people believe the support to be implicit, from the vendor, whose product is being used to drive the business. Now, since the vendor is bound by an SLA (Service Level Agreement), he is bound to provide the support for his products. Specifically, will Linus Torvalds or any of his employees, provide support for `Linux', without effecting the business. Microsoft has employed people to provide that support.
- The statement: Companies that are able to develop useful proprietary technologies in-house are rewarded with a valuable asset: they can either use it exclusively or profit from the sale of licensing of their technology to other parties... It is as if, companies that come out with products that use `free software' do not make money, by making those products.
- Further the statement: This technology is contradictory to the concepts of Free Knowledge. Globally, it has been proved in the majority of cases that proprietary technolgy is not in the best interest of society. Till now, it was addressing the `economy', `self-reliance', `global crisis'.
My point is this, if the FSF enthusiasts believe that free software is what will benefit `The Indian Economy', and we will become `knowledge producers' etc, then they should allow students, to explore both the `closed standards' and the `open standards'. If Microsoft ties up with VTU, FSF enthusiasts should tie-up with VTU in imparting knowledge on `Free Software' and `Open Standards'. Point blank, a tie-up not on advertising the negative effects of `close standards' and `proprietary software', but for imparting knowledge on positive effects of `open standards' and `free software'. If students believe that knowledge has to be free, then the student will definitely end up believing in `Free software', the way each of the enthusiasts did. Let the student have the option and let him/her choose it. In true sense, it is not necessary that `free thinking' comes only by using `open standards' or `free software'. Unless he or she is exposed to `closed standards', how will one know the benefits of `open standards'.
The only thing that I like about the letter was proposing `mutually beneficial tie-ups'. This is what should have been emphasized in the letter.
If people are always kept in `the light', and never exposed to `the dark', they will never appreciate `the light'.
