Re: [PubSoft] [rms@gnu.org: Nonprofits and free software]

At 00:43 24.01.2003 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
-------------------------
> Imagine that you are in a fairly lawless situation. No licenses. No law
> enforcement. (Yes, there are laws, but they are not/cannot be enforced).
> If everybody can "look at the source", then in this situation, all the
> other benefits follow more or less automatically.
>
>That is true for the moment, but it won't remain so.

This is what I thought until recently also. But when I play the scenario a
bit further, I come to different conclusions _for_Vietnam_. See my other mail.

> The companies'
>strategy is to let poor countries become dependent on proprietary
>software; then they clamp down harshly. The impression that people
>are safe using software disregarding its restrictive licenses is,
>unfortunately, a mistake.

Take it that way: MS Office is probably something in the 400 to 600 USD
price range. A Vietnamese office worker gets a monthly salary of 50 USD
(State offices) to let's say 150 USD (well paid private business) - with an
average probably around 100 USD. There is IMO NO WAY that MS is going to be
able to sell their office packages to their price in Vietnam on a larger
scale. At least not as long as there is OpenOffice available. The issue is
a bit different for the OS, which is cheaper, and where end-user
alternatives for the time being are not yet really available. But until
that time that they can go for it, there might be good alternatives....

>So is the idea that being able to see the source is enough to give
>them freedom.

Again, the situation in Vietnam is probably a bit unique:
If you look at the list of "most spoken languages", you will see, that for
pretty much all the other more spoken languages (Spanish, English, French,
Chinese, Hindu, Arabic, etc.) there exist versions of MS SW. Vietnamese is
the first one in that list (around position 12), where there is no
reasonable working version.
"Open Source" is therefore critical to make local translations of SW.
Nobody cares about "rights", i.e. whether you are allowed to do so, or not.

> . "Open Source Software" works without much explanation and background
> understanding,
>
>What you mean by "works" does not include understanding what they're doing.

This is pretty much true.
Which gets us to religion: If somebody does "good things", but knows
nothing about something called "God": will he get to heaven (whatever this
is) like the one who does exactly the same "good things", but thinks that
he knows God?

>If people do the right thing, it's an accident, and you can't expect it to
>continue.

Well, the only sure thing which will continue, are accidents ;) (See Mc Murphy)

The problem right now here is, that programmers do consider "Free/Open
Source Software" as a one-way "take it and be free to do what you want".
Due to the absence of any comprehension of the concept of a "license", they
don't see, that they have to keep it open/free, and that they should
contribute back to the community. If a Vietnamese company takes a Free
Software package, and uses it to produce some freeware (as it seems to
happen right now very often), then we might be in a better position
regarding MS, but we don't take advantage of the benefits of Free Software.

The fastest / most effective way seems to be to go for "Open Source/Open
your source" as a brief slogan (which would work even without much
explanation), and to educate about "Free Software" in parallel.

Goals:
- to make SW available with Vietnamese GUI (which proprietary SW will not do)
- to make alternatives to proprietary SW available,
so that there can be no effective threat from MS and the like
(Strategy actually could be, like if we would prepare everything
for a possibly country-wide dissertation to Free/OSS, setting an
example for other countries to follow. This would keep them at bay.)
- to make efforts sustainable and not dependent on any single Vietnamese
company,
especially with basic SW like OS, office packages, etc.,
by opening up the source
- to encourage users only to use open file and data interchange formats,
so that they keep their own choices open about what SW they want to use,
and what their partners want to use.
- to encourage programmers to take part in international SW projects
(e.g. sourceforge.net, openoffice.org), in order to make sure
that those packages are also usable in Vietnam.

So far for now. Have to go to a meeting ....

Cheers,
Stefan

To facilitate co-ordination regarding the introduction of OSS SW in Vietnam

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