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Re: [ox-en] The Kerala experience



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Something that I particularly found of note,is Eben Moglen remark about a
triarchical alliance to promote free software as a political and social
movement, which would link up kerala, with latin america, and scandinavia.

I've witnessed latin america and kerala firsthand, but what about
scandinavia,any details about that?

Someone, I think it was juan carlos of hipatia, also mentioned Paraguay as a
good example of politication of free software, does anyone have details
about this aspect?

and was anyone present struck by this:

What also struck me was a particular moment in the speech of Neville Roy
Singham of ThoughtWorks, a leading company in agile software development
using extreme programming techniques. He reminded the audience of the
inaugural plenary that Henry Paulson, the same man who proposed the gigantic
bailout of banks, pounded his fists on a table on a meeting with the Indian
government, saying that they could not free the poor Indian farmers, 10,000
of whom commit suicide every year, of their crippling debts, as this would
destroy the market economy principles. If this is true, and it really turns
your stomach, it does shine a different light on the integrity of the
neoliberal leadership.

Michel

my own report, with citations by stefan and sasi, will appear on the 16th,
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/report-from-the-free-software-movement-in-kerala/2008/12/16

Three days ago, I spend a much too short time at a Free Software, Free
Society conference<http://fsfs.in/content/free-software-free-society-conference-day-one>in
Kerala, which was quite an enthusiastic gathering. Equally present was
Stefan Merten of Project Oekonux, who has published a report in
Keimform<http://www.keimform.de/2008/12/12/the-kerala-experience/>,
which I'm partially reproducing below. (see also added comments by
co-organizer V. Sasi Kumar)

What struck me on the first day was the speech by Eben Moglen, lawyer of the
Free Software Foundation, who basically said that "we have won". As we have
power, we now have responsibility was his main message. This may appear
quite surprising, but seen from the perspective of Kerala, where the
government fully supports free
software<http://swatantryam.blogspot.com/2007/08/story-of-free-software-in-kerala-india.html>and
received Richard Stallman with extraordinary honours, it looked like a
quite realistic assessment. The Kerala government, which mandated usage of
free software by its school system, may well be the first free software
state in the world. Eben Moglen went further, by positing a global axis
consisting of South America, and Scandinavia. I can at least confirm that my
visit in Ecuador last month, also a gathering of free software advocates of
the whole continent, indeed showed it to be a thriving social movement,
supported at least by the regional governments of Ecuador, Venezuela and
Bolivia, with healthy grassroots activities everywhere else. Richard
Stallman was less upbeat than Moglen, stressing we have a long way to go,
much work to do.

Another highlight for me was the meeting of an enthusiastic bunch of free
software cooperative members from the other Kerala city of
Kochi<http://p2pfoundation.net/OSSICS>.
I have added them to my list of similar
initiatives<http://p2pfoundation.net/Free_Software_Cooperatives>,
such as WikiOcean in Pune, and hope that somehow, they may find an
international voice to stimulate the creation of similar initiatives
worldwide.

What also struck me was a particular moment in the speech of Neville Roy
Singham of ThoughtWorks, a leading company in agile software development
using extreme programming techniques. He reminded the audience of the
inaugural plenary that Henry Paulson, the same man who proposed the gigantic
bailout of banks, pounded his fists on a table on a meeting with the Indian
government, saying that they could not free the poor Indian farmers, 10,000
of whom commit suicide every year, of their crippling debts, as this would
destroy the market economy principles. If this is true, and it really turns
your stomach, it does shine a different light on the integrity of the
neoliberal leadership.

*Here is Stefan Merten's report*, without the bullet point summary of the
Eben Moglen speech:




On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 3:07 AM, Fouad Bajwa <fouadbajwa gmail.com> wrote:

one thing has to be realized, the reality between philosophy and
practical use otherwise, science would have not continued to stay
alive!

In my 11 years of experience with FOSS, starting from my pre-college
garage company to my experience in strategic technology management as
well as academics, FOSS in South Asia was more inclined towards how we
accepted it as well as the philosophies that surrounded it. Its
adoption was based upon practical-ism and the philosophy was secondary
in nature.

Simply said, our environment or ecosystem evolved first around the
fact of what we understood. None of the legal implications of pirated
software or the FOSS copyleft and licensing is accepted in our
legislation or legal courts. Software in Pakistan is not patentable by
legislation. People could build solutions around FOSS and sell them at
good price, that was the key use. The difference between software
piracy and IP protected software only evolved after our awareness
campaigns in 2005. Before 2005 people used Red Hat and Suse Linux
because no other operating system would accept 128+ giga RAM on
servers or blades were replacing the traditional RAC environments.

FOSS is the result of the benefit in terms of learning, research and
innovation that people can derive out from it thus what RMS or Bruce
Perens say have very less value in this country of 180 million
inhabitants and if we look at the number of people that even use
computers or software in general, that quantity would in some cases
equal the population of certain countries around the world.......

Coming back to the question. When software or any agricultural item is
termed as a commodity, the idea of a commodity was an object hold
certain tangible value and that was traded as barter. Today's world
evolves alot on monetary value and transactions but in the world of
FOSS, it has continued to be more philosophical and philosophy hasn't
been restricted to RMS or BP but it is what communities that come
together for learning and practice have evolved.

In Pakistan, FOSS is Free as in Free Beer Software...............the
whole IT industry downloads software freely and uses it and does good
business http://www.emergen.biz and the government helps them
http://www.osrc.org.pk, builds local skills http://www.techno-ed.com
and , Universities conduct research http://osrc.niit.edu.pk and
http://osrc.niit.edu.pk/ibm_niit.php, local NGOs equip themselves with
ICT skills, communities get empowered etc etc.

I've been able to witness a whole community development process
leading the FOSS foundation as well as the local ubuntu linux country
team. Every region will have its own perception of the commons. How
they learn to adopt, use, modify and share is based upon their
personal or regional preferences.

If you come to my country, I will give you the seed with the crop
produce if I can "afford" it. Similarly, it took me many years to be
able to buy my personal computer because first it was too costly,
secondly we were given only 20 mins to use a computer at school
because there were 90 students and only 30 computers once a week and
since the Internet was very expensive so we used to plan what we
wanted to search on the internet or write the emails well before we
connected the internet..................there is a clear difference
between the west and the south.

The West invented and adopted it, the South followed in need because
the world was adopting it. Now in the last half decade the South has
understood why it really needs the Internet. The FOSS movement is
fueled by the Internet. The South needs more free and fast internet,
it needs more computers and then FOSS would not be just
gratis.............

Different regions, different FOSS and Agriculture philosophies and
perceptions. :o) My two cents!

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 1:36 AM, Stefan Seefeld <seefeld sympatico.ca>
wrote:
Fouad Bajwa wrote:

Ever heard of any country distributing Agriculture with free seeds?


I think the analogy isn't quite accurate: The seeds don't have to be
gratis,
but the buyer has to have the right to reproduce (and distribute) them.
 As
in software, this used to be normal practice, until the economy evolved
in a
way that made this kind of 'knowledge' a commodity in itself.
The obvious counter-example is Monsanto.

Regards,
     Stefan

--

    ...ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin...

_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de




--

Regards.
--------------------------
Fouad Bajwa
_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de




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_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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