Long live the freedom software movement

There have been many examples of organizations taking up GPLd code and trying to spin a business model around it(Let us call it organization A). The catch here is that the code is available in the public under GPL. If an individual or another corporation(Let us call it organization B) sees that the offering is costly and the terms offered are too stifling they still have the access to the same code. Let us say that that A has now sweetened the deal with improvements and additions to the code base and offers that as the premium to B. Now, B has the option of taking the improved deal form A or asking for A to give out the improvements to the original code base since the original code base was GPLd. This is where A loses its head. This is where A drops its towel. This is where many organizations understand that it is not a viable model.

But there have been examples of organizations making money out of GPLd software. The important ones coming to the mind is Redhat and Suse. At a time when even redhat didnt have a commercial offering, suse had only the commercial offering. All these people started working "around" GPLd software. They did not work much "on" the GPLd software. Whatever utilities they developed to wrap around the GPLd software making the users adopt GPLd software was aimed with ease of use and technical support and customization for the clients. This worked and companies were successful with this. The object of business is profit maximization. There are plenty of strategies to do it. The problems while doing business with GPLd software is the ethical dilemmas. You want to be true to the GNU philosophy and you have to maximize shareholders profits. As you start wanting more returns from GPLd software that is where you start spiraling down. That is where you are extracting blood instead of milk from the cow's udder. Now, the money you are making is blood money.

Now comes a biggie who thinks that he knows how to make more money from GPLd software and buys the smaller and a better ethical vendor. Without even having a plan to integrate the ethics and the working of this company. The integration plan is one of the most vital thing for a successful takeover. You decide whether you want the smaller firm to continue with its ethics or completely break it down and merge with your profit making culture. There is no road in between. Many mergers and acquisitions have failed because of this. For big corporations it is better you kill it totally like google or microsoft. Take out whatever assets that can be proprietarized and throw out the GPLd ones. The problem arises when you think of proprietarizing GPLd code. There might be plenty of code written by the acquired company under GPL. But just because you wrote it, you dont own it. It is in the GNU world.

Efforts are on to kill the free software movement. Efforts are on to destroy the free software foundation. Efforts are on to kill the GPL. And this time it is a totally co-ordinated effort from all the bigs. We dont know how it is going to end. But we know for sure that the GPL document has stood its test of time. It has been framed with the core human societal values at its core. It has not been framed for profiteering. It has been framed with the basic human ethic of "sharing". They all thought that they bring down RMS they bring down GPL. They are wrong. They should have done it the other way round, then it might have worked. But, now it is not working. People are sratching their heads. All their lawyers and PRs are working overtime to malign the GPL.

So, clearly now is the time to advertise freedom software. Now is the time for all the individuals and ethical groups to spread the word of freedom software. Now is the time to share. Now is the time to side with the free software foundation and identify the blobs in the free software foundation and replace them with GPLd code since we have already lost the Linux foundation for the blobs. Now is the time to start GPLd software. Yes they are not flashy, Yes they are not easy to use. Now is the time to make them flashy. Make them more usable. Make them more known to the public. Now is the time to celebrate the contributions of one and all made to the freedom software world. Now is the time to provide due recognition to all the developers who work both for earning and for human ethics. Now is the time to spread the names across the public network. Now is the time to dig out the the name sof the contributors on which all the proprietary world of software is standing. Now is the time to tell that Macos and ios are visual shells on BSD code. Now is the time to shout that the flashy PS4s are just an interface to the awesome BSD code. Above all now is the time I request all developers developing for fun for serious ethics to please release their code under GPL and not under any other permissive licenses.

As a long time GPLd software user, I salute all the freedom software developers and thank them from the bottom of my heart for providing the world an ethical alternative.

Long live GPL. Long live RMS. Long live the sharing ethos.

Bring back the feed readers and push back the algoritms

In the present world of social networking, the corporations have pushed us into the push method of giving information. That is information is forced through our throat. It is a torture but with golden and platinum tools. It is like we have been manipulated to enjoy the torture. The torture of forced feed of information. The information which is curated by the 1%. There was a time before the explosion of the public network, the 1% did not have "real" information of the remaining 99%. It was just a vague idea that people are in misery in general and they have to be maintained so. But, today, the corporations know the level and extent of misery of every individual and this information is extracted to the maximum. The information is available free with the consent of the individual. No need of any special sponsored survey, which was happening before the era of the public network. Data of the people was only with the government. Corporations would cozy up with the governments for the data. Now, it is not so. It is the other way round, the governments are cozying up with the corporations. That is the amount of data available with them. All this is because the corporations are modelling the behavior and acts of the individual by carefully curating the information which will be bombarded to the user. The user will have no option but to digest it. In the beginning he might resist. But the same data is coated with sugar in another pushed information. Until you "like" the information you will be bombarded with the same info in plenty other forms, hidden.

This push strategy does not give the user any sort of freedom regarding choice of avoiding it. If you search for a certain information, the search result which is payed for is pushed to you. You think that you are pulling the result from the search engine. But taking your query as an input with various other personal information, the search result is "personalized" and "pushed" to you. Whatever is presented to you would not be what you really wanted. But, you will be told, this "is" what you searched for. The same with all the social networking algorithms. The name algorithm is a fancy name for the service provided to puss what he wants to tell you regarding any subject you search for with your hashtag. Hashtags are not for the convenience of the individual users. It is for the convenience of the corporations. Just see the amount of hashtags in any post sponsored. The hashtag is one key which is visible to the user. There are plenty in the metadata of sponsored posts which will be used to feed to you based on the metadata collected from your likes and dislikes. Dont think that your dislikes are neglected. Dislikes grab more of your eyeballs than the things you like. If you come across a post which you like, you will see the subject and like it without even reading it. It is not the same with your dislikes. You want to read through and pat yourself on your back for you being correct.

This is the time for Feed readers. The feed reader which google killed. The feedreader which mozilla, the ethical browser wants all the users to forget. Now, what is so great about the rss/atom feeds. Well to start with the technology is tried and tested and works beautifully. It is simple to implement. Whenever I have requested a website maintainer of my interest for adding feed support, it was done in a days time. It is so human. This is a pull strategy of getting updated information from your preferred/trusted information provider. It supports individual websites. That is the websites run by individuals. It supports blogs, which again was killed and pushed to obscurity by all the social networking behemoths. Blogs are so simple and beautiful.

A simple website is a treat to watch and browse. They appear the same in the most featured and also the minimum browsers. If I like the content on and individual's website, I will subscribe to his feed. Only when I ask my feedreader to refresh do I get information regarding any new posts. If I dont want to read, then I will not refresh my feed. This feed is chosen by me. There is no algorithm here. It might be suggested to me from a friend, But, I have the choice of going through his content and to subscribe or not. Once you like an article, since you read only the first few lines, you are going to visit the page. You are now supporting him by visiting his page and may or may not click on some ads, so that the content creator earns money. If the created content is so good, you can donate to him and encourage him to continued to do more. It is a win win situation for both the creator and the consumer. The creator need not worry about people from other domains reading, not understanding it and providing shitbag of comments. The creator is the king as should be. He should have the full rights as to whether any comments should be kept up or not. It is his content. You might not like it, and you may unsubscribe. The creator will find other fans, but, the consumer might not find more capable content creators. The feeds give ample opportunities for both the creators and consumers.

If you are a content creator, kindly add RSS/atom support to your website/blog. And if you are a consumer, support your content creator by using feed readers and supporting the creator directly without any intermediary who is making money out of the creator and also the consumer. Let us make the public network a better place.

All oppressions start with an idea and dont die

We have all come across news regarding multinationals/individuals/corporations being sensitive/insensitive to human existence/development/status quo etc... Yes, that sentence was a mouthful. I couldn't write it any other way. All those terms are so tightly tied that you can add way more to the same sentence. Why do people do what they do. It all starts with an Idea. Th idea of existence/persistence/growth/identity. now, when people talk about idea, they normally associate it with a huge business/science/technological idea. But these ideas are based on smaller ideas and also the other way. There have been smaller ideas coming out as branches from bigger ideas. The ideas i am talking about here are the destructive ones. The ideas are about taking inputs which are un-ethical. The output will definitely be something valuable in the real world for the oppressor. For the oppressed(input) the result would be devastation. The oppressor will never know and want to know that this devastation will hit him in the immediate future or a little ahead. The idea is so damn shortsighted

Well, what are we exactly talking about here. We are talking everything which is labelled under non-sustainable development. The problem here is two fold. One is the team carrying out the devastation with the core general idea.The other is the devastation surrounding the group trying to correct the whole non-sustainable thing. The thing concerning the core idea is that even if the idea generator gives the whole plan up, the idea is still up for use. The other complication is the branching from this core idea, the subsidiaries. In fact these subsidiaries have more at stake compared to the bigger ones. The bigger ones bail out once the hurdles for returns increase. The smaller ones continue and in fact all the smaller ones can coalesce and form one big juggernaut. These smaller ones never give up. This gives an impression that the problem is bigger and there is only one big oppressor

These smaller ones are like the hydra. You get one another takes his place. This is known by all the stake holders. So, they just continue. The more educated these are the more clean and polished the oppression. What are the roles of the oppressed, the government, the general public, the press and the international community at large to stop this. Who are responsible for stopping this. Who is responsible for the situation in the first place. What are the roles of these people in resolving this. Cant we live without technology which is at the core of this oppressor/oppressed scenario. Can the world be stable without this. Is the world not stable because of this. Is the world stable. Why are the majority oppressed and the minority the oppressor. Are humans such. Are all the animals such. Why is it that equality so difficult to incorporate in living beings. Marx who started with equality had to adjust to the superiority of a few. Wont the superior ones be constrained if they have to maintain equality with the mundane.

If this has to continue, then why question it in the first place. Why show it as something wrong. Why show people who do it as if they are wrong. Does anybody become right by just telling that this is wrong. What is actually "wrong". Do we understand the right and wrong. Are we programmed with points to clearly spell out right and wrong. If we are clear on this why is everybody bearing the wrongs. Why are people doing the wrongs. If a rule is beneficial to the majority is it any excuse for the minority to bear the brunt of it. Both the groups will have their own right and wrong which are totally incompatible.

Until a time every action of all living beings happen for general good without changing the status quo or improvement chances of all living beings.........