[Fsf-friends] Statement of FSF India board on recent incidents

[sarath ms]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 6:47 PM, Arun M <arun at gnu.org.in> wrote:

> FSF is not Free Software Movement. FSF and its sister organisations tries
> to
> give leadership to free software movement.


Unfortunately, thats not what the community seems to understand these days.
The leadership is expected to step ahead to lead the movement, but not to
stand behind the people working for the movement and work as a body that
says 'this-is-so-wrong-this-is-no-right' and feel that the 'direction' is
given.


> Also note that being a sister organisations of FSF, FSF India has to
> follow policies of FSF.


I spent some time finding these, but couldn't see anything. [probably i was
expecting transparency ...oops]

Let there be 1000 more organisations to promote free software.
> We just needs to be watchful of whether these organisations are
> helping community or sabotaging it from with in.
>

I don't know if more organizations promoting free software would sabotage
the community or not, but I feel that the kind of views the FAQs seem to put
forth (which I must now understand is going to be different from what the
board members/employees think/say) is going to sabotage the Free software
community in India.

Words from Gitanjali coming back to mind.
>
> "Where knowledge is free
> Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic
> walls"
>

Thats what he said then, and now today we say "Let there be 1000 more
organisations ...."??
I know. This might not be double-speak as I used to think earlier.

Democracy cannot be achieved without democratic procedures. A movement like
Free Software movement should be based on mass support and mass involvement.
One can't deny that because, well, thats how its been working and thats how
it will work too. What motivated activists like me to join and work for free
software is the very fact that its a mass based movement. The charkha (which
coincidentally is part of FSF-I logo) signifies the masses that used it to
participate in the Freedom movement in India, which was again a mass
movement.

"FSF" might not be "FSM" literally, but I hope FSF is not dissociating
itself from FSM. Thats not leadership, thats gonna break our hearts.

-- Sarath M S
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