Welcome to Freedom Matters. Sixty two years have passed since that momentous day in 1947 when the shackles of two centuries of British rule ended and India entered a new stage in her history. Freedom is not a new concept. In this age, we consider it of prime importance to know and fight for our rights and freedoms.
In this age of technology, software plays an essential part in our daily lives. Emails, greetings cards, social networking sites and micro blogging sites have captured the imagination of many and people cannot do without them. The growth and use of computers has increased from zero to almost universal since the mid twentieth century. There are many players on the scene in the software market, and softwares come with different licences.
There is disagreement from software vendors about what license should be used for software. The two opposite philosophies are at loggerheads, one the proprietary and the other, the Free and Open Source philisophy. Research has shown that awareness and knowledge of FOSS is very low, especially in India. Most users of proprietary software use it because it was pushed to them by their computer vendors.
But things are changing. People are increasingly concerned about the freedoms they gain by using Free and Open Source Software. We have seen the power of community driven works like Wikipedia. The Debian project is a historical mother project with Freedom as its core philosophy. Read this article to know more about FOSS: Making the impossible happen - the rules of free culture.
