freedom!!!

Why Software Should Be Free - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
[ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html ]

this is recommended reading. the article is really well written. incidentally, in the cinemas they show this advert and tell you to stop piracy by comparing it to stealing a car, or stealing a purse, or whatever. that with piracy you steal the movie. it's a fallacy, of course, because there is a crucial distinction between stuff like cars and stuff like books, software, information. the latter stuff can be coded electronically and after that, the "marginal cost" of reproduction is essentially nil.

anyway, the Stallman article i linked to above compares free software to roads without toll booths. toll booths are an inefficient way to pay for the cost of making/maintaining roads because they add inconvenience and slow traffic unnecessarily. a better way of collecting money would be unobstrusive, i guess like the ERP (electronic road pricing) scheme in singapore. but read the article. it's filled with very interesting, and might i say accurate, analogies.

the main selling point of free software is the ethic of cooperation and knowledge. it's about creating this thing and then letting others see it and copy it and tinker with it, rather than just marveling at it and paying you to use it. it's not as if they're renting your bike to use for a while; with software "bikes" can be cloned for free and given to every last person.

and with this freedom so much could be done, it's like you can clone food and feed everyone, and if someone else invents this delicious delicacy, everyone gets to eat it too! and the foods can be customized to individual needs as well; no need to wait for microsoft to release a service pack and depend on them only because only they know what went into the food.

best of all, the wheel need not be reinvented: i need not have written all the stuff i wrote above because you can read what Stallman wrote for yourself. the advantage for business using software is that with free software, they can add or modify features themselves, by hiring any savvy programmer they want.

it's also not that much of a coincidence that free software is closely related to "free" as in don't need to pay money. because it is given out freely, the cost of obtaining a copy is minimal. i would be much more confident of a company running on free software than one running windows, because windows increases costs quite dramatically, with probably non-existent extra benefits.

it would be really interesting if a university like princeton switched to linux as the "official" OS on its terminals scattered around campus for student use, and on systems sold to faculty, etc. A lot of money would be saved, which could be spent on more useful things like study breaks! rather than enriching Bill Gates, though i must say that i support his donations to charity (but i would much rather donate myself than pay him, because if i paid myself much more money would go to charity. plus also proprietary software is problematic...)

jasper says he bought his shoes and i can write that on my blog. so there. also, the plan with james is now for us to go east coast first then tennis then badminton. whoopie! that means i've got quite a bit of stuff to carry, though: blades, tennis racquets, badminton racquets, tennis balls... but good thing i can leave most of my stuff in his house and then we go blading.

because jasper was talking about samsara and suffering, i said something about the end of the world. so he asked me what i thought about it, and i said i think if we manage to avert a world war within our lifetime, then there won't ever be another world war.