Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Dealing with blind hatred for the GPL (Daniel Pocock)

[Fabio Pesari]

On 02/27/2016 08:23 PM, Harsh Gupta wrote:
>
> As a current student in India, I feel this point is very valid.
> We have a clean slate out here, not only in terms of opinions of
> developers but also in terms of users and bureaucracy. Our
> bureaucracy is willing of listen to the voices of the people in Free
> Software Movement. Our government adapted the policy of using FOSS
> for applications government builds [1]. A month ago we prohibited
> the differential pricing on data, which is a big win for net
> neutrality [2].
> Just a few days ago our patent office said no to software patents [3].

Thank you for your testimony, Harsh (your name is heavy metal, by the
way!), and thank you Daniel for raising this very important point!

The world isn't just the West and speaking anecdotally, the most
committed free software supporters I've ever seen were from Asia, like
___blind___ Trisquel programmer Ali Abdul Ghani ([0]). And plenty of
able-eyed GNU/Linux users make a huge issue about GTK and Qt looking a
tiny bit different...this just shows how easy it is to get caught up
with trivialities and think short-term when everything is already out
there, and we just need ways to popularize it.

I also was really surprised to see someone stand up to a giant like
Facebook when you Indians rejected Free Basics. Europe already lost the
net neutrality fight, and I honestly thought other countries wouldn't do
much better, but I am glad I was wrong!

Here in Italy we're just a tiny bit "behind" technologically, and we
just welcomed Amazon's VP as our chief of digital office! And ours is a
country that should have learned its lesson, they say...

The whole notion of proprietary software is both unjust and irrational
and I am fairly certain that free software will prevail, eventually. I
am sad that it won't happen before some people die, are imprisoned,
framed, tortured, bought out or threatened for it but it will prevail, I
have no doubt about it. Still, we should always be hopeful that it
happens within our lifetimes and peacefully, which could happen only if
people like you never give up!

[0]: http://itsfoss.com/ali-miracle-interview/