Thu January 1 1970 It is well-known that using Microsoft products is risky because of many reasons. Just to refresh your memory, Microsoft Windows (of any flavour) is the most insecure operating system. Viruses, of course, are well-known, but most people do not realise that viruses are a problem only in MS Windows. A kind of malicious software called Trojans is, per ...

Thu January 1 1970 The Free Software movement has seeded many other movements that strive for freedom in creativity. These include Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Open Access in scholarly publication, and so on. Some music groups have said that it is better for them if free download of music is permitted because that helps their music reach more people, which, in turn, ...

Thu January 1 1970 The publishing industry started with the invention of the printing press. What used to be a time-consuming and difficult task, namely, making copies of books, became much simpler and fast. Thousands of copies could be made within days. This meant that owners of printing machines could make thousands of copies of books and sell them to make money. ...

Thu January 1 1970 Over the last several hundred years, people have created a large number of cultural artefacts in the form of sculptures, paintings, pottery, clothes and so on. And also "immaterial" stuff like stories, music, films and so on. But over the last couple of centuries or so, we have had the means to preserve these in the form of material objects like g ...

Thu January 1 1970 Copyright laws came into being in the face of the arrival of printing technology. The intension behind bringing the law was to allow authors to benefit financially from their work. The idea was that this would encourage creative people to create more so that society would benefit. But now things have changed without people even noticing the change ...

Thu January 1 1970 An Interview with Richard Stallman
(This interview appeared in Frontline, Volume 26 - Issue 04 :: Feb. 14-27, 2009 under the title "Liberating Cyberspace")

Richard Mathew Stallman needs no ...

Thu January 1 1970 Recently, the Indian Express published a report where allegations were thrown at Kerala State IT Mission and SPACE and also at Arun, who currently works for KSITM. SPACE prepared a response to the report and it was published by the newspaper in the Letter to the Editor column. I personally believe that what t ...

Thu January 1 1970 This is good news for the Free Software community and for a lot of others. A US court of appeals has decided that a number of patents on software and business practices are invalid. This decision has wiped out much of the patent portfolios of many big companies, though this does not mean that software cannot be patented in future. According to th ...

Thu January 1 1970 When we speak of Free Software (FS), we are speaking about the freedom it gives users, as all supporters of the FS movement understand (or, at least, are expected to know). And freedom of software cannot exist in isolation. It depends on other freedoms, such as freedom of speech. People in the Free Software movement have been speaking against prop ...

Thu January 1 1970 A comment on my earlier post on the denial of democratic rights to individuals and communities attracteda a comment that virtually accused me of supporting "terrorists". I can understand the feeling of the writer, a retired army officer. Maybe he had to face "terrorists" during his service. But, in my humble opinion, gives no right to the State to ...