The premise of Free(dom) Software!

We are in an era that is defined and shaped largely by the emergence and amazing growth of the Information Technology. The ever-increasing role of IT in defining and changing our life profiles has been overwhelming. One of the key and unique attributes of this digital age has been the creation of humongous volume of ‘information’. Naturally, presence of such huge pile of information has also given rise to various forms of channels and media to cater to the needs for distributing and disseminating this information. The irony however is that while on one hand we witness the high-volume generation of information and emergence of newer and sophisticated technologies and tools to distribute and process such information, on the other hand we are seeing attempts to make this information more and more restrictive, inaccessible and expensive for the common man. In short, as the creation and distribution of information becomes easier and the potential of this information to influence the lives around increases, the efforts to claim exclusive rights on it and establish monopoly on the same also increases exponentially.
.
The Information Technology revolution has given us a powerful means to reach more information to more people easier, faster and efficient. IT carries tremendous potential to act as a strong catalyst in the efforts to improve the lives of millions, especially that of the underprivileged and the uncared majority. It offers an effective platform to provide impetus to the struggles world over for positive change. Thus any effort to allow such a potent platform to be hijacked and (mis)guided by the greed of profiteers would be highly regressive. Unfortunately this is exactly what the corporate world want to achieve through draconian Intellectual Property Right laws.

Ownership for information is a creation of the modern profit interests. Allowing uninhibited spreading and sharing of information will mean that the corporate stand to lose the opportunity to make huge profits for themselves. Today the owners of information are the profit mongers and the monopolists, not the enlightened souls who had only the good of the society at their hearts. Had it been in the hands of the greedy modern day corporate, even Fire and Wheel would have been under patent today! For the corporate, an ideal world would be the one where the users never get to own a software but continue to keep paying them royalty whenever we see, hear, read or use any piece of information they created. They would not only want to protect their software from copying, they would, if possible, even want to stop emergence of any means that would help copying! Corporate may want to put behind bars not only the people who copy a software from one computer to another inside their own home or give a copy of the CD to their friends, but also the people who don’t ditch their friends or neighbors by not informing the corporate about their ‘piracy’! They fill their coffers by maintaining their monopoly on the information and they are willing to go to any extent to protect their ‘rights’ to rob the people!

The IT revolution has resulted in creating a distinct economy of its own and it has brought a new imbalance in the existing economic orders. The IT economies have successfully established an artificially inflated exchange value in their favor over other agricultural and industrial economies world over. The fundamental difference in the manufacturing process of software products versus other material goods is at the core of the huge profits that the IT conglomerates manage to amass for themselves. What enabled IT economy to create such a huge surplus is the fact that the software needs no investment or expenses to replicate and make copies once the original is made, unlike material goods or other agricultural products. And the prices of these software products are kept absurdly huge that it has no relation whatsoever to the investment made to create it. The companies continue to reap in profits for years and in many multiples of the actual expenses incurred to create the first copy. With its unique value creation paradigm, the ‘digital economy’ has thus managed to disconnect itself from the very realities on the ground.

For example, the price of a Windows XP CD (~$275) becomes equal to around 600kg of rice in the Indian market (read it 6000kg if you go by Rs.2/kg scheme)! Microsoft can simply give a CD to a farmer in India and take away 600kg of rice from him. Did Microsoft lose anything in this deal? Nothing absolutely! They still have their original XP CD with them and they can create another hundreds of thousands of such CDs with just few cents per CD (the cost of the disk ie). What about the farmer? He lost 600kg of rice and you can calculate the effort (money, time and labour) he has to put in to create another 600kg of rice! The disparity cant get ridiculous than this! And Microsoft insists each one of us should buy new Windows XP CD for each of the computers at our home or office! It is this economy that the software giants want to protect through their monopolies and ‘Intellectual Property’ rights.

Thus, it is more important for developing economies than anybody else that they dont allow the monopoly interest of these IT corporate take precedence over their own national interests. Free Software movement thus attains more political significance for countries like India. Economically it makes a perfect case for developing and underdeveloped countries to go the Free Software route as the cost for Proprietary software becomes prohibitively huge. But more than the cost, it is the Free Software philosophy and the development model that should be more interesting for these societies. The Free Software initiative demonstrated how a common cause can bring a whole community together and how they can work in unison for the common good of the society as a whole. Profit has been the least motivating factor in this grand collective initiative. The core philosophy as epitomized by the Free Software that the freedom for all is much more important and sacrosanct than the greed of a few may guide not only the Software world but every other endeavors of our social life as well.