In the discussion below, the Open Source vs. Proprietary distinction is made for all forms of "Content Creation and Transmission"; thus other than computer software I include text, audio and video as well as data.

There is a moral high ground that the Open Source Movement can take and does take when it compares itself to Propreitary Systems. The OSM is fighting for freedom while the PS are fighting for control. The OSM is the "future" which is being restrained by the PS which is the "past". The OSM is young and dynamic people who are "going out there and trying to change the world" while the PS is old "sticks in the mud" who want to keep to the old patterns. Unfortunately, for the OSM the governments, legislatures and courts of the day are (by and large) sticking behind or side-by-side with the PS; even in countries with strong democratic constitutions and institutions. This is a big failure for the OSM and one should try to understand why.

One possible reason is that government is run by old people and they stick with other old people (actual age is not what is relevant here; this age being "in the mind").

Another possible reason is that the OSM is spending so much time "doing things" that they haven't spent enough time "fighting the fight". They care more about technology than about causes.

While both the above reasons have their merits, I would like to present a third possible reason that has not (to my knowledge) been adequately discussed.

Fair-minded constitutional institutions such as governments and the courts do intervene when a large section the population they govern is under threat; this threat could be physical, economic or even ideological. Most democratic institutions are, however, only tuned to react when this "large-ness" criterion is met. When a much smaller population, that is considered "special" in one way or another is under threat, the same institutions do not in general react unless there is power-play at work. By power-play I mean powerful business or military or other extra-constitutional interests. To give an example AIDS was not considered a major health issue by the governments of many countries when it was thought to affect only the gay male population or the sexually prolific (such as "sex workers"). In contrast, when the business interests of large corporations or banks (which at some level represent a very small number of individuals---i. e. the share-holders) are under threat, the government and financial institutions of the country where these coporations have major operations will often provide succour; power-play has come into action.

The nature of the OSM is that it is a movement of the content-creators, for the content-creators and by the content-creators. While some among this movement may argue that they are working for the common good, it is not so until it is perceived to be so by the common person. In fact, some hackers are pretty open about the fact that they wouldn't mind if the freedom to examine the source were somehow restricted to "those who can do something with it". The collection of all content-creators (those within the OSM as well as those with the PS) is perhaps no more than one or two percent of the entire population of the "developed world" and much less than that elsewhere.

The "web" was supposed to "change all this". Everyone was supposed to spring up and be creative and post their ideas with free-flowing discussion and code abounding. Actually, book-reading and education as envisaged in the Gutenberg revolution was supposed to achieve something similar. The one difference between the Gutenberg revolution and the current one is that today far more people in the "developed world" have the economic (time and money) freedom that is necessary to participate in this creative surge. But to many people's disappointment it has not happened.

The "Internet" has become, like so many media before it, a "spectator sport". It does not matter that you shout from the roof-tops to urge people to take a football to the local playground or even go and cheer the local school team, to enjoy themselves without having to spend any money. Most people will opt to go to the big stadium to see Manchester United vs. Arsenal paying money (probably not a lot but infinitely more than they would have by playing themselves!). No one can argue that this is "wrong". It is similarly not "wrong" of people to use their computer as a "television with bells and whistles". To an "insider" it just feels "stupid". In this "outsider" manner of "use" it matters not to the spectator what is inside the television and who produced it and who made the money as long as it works and doesn't cost too much.

All those people who, by training, education, ideology, indoctrination, what-have-you, will not participate in the creative freedom that is possible (with the advent of personal computers and the telecommunication network) are also unaffected by the war that the OSM sometimes claims to be fighting on their behalf. If the PS were to "win" and all machines were able to read files stored in proprietary formats which the user had "paid for", those complaining about the proprietary nature of the format and the restricted nature of access to it would sound like someone accusing the CD seller of being too restrictive since he has only a floppy drive on his computer.

The OSM has two ways to "win the war" against the PS. One way is to acquire enough "power" to engage in "power-play"; with big corporations lining up behind the OSM this may actually happen. To my mind this is a way of losing the war not winning it.

There is a bigger dream. One that will probably be more difficult to achieve. That finally, in this case the creative revolution that was to be unleashed by Gutenberg will actually take place. That the democratic institutions will find that the PS are actually hindering the creative freedom of a large section of their population.

That is the great GNU hope:

The spectator will start to play.

In the manner of Meena's description of Oracle-style Interactive Proofs (OIP), I am trying to anticipate various queries and answer them since I will not be present at the user's meeting. If your question/comment is not handled by this write-up then either I do not know the answer or you question/comment is meaning-less and you should think again. All responses to me for this message will go directly to /dev/null and will not pass GO or collect Rs. 200.

My own motivation

I find certain programs are well-maintained in a "community" fashion (see below). When I find errors and report them, the authors try to fix them or try to explain why this is a "feature" and not a bug. Without putting too fine a point on it this is essentially the software that you will find on my desktop machine at home and in the Institute; there are a few other things that I do not use but would be quite willing to help in "de-bugging". Whenever anyone (including a system administrator) has come to me with questions about such software I have been found willing to find time to help. Since more than 90% of the software that is used more than 90% of the time on our system is of this nature, it is generally assumed that I am a "computer-hack", geek or "computer expert" or computer-addict.

Further, it is assumed that when I do not help, I am being "pricey" or "ideological" or "obstructive". Far from it. It is a practical matter. Software that I use or can easily fix or get fixed or get credit (from the programmer in the form of thanks) for fixing is enjoyable to fix. Other software is not enjoyable and it is anyway the job of the paid programmer from those big companies in the USA to fix such programs.

Isn't it the sysadmins job then?

Now this could be argued. After all what have we hired him for?

This is to misunderstand the system administrators primary job---maintenance of a running system. Small and routine problems crop up all the time and these need to fixed, machines need to be replaced or vendors notified and so on. An extensive list of system administrator's daily and weekly tasks can easily take up at least the entire morning---and this is assuming that there is no crises (like UPS failure or link failure or someone re-booted the main file-server because his screen hung). Given low community knowledge, crises or imagined crises are more frequent as well.

Certainly, part of the system administrator's job is to respond to user's difficulties with the system. Let us take an example (which is quite a real-life one). A user calls the system administrator and says "I cannot print .bdt files on the new printer. I need it urgently." Leaving aside the problem that there are often other pressing issues such as the mail-server being down let's assume that the sysadmin has one hour at his disposal to solve this problem. How is he supposed to solve it?

Well he should first check the configuration of the printer and see that it is ON! Then he checks to see if the .bdt file will print if he sends it for printing. Suppose it works. Voila! The urgent problem is solved---but it will come again since the user will have to print a .bdt file again! Anyway, the other (and more likely) possibility is that it does not print.

In either case, he will go through all the documentation that he can find locally and on the internet regarding printing .bdt files looking for a hint. His chances of finding a solution are much lower (and his search slower) than the person asking him this question who has a Ph.~D. and is (supposedly) an expert in analytical thought. (Remember, the sysadmin has a degree or a diploma in an unrelated discipline---this is a real-life situation). There are so many printers and types of files out there that no system administrator can know about them all. So he does the next best thing which is to ask other "more knowledgeable" users how they print files and so on---in other words it is the community that provides the answer. His chances of finding a solution are much lower if the user is more specialised and if the user's system is more specialised; for example the community may have no answer on "How does one print .eek files on a bull-doze system?" (You would understand this better if you walked into a typical cyber-cafe trying to print out a ".ps" file).

It is unrealistic to expect the system administrator to find a solution based on helpful hints like "the system administrator in Bangalore could solve it" unless the system administrator at Bangalore is running a similar system and has an e-mail address and is willing to help---in any case this would then again be community knowledge. It is totally delusional to think that the system administrator will use this problem as an incentive to design a shiny new printing system that will work for all files on all printers and on all machines at the IMSc. Most of the programs that we use were either written by software professionals or research-oriented academics like you and me---not system administrators. In any case, if we expect him to do this then we should also expect to get abrupt answers when we ask him questions while he is working on this new system---exactly as we get irritated with irrelevant questions while doing research! So can either have a friendly sysadmin or an expert one---not both!

Community knowledge

This brings me to the real answer to "computer problems". Viz. increasing the community knowledge-base about computers and their use; locally and (to the extent possible) globally. This is slow and painful---occasionally you may lose an important file or two days of work or even worse you may spend so much time trying to solve this (apparently) non-research problem that you may be scooped on your great result and thus miss out on a promotion or job. Clearly, individuals have to decide on how much is fair and reasonable. All I can say is that current levels of community knowledge at IMSc are abysmal; just to be painful let me repeat that; current levels of community knowledge at IMSc are abysmal. In such a context a wise system administrator will decline your offer, a good one will take the "next available flight", the guy who stays on will learn to answer "it is being looked into" or use some other delaying tactic.

I had suggested in the past that complex systems or "computer packages" such as "mail", "firewall", "TeX", "printing" be taken up by groups of faculty members as their "pet projects". This way they will learn a little more about the system and increase the community knowledge base. All I can offer is the assurance that this is more (personally) rewarding than the existing system of trying to pay (hire people), coerce (bully people after hiring them) or steal (use illegal software) to get your job done for the moment. You may not get that terrific job or that promotion but you will have the satisfaction of a project well done; as Knuth said about writing "clean" TeX "You will have the satisfaction of having produced a nicely printer paper from a beautifully written computer file". If such rewards are not enough then you should not take up such projects. Unfortunately, if enough people think like this the IMSc computer system is doomed anyway.

And don't even get me started on the responsibility of managing a really large computer budget in such a context...