JOIN USThey have said in a press release that the widespread raids were being conducted on software users to verify whether they used licensed software.
“As a team of representatives of IT companies conducted raids in Chamarajanagar, Mysore and Mandya districts, the news created panic among the small-scale users like cyber café, DTP operators, graphic designers and they had shutdown their shops fearing legal action.” they said.
Secretary of FSMK Jaykumar said IT companies have been targeting small-scale vendors in the name of violation of copyright laws.
“It is yet another example of IT giants, in pursuit of enormous profit, seeking to use every opportunity even at the cost of livelihood of common man, to monopolise the produce and derive profit.”
Jaykumar said they were offering an alternative community-owned ‘free software’ unlike corporate-owned ‘proprietary software’.
“Free software guarantees fundamental freedom to users like right to use, copy, study without restriction, and modify the software. Free software is available almost free of cost. This is already available in more than 50 engineering colleges. FSMK appeals to software users not to panic as there amplefree softwares are available for every proprietary software tool in the market” Jaykumar stated. FSMK volunteers would assist and train software users to switch over to free software almost free of cost and distributes copy-left free software, Jaykumar added.
Visually-impaired
Meanwhile the Public Software Centre, IT for Change, Bangalore has said that Bangalore University, which will introduce computer training to its visually-impaired students starting from December 2011, will be using proprietary software such as JAWS and MS Office.
The Centre has requested BU to replace these with Open Office and ORCA, respectively, in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) as the proprietary software is very expensive.
More info on public software is available on PSC website : http://www.public-software.in/