Founder of Internet Growth Engine SANGKRIT.net Rajendra Kumar Pandey has proclaimed the Free Software Policy to get persuaded with all the governments alike by organizing the support of hackers in computing and politics from worldwide. He did so by accepting the draft prepared by the founder of Free Software Foundation Richard Matthew Stallman on Tuesday, January 14, 2014 at New Delhi.
RMS did name it Draft Digital Freedom Goals before to RKP’s calling it the Free Software Policy. RMS had written the draft mentioning India but RKP replaced the term “India” by “Governments” and made a few very minor changes to make it universal. Overall both the leaders have agreed upon the following: –
Free Software Policy
Digital technology in a free society must respect users’ freedom.
All the countries must move towards _free_ software — software that respects the four essential freedoms: to run the program, study and change its source code, redistribute unchanged, and redistribute with changes.
Governments of all countries do require advancing towards digital freedom on six fronts.
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For digital sovereignty, governments will cease installation of nonfree software in government agencies, then over time replace currently used nonfree software with free software. E-governance must use only free software.
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For education in freedom, governments will have schools teach, distribute and promote only free software and free textbooks, and explain the civic reasons.
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For citizens’ digital security, governments will make digital products safe by requiring firmware to be free, and limit digital systems from amassing and keeping huge collections of personal data.
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For a free web, governments will make the software contained in web pages respect users’ freedom too.
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For freedom in digital commerce, governments will implement digital cash that allows users to be anonymous when buying from a web site, but doesn’t let the web site conceal its total income.
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For freedom of digital expression, governments will guarantee that no web material can be blocked or removed by government without due process of law.
HAPPY HACKING!
RKP said to RMS: “I suggest for you and me to endorse this in our personal capacity at the core (as only respected individuals of our respective fields) to make it easily acceptable by others also (individually) while all the organizations (including ours) should only be seen as supporting (or not supporting) this Free Software Policy.”
RMS said to RKP: “Yes and no. Individual support is welcome, and so is support from a political party. Or, if a political party wants to write its own statement of support for free software, we would welcome that too (but we will have to judge by what it says).”
