The Tamil Nadu government may be trumpeting its scheme to distribute computers for free to students but it is setting a poor example for what a state should do, says American software freedom activist Richard Stallman.
"It distributes laptops loaded with non-free software to children, teaching them to be dependent on paid products. It creates a system of digital colonisation," Stallman, who has waged a storied battle against software giants like Bill Gates, said in an e-mail interview to The Times of India. He criticised the state's ambitious free laptop scheme that hands out computers with the Windows operating system. |
