Yes – the title is deliberately that. On 19th August 2006, RMS spoke to a small gathering at the Faculty Hall of the Indian Institute of Science. Now if you have listened to his speeches more than once you realise that it is more in terms of a socio-economic interpretation of the current community of programmers and society as a whole rather than an exposition of the deep technical designs of the GNU Project. In fact he continues with a whole bunch of hoary old jokes that appeal to those who are hearing him for the first time but more than once lose their charm. However, this time it was different. The talk was more deconstructed in terms of patent laws encompassing software patents, patents on generic drugs etc, collaboration and community but most importantly it was about getting the message of Free Software across properly so that more and more people appreciate both the need and the existence.

Somewhere along the line the importance of Free Software in Education became the central point of discussion and RMS talked a little about the recent decision by the Indian Government to shun the OLPC project. Although there is not much publicly available information on the decision (or could be that I don’t have access to them), RMS was certain enough to comment on record that it was not a decision that would be beneficial in the long run. As he said, projects like the OLPC which have involvement and participation as their main way of doing things are best placed to succeed and are surely on of the innovative ways one can approach a solution to a problem.