SPACE's 10th anniversary celebrations got off with a lecture by Richard M Stallman on ‘A Free Digital Society’ today(16 January 2014) at Mascot Hotel, Thiruvananthapuram. He also released the 10th year souvenir of SPACE on the occasion.
Addressing the issue of free software in government, he urged governmental agencies to exclusively use free software. The state had a responsibility to maintain control over their computing and it is impractical with proprietary software, especially those by foreign companies. Questioning the trustworthiness of proprietary software, Stallman pointed out how they came attached with malicious functionality.
On the issue of technology for education, he said that educational institutions should take initiatives to propagate free software and use it exclusively. Proprietary software, that is an agent for withholding knowledge, should be used only to teach reverse engineering, an area with growing demand.
Stallman also urged that the use of Blu-ray Discs be discouraged as they employ several layers of Digital Rights Management (DRM) which restricts the usage of the discs. He said that the non-commercial distribution of published works should be legalised and the countries should get rid of arbitrary censorship. He also criticized the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) controversial decision to add DRM to HTML5.
The lecture was attended by more than 350 people and was organized in association Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ).
