One of the major factors which help proprietary software vendors keep a grip on the market is ignorance on the part of the consumers. Newspapers, one of the key sources of information to the common man, to aren’t playing their part and in their state of ignorance, helping such organizations.
Recently, on twitter, i pointed out the proprietary bias shown by Times of India vs Open Mindedness shown by The Hindu “#timesofindia vs #thehindu Clear proprietary bias shown by #timesofindia http://3.ly/bvh
and http://3.ly/MQk #opensource #linux “.
I also came across many internet related news articles in the local paper Amar Ujala which uses the logo of Internet Explorer in all their web-related articles. It gives a wrong notion to the ignorant masses that the Internet and Internet Explorer are synonymous. So i pointed out this to the Editor, Amar Ujala through a letter, a copy of which I am pasting below. My motive is to inspire every reader to fight FOSS ignorance in whatever best way s/he can and spread the spirit of Open Source.
All the best to all.
The Letter
—————-
Hello sir,
I am a regular reader of your newspaper an am highly appreciative of
the content matter and the quality of unbiased journalism of the
daily.
I would like to point your kind attention to a regular feature of the
web related articles published in Amar Ujala. Most of such articles
contain the logo of Microsoft’s proprietary web browser – Internet
Explorer.
Apart from being a free publicity for the browser and the company, it
gives a wrong notion to the lakhs of readers of the newspaper that the
Internet and Internet Explorer are synonymous. The role of a newspaper
is to create a better, an aware society. Using Microsoft Internet
Explorer’s logo in your articles gives the ignorant readers a notion
that Internet Explorer is what the Internet is all about, which is
totally wrong. A newspaper of your reputation should instead promote
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) which gives the users the freedom
to use them, without being under the restrictions of copyright laws.
Mozilla Firefox is one of the most popular Open Source browsers
available. Another Open Source browser, Google Chrome is doing well in
the browser market. Opera and Apple’s Safari, though not Open Source,
are still options available to the users.
My only concern is that the newspaper should not mislead the readers.
Hence I request you to kindly look into the matter and do something in
this regard as early as possible. I would like to get an
acknowledgment of this letter to you.
I would be highly obliged.
Thanking you
Yours sincerely,
—
Tanay Mathpal
Final Yr, Computer Engineering
College of Technology
Pantnagar
Tanay's Blog 