Re: A review of the seminar by an outsider

--- In bmslug@yahoogroups.com, "gadhadar" <gadhadar@...> wrote:

I do not believe that this is group is moderated because we believe

that users use their freedom with responsibility.

> So they started speaking as usual and then they go to the part on Ip
> rights (Intellectual property Rights to be precise) and as usual
> Basmati and Turmeric comes to the fore ;they start saying that the
> Americans have applied for patents to these substances but when we
> look closer the people who applied for these patents are hold your
> breath Indian- Americans(INDIANS living in America).

First, I was speaking about patents. There are huge differences

between patents, copyrights and trademarks and these three
incompatible issues are wrongly coupled together as IP.

Second, the patents are not in the hands of those Indians there but in
the hands of the Monopolistic Corporations that had hired them.
As a matter of fact, 90% of the patents are owned by Corporations and
90% of them are based in the US.

When the Britishers, French, Portuguese, others came to invade India

they used the gulliability of individuals and groups to "divide and
conquer" us.
Now again the policies of the present and past governments are not in
the interest of the majority of the population but only in favour of
the rich foreign and Indian Corporation. Thus are ideological
opposition to Monopolies.

>
> And then they talked of WALMART coming to India and how it will
> displace the local shopkeeper. Just give it a moment ; how can
> Walmart give goods at a very low price which the shopkeeper can't ?
> The fact is all the extra money goes into the shopkeepers pocket as
> extra profit . So if you are buying something whose MRP is Rs100. You
> pay that much to the shopkeeper but when you buy it at walmart you pay
> Rs70/- and that I feel is goog for the people . Walmart is only going
> to bring down prices by a good management skill and this will help all
> sections of the people . I still don't know why people are worried
> about a shopkeepers profit ?? he'll always find a way to make more
> profits.

First, I request you to please study the conditions in countries which

have already experienced the conditions that India is now
implementing. Example Indonesia, former Bolivia, former Venezuela,
former Brazil, others... and then analyse the policies with respect to
India.
Now a business analysis: Tell me who will get a bigger discount, a
small shopkeeper buying around 100 units of some product from the
Wholesaler or a Walmart buying couple a million units of the same
product directly from the Producer at a throwaway price???

Walmart's profits is in the multi-billion dollar figures.

Walmart's profit per minute.
http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2005/03/walmarts_profit.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2190877.stm

Now think of this, Walmart comes to India and sells a Rs.100/- item
for Rs.30/- They do this for a year. The small shopkeepers numbering
lakhs will not be able to do the same. They will just die of
starvation and Walmart will get complete control(monopolistic control)
of the Market. Now that they control the Market they push the prices
up to whatever level they want. This is not my hypothesis but what has
been studied from the examples of the above mentioned countries.

That is why we emphasise on the healthy competition.

Why should we care about the shopkeepers and small business???
Because we are a community where we believe in "one for all, all for
one". Now this is *not* regionalistic or communal or language-based or
such petty issues because we pride ourselves to be a global community.
One that works for the common good of the society than for the good of
a few pockets.

> There was no concrete reason given for people to migrate from
Windows<Snip>
> to run all my favourite programs from Windows on linux and also be
> able to play all those awesome games i can on XP and Vista on Linux
> there is no doubt a large number of us would have shunned out XP then
> and there.

Haha. You make a very good point here. We are not yet at the point
where we can compete with Windows on *certain* aspects.
That's why we in the Free Software community emphasise on the
"Swatantra" aspect else people will join for the wrong reason and also
dropout for the wrong reason.
We start from a strong ideological standpoint and build a better
product from there. We do not claim to be perfect. We just claim that
our ideology protects our freedoms.

regards
Vincent