"NEW DELHI: Imagine a world free of patents and passwords, of copyrights and copycats, of freedom to create. Imagine a world full of free software. That’s the world of Richard Stallman , tech guru, hacker, political activist, pioneer of concepts like Copyleft, digital colonisation and maker of GNU compiler and debugger of GNU/Linux operating system.

As founder president of Free Software Foundation, Dr Stallman, 55, has managed to convince governments like Kerala and companies like ATI (now AMD) to switch to the idea of free software. ET caught up with the legendary Richard Matthew Stallman (called RMS by hackers) on his visit to India to understand his idea of a free world of technology. Excerpts..."

Lots of governments, businesses and individuals are turning to FOSS during the global recession, according to a recently-released study. But how do you go about it? Do you stick a toe in the water, or dive in head-first to your new FOSS computing environment? This article helps new users think out the steps for migrating to Free Software, and gives a couple of examples.

Obviously, no company is going to refuse the chance to save money. However, the focus on this side-benefit is threatening to overshadow the main advantages of FOSS -- and that's true regardless of whether you take an open source or a free software perspective.

Microsoft's recent survey proclaimed nearly half the population believe it is ok to use pirated software for personal use. This diminishes the argument by Linux advocates that you can use their operating system without any cost. Yet, you can't confuse free as in cost with free as in freedom. Here's what FOSS really means.

«...On this subject, I had an interesting email conversation with Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, who differentiated for me the difference between "open source" and "free software," ...» -- Free Software, Free Society: Why Barack Obama should support the Free Software Movement

It's not just European government that's opting for open source. Today the NSA (the super-secret spy agency in the US) have announced they are joining in with OpenSolaris. Barton has an interview that explores this more. I think we'll see more and more government engagement as the adoption-led market takes hold.

Using Free software from open source communities makes perfect sense for governments, and not just for the obvious reasons of up-front savings on license fees.

Although Linux lovers will rightly say that an anti-piracy initiative isn’t necessary in the FOSS world, free and open source software has overtaken the world yet, and the piracy of commercial software is still a crime that Microsoft is most definitely investigating, chasing and prosecuting.

In some countries' governments, the use of Linux is often viewed as a cultural thing. Linux is closely aligned with the concept that software should be free. "In Europe, governments take open source very seriously. They have a fear of being locked into one vendor," said Paul Smith, vice president of government sales operations for Red Hat. "Linux gives governments leverage against the fear of being controlled."

Governments need open source because it preserves choice. No government should cede sovereignty to any private enterprise.