Free is gaining wider application in business and government.

free

by henry burt stevens
07/30/2006
authorsden.com

Free as a  concept has been gaining ground.  Not only AOL but many other business models are being developed and added to the list that really got a big push from Netscape a few years ago.

Do you remember that far back in the dark ages of the internet?

Free has always had its supports, especially in the advertising business.  Free is the most powerful word in advertising, which is why you see so many ads starting with the word free in big bold red type.

One of my most read articles is "Free poetry? Yes, really."  And one of my most read poems is "My wish" which is a poem about me giving my poetry away and why I am doing it.

But it was a today's Digg on digg.com that started me writing this essay.  Here are math teachers who have banded together to give away their math teaching skills.

http://www.totallyfreemath.com/


Their reason?

"We are a group of authors who have had a long and successful career in education and publishing. We feel it is time to give something back to the educational community for its commitment to using our textbooks for over 20 years. Several million students have purchased at least one of our textbooks, but you will now be able to start using those same textbooks along with the teacher's resource material for free.

With the current price of a new algebra textbook approaching $110 and publishers bringing out a new edition every three to four years just to prevent students from selling their used books, we have decided to create a site where the textbooks are free.

We wish to share our knowledge of mathematics with anyone who wants to learn new material, increase their current understanding, review previous topics, or just explore mathematics.

We hope this will be a useful resource for families doing home schooling, people tutoring mathematics, schools that cannot afford to purchase up-to-date textbooks, and anyone else who can benefit from our materials."

Again, from digg.com

http://www.pcwelt.de/news/englishnews/114859/


"India plans free software for all India is expanding a government-led program to provide free, local language software to all of its citizens, as it tries tobroaden computer use in the country. [India plans free software for all]

India is expanding a government-led program to provide free, local language software to all of its citizens, as it tries to broaden computer use in the country.
 

The move to widely distribute free desktop applications and tools could be seen as a setback for Microsoft Corp., but the Indian government says it has no agenda to promote open source-software over proprietary products. What's more, all of the applications and tools run on Windows, while some do not run on Linux, and any move to expand computer use in one of the world's most populous countries could arguably benefit Microsoft

India's Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a Pune-based research and development (R&D) organization of the Indian government, is distributing CDs with the software in Tamil and Hindi, two important languages in India. C-DAC plans to introduce versions of the software in other Indian languages later this year.

The project was initiated by India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which aims to take computing to the country's masses in the language they are most familiar with.

The CD contains productivity software such as a browser, e-mail client and word processor, as well as tools such as a dictionary and spell-checker. While many of the productivity applications are open source and run on both Linux and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system, some of the utilities are closed-source and run only on Windows. The software can also be downloaded at http://www.ildc.in/

In an interview with IDG News Service, R.K.V.S. Raman, staff scientist in the National Center for Software Technology (NCST) wing of C-DAC, talked about the project, including the decision to offer both open source and closed source software. Below is an edited transcript."
 
Now this is an idea I can really support.  Think about local language softwear being offered free along with the $100 dollar. That's going to add up to a lot of computer literate children.

Here is an exciting example of the concept of free.

http://www.suseblog.com/?p=141

SUSE is a flavor of Linux and this link to a free story about free softwear.  There is an excellent .pdf beginng's book written with a free .pdf writer and can be downloaded with a free .pdf reader.  Now that is progress, to my mind.

Free is finding lots of supporters these days.  Personally, I find it a hopeful development.

s/henry