12 December afternoon: Eben Moglen spoke at the Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore on the topic, 'Software as a Public Good'.

He started off on a war footing and put forward his argument how Free Software complies with the idea of 'software as a public good' and capital investment for making proprietary software is a dead-weight loss. To a bunch of a management students, of one of the premier business institutes of the country, this line of thought put forward by a person of Moglen’s credentials, was shocking, surprising, dangerously attractive – almost revolutionary.

He argued that the software we are using today is the result of various experiments, projects, home grown ideas, initiatives by some students in 1950s. Software has been developed, learnt and taught through experiments. Production of software through learning, as in the Free Software Movement, created and promises to create learned people. This means that developing software produces educated brains instead of consuming them.

He continued his argument with the point that software is a natural resource. Software has a zero marginal cost, it is an intangible and non-physical deposit which has been explored thus, and hence, DOES NOT belong to one particular corporate. 21st century is turning out to be a period of knowledge based industries where democratization of knowledge is one of the necessary conditions for social solidarity. Freedom of knowledge in the field of computer science and software implies Free Software.

He said that it's possible to produce better software with minimal pricing through Free Software community model. Free Software is distributed under GNU General Public License, it gives Freedom to users & developers to modify and redistribute in turn they create social solidarity. He also explained how proprietary software companies are implicated in curtailing the freedom of users and developers. Software as a science and a natural resource which has been created and obtained through experiments should NOT be allowed to be smuggled through proprietary software and companies producing proprietary software.