Re: FSF taking money from outsourcers

[Rui Miguel Seabra]

On Tue, 2004-04-27 at 19:35 -0700, Snuffelluffogus wrote:
> > Those companies make a lot of money from software developed in the scope
> > of the GNU project, is it not just to support the project?
> 
> In the old days, plantation owners took the attitude that the cheapness
> of labor was the primary goal, so they bought imported slaves or 
> took slaves during times of war. They did that irregardless of the social
> consequences because all they cared about was short-term profit and
> they did not feel they had any responsibility to the society they were
> operating in. These big corporations today are taking the exact same
> attitude. It was unethical back then, it is unethical now.

So, if a recognizeable evil company, such as Microsoft, creates an
helpdesk center in India (which it has) and while lower than it's US
counterparts defines a hugely better employment conditions standard in
India (as it is said it did), raising both employee finantial status and
employment conditions expectations...

    ... is this an evil action comparable to slavery?

Now if one of this workers is now able to invest his salary in his home
village, financing now circa 80% of the village's incomes...

    ... is this evil because it came from an outsourcing investment?

Companies tend to not be black and white. They do bad stuff and good
stuff. You should criticise them over the bad stuff (you'll see you'ĺl
still have plenty to complain I'm sure).

Like I said, I can understand you're angry (maybe you were fired in
favour of outsources, or someone you care a lot), and probably with good
reason (it could have been blind layoffs without caring for competent
employees they would do much better to keep).

But are you not being a little evil (selfish) in comparison to all those
others that had their economical life style improved?

Rui

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