Archis's Blog

Many of you may not know Heath Ledger – but for us true believers in Batman, Heath Ledger was about to become a legend!

Heath Ledger was an actor little known to me too before I found out he’d be playing “The Joker” in “The Dark Knight” (the sequel to “Batman Begins”). There were many apprehensions and doubts regarding whether he would be a “good enough” joker compared with Jack Nicholson (to quote some website: Jack Nicolson’s joker was like an angry old uncle).

When we saw the pictures, we were convinced that Heath Ledger was born to play this role. When we heard his voice and especially his laugh, we know this guy would become a legend! When we finally saw the theatrical trailer for the movie, we were all speechless. Heath Ledger brought out the real joker – the psychopathic killer without a consience or emotions. I cannot express in words the kind of joker Heath Ledger played – his portrayal was beyond words to say the least. If they ever give out an Oscar for “Best Psychopathic Criminal”, this would be it.

For the record, I am willing to state that he tops my list of “Best Villians Ever” even above Darth Vader! (Yes! Believe it! I, of all people, really think so!)

I was expecting a continued performance from him in the sequel to “The Dark Knight”. Heath was found dead in his apartment with cause of death unknown as of yet. Some speculate his death was due to an overdose of sleeping pills that he had to take since his performance as the Joker caused him severe insomnia. If this be true, I bow down in respect for a man who dedicated himselef to bringing to life a role that will be remembered for many years to come. I assure you – Heath Ledger’s Joker will not be forgotten – not due to some crap sympathetic reaction to his death – but because no Joker can match it EVER!

My heartiest condolonces to his family, his loved ones and his friends. This was a sad bit of news. If he is watching us at this moment, I hope he knows that we all admire his performance!

As we all know, a lot of internet traffic was generated by this news over the last couple of days. In a local mailing list, I read this comment:

WOW!!! US$ 1Bn for that.
This could be any eye-opener for the people who say there is no money in FOSS

Below is my response to this comment (which I have posted on that mailing list too – but my blog is a good place for me to talk instead of having to listen to abstract philosophy in every other sentence):

I’ll interpret that as, “For people who think money cannot be made from owning source code to a FOSS project”, which nobody has ever debated . (I can feel the flames coming.)

The billion-dollar question (it’s very rare occasions when one can use such a phrase figuratively and literally one one shot) was, “Can I make money by _using_ GPL’d code” and the question just got answered!

MySQL was GPL’d already – and Sun could have just bought a copy (or licence or support or whatever MySQL sells) to get their source code (assuming Sun was already stupid enough not to download a tarball (further assuming I’m not stupid to have assumed a tarball is available for public download)).

The real key here is ownership of the copyrights to the MySQL codebase. That’s what sun paid 1Bn for. In that case, the money went to buying out a copyright. Can’t really understand the merits of the code being GPL’d or otherwise – people pay money for copyrighted code every day of the week.

Nobody had ever debated the prospects of making money so long as _you’re_ the owner of the codebase. In fact this is an eye-opener for those who were being told, “Hey, you can make money from MySQL because it’s GPL’d.” Now if a company with Sun’s magnitude and power and influence and fan-following can’t make money from the GPL’d version, it’s hard to believe that an individual might make money from it.

Of course, I’m not at all saying MySQL isn’t “free as in free speech” (lest I should be mailed a whole lot of philosophy), but since “money” is considered orthogonal to freedom, I’m simply talking on that aspect.

Since we’re on that topic, there was an interesting post on a zdnet blog recently about “definition of freedom” and a comparison between the BSD-style licence which allows you to make proprietary forks of their code and the GPL. Ultimtely it’s upto the benelovence of the “owner of the code” (I have to agree with Torvalds here), to maintain “freedom”.

1. In the GPL licence, you have the freedom to do anything with the software except sell it’s source code separately (as a separate entity from the binaries). This means that whoever owns the copyrights to the code (Trolltech, MySQL, etc.) could just fork a proprietary version without you being able to do anything about it (do not misinterpret that; I admit _most_ of those who ask for transfer of copyright are in fact benevolent; all I’m saying is that this is not a licence-imposed necessity). The average guy still competes with other players who have the GPL’d code.

2. Under the BSD-style licence, if one guy makes a proprietary fork, then so can you. You can go head-to-head and try and kill each other off. If Berkeley makes a proprietary fork, every single person on earth can do the same and neutralize the playing field. (To answer all those who were wondering why after having funded PostgreSQL so much, Sun bought out MySQL). If they’d bought (without need) the PostgreSQL codebase, every programmer on earth worth his two cents would have made a proprietary fork to compete against Sun. With MySQL…. well you get the picture.

Please do not misinterpret this post. I’m sure Sun will ensure everyone gets all the code and we already know Google is planning to give back a lot of their in-house modifications to the public code-base. All I’m saying is, the 1Bn of money that was paid, was paid for the conventional thing you pay any proprietary company for – the ownership of copyrighted code.

You’ll find a review by one of my friends (Prameela) linked here and I have to say, I agree with her. After a long time, a movie that makes sense. A movie with substance. A movie with an opinion.

I’ve always said it and it always needed to be said at a global level. Finally someone actually used an analogy that I believed in – “Indian families are Stud Farms where kids are simply toys for the gratification/amusement of families and the bidding that goes on over their races is probably way higher than the bidding that happens on horse races.”

The movie makes a good point of showing our ignorant system, our holistic quest for “marks”, and our struggle for a safety-net. Now, I’m not saying that a safety-net is bad. But there are those who want to go out there and risk it. Those who don’t care about a backup, but want to go and do something cool!

And I’ll go ahead and say something even Aamir Khan didn’t dare say explicitely. He seemed to show society as being ignorant. I’ll tell you society is far from ignorant. But pretending to be ignorant allows them to behave ignorant. In reality society is selfish. When Ishan’s (that’s the kid-with-dyslexia’s name in the movie) parents are asked to consider the possibility that Ishan may “have a psychological/psychiatric condition”, the look on their face and their attitude just brought in a surge of hatered in me for a moment. Their first reaction was, “you mean to say my son is retartded?”

Wat the hell? He has a “condition”. He’s not retarded! Moreover, both parents instant thoughts in their minds must be, “How will I show my face to my friends/family/etc.” For God’s sake! He’s your son! How will he show his face in society if you don’t give him proper support and give him self-confidence?

I do hope we see more movies on themes of how our society and so-called-self-declared “ancient culture” is destroying the childhoods of so many kids all over the country. And I’m not talking about illiterate families. I’m talkng about families in cities and metros.

Part of the reason I feel so angry about such people is perhaps I went through a VERY mild dose of what that kid must have gone through – and believe me – a movie can’t even begin to depict what he must be facing. Imagine a world where people don’t understand you because you’re thinking in a different fashion (or perhaps because you are thinking). A world with retarded people who can’t see your intelligence – and in turn calling you retarded because they can’t understand shit you say.

That poor fellow must have been so frustrated and frightened every day of his life! His parents wouldn’t even take him to a psychiatrist. They think forcing him in school would just make his problems “go away”. Who do you think is really retarded here? They’re not even ready to give him a diagnosis.

Is this our great “Indian non-materialistic culture” as opposed “those materialistic westerners” who treat their kids like human beings? Is this our great Mahabharata/Ramayan-descended society? Really? Does anyone of you really feel proud to go out and tell others just what greatness we descended from while treating our own kids like animals in our homes?

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http://www.indiaproperty.com/property/IA202850