“Non aligned countries should justify themselves”

Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt. Leading graphic designers and publishers from around the world have called for an end to the non-aligned movement. These men believe that the concept of non-alignment has lost its relevance and significance in the modern times when typesetting has reached new levels. Such thoughts were echoed at the annual meeting of the representatives from the so-called non-aligned software companies of the world.

“The world has moved much ahead of alignment and today there are much more vital stuff to discuss like embossing, bevelling, stroking, or even the basic issues like style-sheets and templates. Who cares about alignment? You could be left aligned, right aligned or centrally aligned, it’s your choice. Why be so shy to display your alignment? And if there is some reason why one wants to hide the alignment, better justify yourself.” one of the delegates at the non-aligned meeting told.

The delegates argued that issues like alignment were relevant to the times when there were very few word processors available and that too with nothing but basic formatting functions available. There was a time when only two big companies in the word processing business existed – one headquartered at Moscow that had left-alignment as the default format, and the other one headquartered at Washington that had right-alignment as the default format.

These two companies wanted all the new companies or engineers working on word processing software to either join them or be wiped out of business. Frustrated with such state of affairs, some activists believing in open-source and GNU licensing started the non-aligned movement, which was very attractive to begin with. These activists came forward and started distributing word processing software for free, which had no text alignment as the default format.

The movement gradually gained steam and more and more engineers and smaller companies joined hands. Many counties officially adopted these word processing software, these countries were later called as the non-aligned countries.

Ultimately the monopoly of the two big companies withered away, resulting in the issue of alignment being pushed away to the sidelines. Therefore the delegates suggested that the non-aligned movement should be buried respectfully and the participating companies should concentrate on other aspects of business while furthering the basic philosophy of open-source software.

The top management of the participating companies are yet to comment on the suggestion, and it seems that such non-aligned meetings would continue to happen until the top bosses take a decision. Meanwhile, some business did happen at the meeting, with companies from India and Pakistan agreeing for link and banner exchange to foster better ties.