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Indian Government Goes For Free Software
Geekonomical writes "Economic Times has an article that says Indian Government's Department of IT is going to encourage Linux and OSS on all fronts including college education! The article has more details (eventhough it has a misleading title!) The reasoning being more of plain economics than security or other reasons."
Programmers that had been using it at colleges were keen to use it in the workplace. I think it's likely that Linux will follow this pattern.
The things that have kept Micro$o£t so popular are that people tend to pirate a copy and that it is installed on just about every new PC. Arguably making their software harder to copy will damage them in the long run.
and people all over North America using their OS and products
So? You don't actually believe that the combined economies of two of the most populous countries on Earth is somehow smaller than that of two countries (North America is the U.S.A and Canada). Do you?
This isn't even getting into the fact that most service industries outsource to Indian companies, nor the expected growth of the Chinese economy alone...look, the board of Microsoft should be shitting their pants right about now.
In countries where the wages are lower, the licensing/hardware portion of the TCO will be larger. Linux runs on smaller iron, without licensing costs. It's very simple math.
Stop the brainwash
You obviously know nothing about the difference between a "coder" and a "software engineer".
Yes I'm serious - and I'm both a Mechanical Engineer and Software Engineer. The actual time "coding" is almost the smallest part of a well designed project. You need engineers to take care of the rest that if(5!=duh) doesn't really do well.
it's in my head
"The reasoning being more of plain economics than security or other reasons."
Sounds like their going for open source software, not free software. A nice coincidence is of course that they will end up with free software anyway, but "going for free software" is more what the people in Peru are trying to do IMO.
What the government needs to make those college students do is develop applications in the local languages. Just 2% of the 1 billion in India understand English. That's only 20 million if my arithmetic is correct.
OTOH 900 million people *worldwide* (not just in India) understand Hindi. However there are very few applications and operating systems that do support Indic scripts.
http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/ , http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Indic-Fonts-HOWTO/ , and http://www.geocities.com/hanu_man_ji are some efforts in this direction.
Instead of making them dream about making dough in the US, the Indian college students and programmers should be encouraged if not forced to develop tools, utilities and applications in the Indian languages. Not only will it boost the demand for PC's - many Indian homes have white goods in the range of $400 or so, but no PC's - who'll use them if you don't know English? - it will give a big boost to the quality of programming; there are many smart people in India but they are limited by a lack of knowledge of English.
Can't see Hindi?
i'm a cs major, and good programmers are good designers. software engineering is more of the corporate world's attempt to produce more software in less time with fewer bugs that cram more features in. it doesn't focus on the structure of alogirthms, the effiency needed to produce realtime and embeded systems like computer science might emphasise more.
I'm not trying to troll, i'm just saying that most my CS friends are in it for the fun, the knowledge, and getting computers to crunch bits. where most my software engineering friends are microsoft praisers who think that c# is the greatest invention since the stone age since it has delegates and get/set{} operators now (to make their design better?).
- tristan
Arguably making their software harder to copy will damage them in the long run.
Which is why M$ cd's are able to be copied, even when the game industry has proven that copying can be made so much harder. Sure, all games can (and will) be cracked. But it is so much easier to just copy the windoze *cough* OS *cough* because they want people to be using it. They make the money not from the average user, but from businesses, governments and universities that use hundreds or thousands at a time.
Having Joe Average use it at home means that he is less likely to want to change the work policy. Have it installed at work, and it's too much hassle for him to change his home system.
Fortunately, this can work both ways now.
Of all the things you can accomplish by screwing up your face and swearing into a dark room, sleep is not one of them.
I couldn't agree more. I'd distinguish between the "software engineers" and the "CS folks" by saying that the former are soulless code grinders who slave away and fuel the "software industry" which is not too hot in itself (as Jamie Zawinski rightly pointed out, "whole sick, navel-gazing mess we called the software industry"). The latter people on the other hand are the people that keep the earth spinning. Whether their percentage is dwindling or growing is anyone's guess.
It's a mistake IMO to think that "standard software engineering practices" are some kind of panacea that can correct bad coders and produce good code.
BTW, you come off as really condescending, you might want to work on that;-)
Steve
Right, 'cuz everyone in both India and China owns a computer, and are switching to linux along with their governments. Idiot.
For every story post a comment with the full text of the linked articles.
Apparently this qualifies as informative!
bits and peace
Nicholas Daley
One potential future has the rest of the world going to open source products and ditching proprietary code.
The good news about this, one would think, is that countries are less likely to screw around with compatibility in the name of market share.
The bad news is that the US love affair with Redmond starts to look like a highly protectionist trade policy. OOPs.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Because joe user feels so safe activating their software that they obtained illegaly?
I somehow think that the windows piracy thing is going to slow down from the fact that faking activation is similar to cracking a game.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I have been following closely the adoptation of open source within European Union lately. It seems they are working, studying and experimenting this in many fronts.
... the bulk of the rest of the world seems to already have made their choice for freedom, and are poised to sprint right past us into the information age if we are foolish enough to cripple ourselves in the way Microsoft and Hollywood are lobbying Washington to do.
This is indeed good news.
The fact of the matter is that if the world wants to free itself from the American hegemony and economic dominance in the 21st century, one of the critical things it must do is free itself from dependence on American Proprietary software, particularly operating systems, with all of their NSA backdoors, NSA-inspired weak cryptography, deliberate incompatabilities, moving development targets, subscription pricing, and so on. Probably the smartest and best approach is to leverage software freedom by using Free Software and developing home-grown talent and expertise in customizing it for local or regional use. Not only does that allow a solid audit of existing code (and help insure against malicious code a la Microsoft's NSA_KEY), but it creates a breeding ground for local expertise and a local software industry.
Of course, Europe is already on par with the United States in this area despite our home-grown software monopoly, but for the developing world this is a tremendous boon, and it is exciting to see countries like China and India embrace software freedom.
China: ~1 Billion
India: ~1 Billion
That is already about a third of humanity. Add to that Germany, Brazil, Colombia, etc. and you have a ground swell that must boggle Bill Gate's mind. Even if Palladium and DRM were to do their worst, effectively banning Free Software in the United States, it would only be the United States that suffers
Next time we feel depressed, or run down, in hearing the latest bad news from Washington we can take heart that, at worst, it is only the United States emasculating its own information industry, not humanity as a whole. I, for one (despite being an American who will undoubtably suffer both economically and intellectually if the battles against Palladium and DRM are lost), take heart in that.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
True. Exposure is the key. I am not a programmer, but having exposed to open source through slashdot for a year or so, when I set up my business recently decided to use Linux etc.
All the companies I talked for assistance in development work only with Microsoft solutions and were not willing to consider my project. Finally I decided to hire two fresh graduates, they are bright guys fresh out of college (no prior Linux exposure) with a little Unix usage.
They saw my system, there were immediately hooked and installed Linux in their home computers also to play around. Initially they could not write html by hand. After a couple of days they were comfortable
The government promoting open source will have broader implications, since the middle class in India puts a great faith in everything Government. If the government says it will be good. When a boy/girl wants to do a course on Linux, the parents will be more willing to spare the cash, if there is a government label on it.
yAthum UrE yAvarum kELir All the places are our place, everybody is our kin. (A Tamil Poet - 2000 years ago)
I found it funny, and I'm Hindu. I don't think it was intended to offend (and if it was, I have more important things to worry about than this). I think it's just silly childish humour (kinda like my sig.).
Don't have a cow, man.
OLPC Australia
"I thought US was a free nation."
Doesn't mean it is a *smart* nation.