Slashdot Mirror
Indian Government Chooses Linux for Academia
Nilesh Chaudhari writes "Following the footsteps of various governments around the world, the Indian Government has decided to standardize on Linux and open source software for academic purposes. The Department of Information Technology says, 'As a first step we are persuading all government institutions to offer courses on Linux and programming for Linux environment. We would also set up Linux Resource Centres in academic institutes (with co-funding from government and industry).' Going by the high targets they have set for mass adoption of IT, this is a step in the absolute right direction."
What are they going to do about languages? Linux doesn't support any of the Indian dialects; only European languages.
Lots of people in India speak English; but it seems kind of unfair to lock them out of using their native language.
Its used in a lot of universities already, its a standard "distro" Has fantastic documentation and a less restrictive licence.
Why not *BSD?
Germany has done this as well havent they? China is developing their own version of linux, Im assuming to ditch MS. Chile wants to, California wants to, I want to. Wait I did :D
*DrugCheese rants*
English is an official language of India. If some user wants his own little dialect to be supported, the code is open for him or her to modify.
Slashdot already covered this story last week here.
Not only that, the original story was also posted by timothy. Is his memory so poor that he's incapable of remembering what he posted less than a week ago?
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Open IT: Govt to rewrite source code in Linux
SUDHA NAGARAJ
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2002 01:29:29 AM ]
NEW DELHI: If the Chinese have IT, get it. The Indian government seems to be taking a leaf out of China's operating system, and is planning a countrywide drive to promote the open source operating system, Linux, as the 'platform of choice' instead of 'proprietary' solutions.
For proprietory, read Microsoft, which controls over 90% of the desktop software market.
The Department of Information Technology has already devised a strategy to introduce Linux and open source software as a de-facto standard in academic institutions, especially in engineering colleges through course work that encourages use of such systems.
Research establishments would be advised to use and develop re-distributable toolboxes just as Central government departments and state governments would be asked to use Linux-based offerings.
DIT is in talks with leading industry players like IBM and HCL to get a feel of their work in the area and invite proposals for joint projects. "As a first step we are persuading all government institutions to offer courses on Linux and programming for Linux environment. We would also set up Linux Resource Centres in academic institutes (with co-funding from government and industry)," said a senior government official.
Though India has made a name for itself selling solutions, software as a product is expensive within the country. And the cost will bite once India starts implementing IPR protection in earnest, as it has committed itself to.
While redistribution of proprietary software is restricted through a licence agreement, the licensing terms for Linux grants the right to obtain and redistribute copies. Many analysts believe that China's growing dominance in the IT space is fuelled by its low cost open source bias.
The Chinese government has consistently promoted its local software based on Linux, both for cost reasons, and reportedly for 'security' concerns as well.
The source code for proprietory software is not revealed, and this, it is believed, has not found favour with the Chinese, especially in defence and security related applications.
Microsoft, in what many observers and reports say is an attempt to soften the Chinese government's stand, recently committed to investing $750m in China in three years to help set up a software college and put its money into Chinese education.
In comparison, Microsoft has announced investments worth only $75m over a three-year time frame in India. Howver, the Chinese company Redflag Software, which was set up by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the country's most prestigious research institute, has often come out with low-cost software based on Linux, in direct competition to Windows-based software.
The Indian government's plan, however, is not driven by security concerns, but by the far more simple arithmetic of costing. To put it simply, India being a developing country needs low cost solutions.
Unlike the Microsoft-developed Windows operating system, Linux code is free and downloadable from the internet. With the addition of special applications, it can be personalized to meet specific needs.
An industry-government-user-developer conference on the subject would be organised to throw up ideas for specific initiatives including funding, reliable sources told ET.
The only issue here is support and services, which Indian government sources feel is not likely to be an issue in a country known for its software support and service skills.
Like China, the government is also eyeing the increasingly lucrative global support and services market for the Linux environment may prove lucrative. While proprietary support agreements govern only the systems purchased (with licences), for free software support is independent of the number of copies owned.
"With applications in security being a focus area, inputs have been sought from the Defence on their experience with Linux. Indian-language based solutions, e-governance, embedded and high performance cluster solutions are other areas. But firstly we want to concretise the position on IPR issues in the use of Linux," the source said.
DIT is planning a three-tier mechanism, with itself as the first, industry, user groups and state governments as the second and a national apex committee headed either by a government representative, an industry expert or an academician to oversee manpower and skill development, applications development and deployment and public policy support, said sources.
According to IDC's figures for '00, Microsoft still controlled 94% of the desktop software market and while Linux is expected to overtake the number two -- Apple Mac OS -- by '03, it would still control less than 4% of the market.
In server software, it fares a little better and is expected to control around 30% of the market by '03, according to IDC. Linux, which has established itself in the server space, is an open reliable OS that runs on virtually any platform and was developd by Finnish technologist Linus Torvalds.
After developing the initial source code, Linus made it available on the Internet for use, feedback and further development.
Timothy, this story was already posted. By, um, Timothy.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
If they're so into GNU/Linux and OSS, then why is their webserver running Windows 2000? Here's the Netcraft site: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.mit. gov.in
This is 'Best of Slashdot' week. They're rerunning all the top stories, and I think this Friday they're playing 'Voices From The Hellmouth 11: Katz Strikes Back'.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
So will they be using Sioux Linux?
In case it's slashdotted...
Open IT: Govt to rewrite source code in Linux SUDHA NAGARAJ
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2002 01:29:29 AM ]
NEW DELHI: If the Chinese have IT, get it. The Indian government seems to be taking a leaf out of China's operating system, and is planning a countrywide drive to promote the open source operating system, Linux, as the 'platform of choice' instead of 'proprietary' solutions.
For proprietory, read Microsoft, which controls over 90% of the desktop software market.
The Department of Information Technology has already devised a strategy to introduce Linux and open source software as a de-facto standard in academic institutions, especially in engineering colleges through course work that encourages use of such systems.
Research establishments would be advised to use and develop re-distributable toolboxes just as Central government departments and state governments would be asked to use Linux-based offerings.
DIT is in talks with leading industry players like IBM and HCL to get a feel of their work in the area and invite proposals for joint projects. "As a first step we are persuading all government institutions to offer courses on Linux and programming for Linux environment. We would also set up Linux Resource Centres in academic institutes (with co-funding from government and industry)," said a senior government official.
Though India has made a name for itself selling solutions, software as a product is expensive within the country. And the cost will bite once India starts implementing IPR protection in earnest, as it has committed itself to.
While redistribution of proprietary software is restricted through a licence agreement, the licensing terms for Linux grants the right to obtain and redistribute copies. Many analysts believe that China's growing dominance in the IT space is fuelled by its low cost open source bias.
The Chinese government has consistently promoted its local software based on Linux, both for cost reasons, and reportedly for 'security' concerns as well.
The source code for proprietory software is not revealed, and this, it is believed, has not found favour with the Chinese, especially in defence and security related applications.
Microsoft, in what many observers and reports say is an attempt to soften the Chinese government's stand, recently committed to investing $750m in China in three years to help set up a software college and put its money into Chinese education.
In comparison, Microsoft has announced investments worth only $75m over a three-year time frame in India. Howver, the Chinese company Redflag Software, which was set up by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the country's most prestigious research institute, has often come out with low-cost software based on Linux, in direct competition to Windows-based software.
The Indian government's plan, however, is not driven by security concerns, but by the far more simple arithmetic of costing. To put it simply, India being a developing country needs low cost solutions.
Unlike the Microsoft-developed Windows operating system, Linux code is free and downloadable from the internet. With the addition of special applications, it can be personalized to meet specific needs.
An industry-government-user-developer conference on the subject would be organised to throw up ideas for specific initiatives including funding, reliable sources told ET.
The only issue here is support and services, which Indian government sources feel is not likely to be an issue in a country known for its software support and service skills.
Like China, the government is also eyeing the increasingly lucrative global support and services market for the Linux environment may prove lucrative. While proprietary support agreements govern only the systems purchased (with licences), for free software support is independent of the number of copies owned.
"With applications in security being a focus area, inputs have been sought from the Defence on their experience with Linux. Indian-language based solutions, e-governance, embedded and high performance cluster solutions are other areas. But firstly we want to concretise the position on IPR issues in the use of Linux," the source said.
DIT is planning a three-tier mechanism, with itself as the first, industry, user groups and state governments as the second and a national apex committee headed either by a government representative, an industry expert or an academician to oversee manpower and skill development, applications development and deployment and public policy support, said sources.
According to IDC's figures for '00, Microsoft still controlled 94% of the desktop software market and while Linux is expected to overtake the number two -- Apple Mac OS -- by '03, it would still control less than 4% of the market.
In server software, it fares a little better and is expected to control around 30% of the market by '03, according to IDC. Linux, which has established itself in the server space, is an open reliable OS that runs on virtually any platform and was developd by Finnish technologist Linus Torvalds.
After developing the initial source code, Linus made it available on the Internet for use, feedback and further development.
LMAO, That was funny. Mod parents up!!
[Insert MS failing + Nuke Joke = Linux Comedy Option here]
Not exactly anything to brag about, 17 days uptime. I guess we now know why they are switching from a toy to a man's operating system.
Got Code?
Yes, you say one moment I will just ssh in and fix that for you sir. Now go away trollllll
Got Code?
...Who thinks that Bill Gates will be doing a whole bunch of globetrotting in the near future? I'll bet he's at the terminal now, with a briefcase full of "Free Software" for the Indonesian Government, and a Switch Story for them to read... Oh, wait...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
I was worried about countries like India and China bringing strong competition to US software development, but if they are all going to be learning Linux programming, I guess they really won't be competing for american contracts afterall.
I think it is a very good decision. It will help the whole world to embrace Linux. The only problem is the standardization. I hope that will not hurt Linux. I hope this news is really true, because most of the other SlashDot posts are very biased and doesn't reflect the whole truth.
Just so you know, if it gets slashdotted, there are two wonderful full-text pages here and here... :)
Wait a second... oh yeah, I guess that's this site, huh?
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
The fact that this decision will help to produce a homegrown hightech industry is a great bonus that reliance on MS would have precluded, but it certainly isn't the only reason for going this route. It's certainly going to be good for us
See what I've been reading.
I know that people have said it over and over again when anybody adopts linux en mass like this, but it honestly does say something about linux and the open-source movement. It is always great to see more support, and of course if more and more people use the software, the software becomes better and better and more of it becomes available. That's one of the great things about Free/GPL'd software... At least, in a perfect world that's how it works...
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
I think this could be the beginning of something great. India already has thousands of talented coders, and once they get used to hacking Linux, some awesome things will start happening. After all, people who do good work in adding to Linux really get noticed, and their code winds up in millions of machines all over the world. It seems like a perfect opportunity for an Indian programmer to "lift herself up by the bootstraps." (North American and European coders of similar talent tend to get snatched up by companies faster, so there is less need to prove oneself.) Actually, there is nothing special India except maybe that the population really is so well educated in computer science. Brazil and China are in a similar position--and we are already seeing some awesome Linux hacking coming out of Brazil. I can only imagine how much cool code will come from India and (eventually) China. This sort of news really makes you think that Linux might be unstoppable after all.
/* Mandatory India+MS+Nuke=global destruction joke:
I'll be sleeping much better to know that the Indian government will be migrating from those free Windows ME licenses to a Linux distro...won't you?
If you think
Outsourcing is precisely what India wishes to avoid in the future. An entire generation of Indian programmers have been taught only the skills needed to work on other people's software. As a result, when the dotcom bubble broke it was Indians who felt it worst of any.
In Indian computer science circles they speak of this as having lost an entire generation, and wish never to repeat this again. By developing and learning with freely licensed software they expect to be a producer of software in the future, and not just a IT sweetshop labor pool for supporting the products of others.
I'm prone to paranoia, so take this with a grain of salt. I've been worrying me more and more how in the pockets of US corporations the gov't is. When India is willing to make such a strong statement regarding Freedom, and given that they have such a high percentage of engineers and coders, it almost makes me embarrased.
I would like to see true progress, but with Dubya's oil company presidency and the rest of our elected officials spending 80% of their time raising money and, no surprise, putting out laws that help those companies in the lead stay in the lead, I worry. It shouldn't take running out of oil to develop different technology. It shouldn't take a genius to understand having the government use and pay for development that help society at large (GPL'd software) is a good thing.
Damn me and my ideals.
again!
awesome, can never have too few choices!
I know there are some exeptions (red flag linux comes to mind), and that there are economic barriers in place that preclude growing up with the 'hacker ethic'. But still, it's a shame that all those skilled programers are doing boring projects for multi-nationals for crap $$.
My bet is that this desicion will wind up having a huge impact on linux and related projects.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
On the one hand, this is not a particularly big deal as educational institutions have been using what has become known as Open Source Software far longer than others. On the other hand, this is a big deal as it means that now even those engineers building free software will be under increasing pressure from the migration of jobs away from the US and western Europe.
The single biggest difference between software engineers in India and those in the US and Western Europe is... their cost.
I can see the rest of the world adopting Linux. Fine, let them. That doesn't mean America will do it; just look at that stupid metric thing the rest of the world is all gaa-gaa over...
"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit." --Oscar Wilde
Isn't English pretty much the primary language in India anyways? Though it seems pretty fast-paced and hard to understand.
I think your indian. Promoting your women like that, what flaggarent touism.
Why not let the academic institutions choose their own friggin tools?!
I guess I won't be buying any software from Indian companies |-\
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
They are both equally ugly.
I just got back from India a month ago and had advised a guy over there who was going to start his BE to start learning Linux as by the time he graduated, it'd be pretty big. Who knew something like this was over the horizon? :)
Anyway, on a more serious note, it's a really good thing. Previously software piracy was rampant basically because of the reason that buying software legally was just working out TOO expensive to the home user. Shifting to open source and Linux will kill two birds with one stone :
1) It will drastically reduce piracy since students will now want Linux on their home machines and the majority of the home computer purchases in India are done "so my kids can use it".
2) It will produce a HUGE amount of software solutions for Linux in the long run (when these kids graduate) that will go a long way to helping the idea of open source.
India has always been known for their contributions to the software world and I have a feeling that this is finally a chance for something realy good to come out of it - why there's even talk of developing an Indian version of Linux!
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
... are a quiet, tiny minority of vocal speakers...
I guess I'm just not as smart as you are, but I don't get your comment. Does this minority do a lot of whispering?
And what other type of speakers are there other than "vocal" ones? The kind you hook up to a radio? What the hell does that have to do with Linux?
this is a duplicate story, but I'm only mentioning that to point out that I like duplicate stories. It takes away that "oh no i didn't check slashdot for a week, i wonder what i missed" feeling.
...America == USA.
This being the sense of the word that just about everyone (including most people not from the USA) uses. When you read a headline in the Economist (a UK publication) that says "America's War on Terrorism," you can be pretty sure that they're not talking about Guatemala. If a Greek tells you that he went to "Ameriki" for vacation, you can be pretty sure that he didn't go to Peru. And so on.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Its dead, Jim.
Not only because (duh) India is the 2nd most populated country in the world, but they also can lay claim to easily one of the finest/most rigorous engineering and computer science schools in the world, if not the best. IIT grads almost invariably turn out to be big movers & shakers in the IT world, or scary-smart geniouses, and usually both. Thus, good allies to have in your camp. To the extent that their government is telling them to move towards Linux, thus weaning a whole new generation from MS dependence, that's fine news indeed.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
When we see stories that affect 20% of the world's population in one shot, companies like Microsoft shrink in perspective. There's little left but for the fat lady to sing.
No soup for *you* Billy boy.
This is the second time you've posted this. You're boring.
As an avid linux user (home, work, pda, etc) I feel like I can say that this is B.S.
What about all those rantings for diversity, inter-compatibility, and freedom of choice?
I'm against standardization of anything...
later!
.
.
I come from India. All, yes all, the computers that i have come across in India are running pirated copies of Windows. Not a single license, even at one of our biggest IT companies :( . India also churns out tons of talented engineers every year, which include the likes of Sabeer Bhatia (the creator of Hotmail), Azim Premji(2nd richest man in the world, at some point last year) etc etc etc. The IITs from India, IMHO, are the *best* set of engineering colleges in the world. I am not taking anything away from MIT and company, but i firmly beleive that given MITesque resources, IITs will probably produce better graduates. Infact, just have a look at the number of people at MIT from the IITs. The main reason for this post graduate US migration, was the lack of money in India. The avg IIT grad got a starting pay Rs 4000 /- a month($80). This is certainly nowhere near what they would get abroad. Hence, there was significant brain drain. Getting back to the point, India has all the capacities of becoming a software superpower but there are a few stumbling blocks.
The first and obvious one, is the sagging economy. If the Indian economy does not improve, the brain drain will continue and India(not Indians) will get nowhere.
The second problem is the lack of people capable of teaching Linux. If one has bandwidth, one is capable of learning Linux by ones'self. But given the bandwidth in India, learning Linux online is not an option. The only solution is that people who know it already be willing to teach it to others. But even there, there is a huge ratio problem. The number of people who know linux is far too little comapred to the number of engg grads we produce. For instance, Maharashtra, the state whose capital is Mumbai(Bombay), has, according to counter.li, 521 people who know Linux.Maharashtra has roughly 100 M people. It has at least 100 engineering colleges, due to the presence of Mumbai and Pune. Even if we assume that all 500 are gurus, we still have only 5 linux gurus per engg college which has atleast 500 students, or only 1 person per 100 engg students.Bear in mind that these stats are scewed by the presence of IIT Mumbai which extensively uses linux.Add to that, the number of commercial offices in Mumbai that use linux and employ sys admins who know linux, and you will be left with very embarrasing ratio. I know this is a typical chicken and egg problem, in that the number of people who know linux wont increase if no one is ready to teach, but there are very few people capable of teaching. But something has to be done to address the issue. Without adressing such issues, the govt's decsion to move to Open Source, will sit like a white elephant in its own backyard.
I am not providing any solutions here, cause frankly, i have none.
-- Reality is just an extended dream.
I posted earlier on the language issue.
Essentially, bottomline is this:- not all official languages will be supported; Mandrake 9.0 already has Tamil. And so does Tamil Linux.
And of course, Emacs supports Devnagri scripts as well.
More than mere navel gazing.
"Rather than placing the burden on the teacher to distribute the source code"
Look at it in the right perspective. As opposed to not having the option for distributing the source code with proprietary software? Seems that the gpl doesn't put an undue burden. And perhaps a student that receives the source code might decide to take a look at it. The teacher that doesn't want to take "the burden" of that isn't providing every opportunity for learning.
"This seems to be a problematic demand especially for student projects and web sites that may disappear over the course of the year."
Anyone whose code is popular enough that people would be looking for it 2 1/2 years later isn't going to object to trying to make it available on request by trying to maintain a website.
"the GPL puts the creator in the position the being the enforcer of other people's morality....If one is not able or unwilling to enforce the GPL, then there is no reason to apply the GPL." There's more to the GPL than the spirit of enforcing it. You know the old saying, locks are to keep honest people out. GPL something and the average person will be likely to GPL it as well.
But if morality is really that important, maybe we could get the Pope to rule on it
Did you know that 50% of public school students in the state of Uttar Pradesh fail their exams, probably because they're taught in a language that is not their mother tongue?
I agree that English is by far becoming ubiquitous in India, but to say that they're more people who can't speak in English is a major denial of sorts.
It's even worse than saying that the United States and the United Kingdom speak only English, or that France speaks only French.
More than mere navel gazing.
Everyone else calls the US "America" for short as well. In fact, in my experience, the British seem to do this more often than the Americans do (Americans will refer to people from the US as "American," but only refer to the US itself as "America" in slogans like "God Bless America," not in common speech). And most other languages I know of call the US "America" (Greek being one example that I cited; the only other term you could use in Greek would be "person from the United States," which is rather cumbersome).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
...sounds like idle supposition - could you provide some references to help back up your position?
One of the issues I've come across regarding poverty is the way in which Western companies ruthlessly exploit indigenous knowledge through the patent system( Patents: Myths and Reality by Vandana Shiva Price Rs200 ISBN 014029824X )...
>we are already seeing some awesome Linux hacking coming out of Brazil
Could you say a little more about that? I'd be very interested to know what OS projects are taking off in Brazil.
Thanks,
Anders Schneiderman
Boy I am going to get flamed something bad here.. Well here goes...
:)
It is well and good to recognise the need for competition and intellectual development.... But....
How do you get paid for producing OpenSource software? By definition, you give the source code away, so there is no incentive for a customer to pay for the software.
Also what is point of a system setup if you can't read the latest Word format document that all your customers send you??
As a software developer both privately and professionally I can't afford to release my source code, and I can't afford to waste valuable time developing for an OS that Joe Public can't use (no offence, but you have to admit that Linux is not a real good candidate for replacing Windows on the Desktop, it is just to complex to use out of the box).
I understand where you are coming from, I am sick to the back teeth of MS releasing a new OS every two years, and then trying to force the development community to use their own language (C#)...
But.. as the something like 90% of the world's pc run an MS OS, can a company/country really start ditch MS completely.
As a final thought - if you are a student wanting to go out and work of a high-tech company who is most likely to be using a Windows based OS, and MS applications.. What are you going to spend most of your time learning...? (It sure as hell is going to be CPM
My $0.02
The country with more than one billion inhabitants is going to unificate them under the only right environment. They can be happy, it's just unix. How ironic.
The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer
and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown
suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged,
I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not
dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the
quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors,
and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural
for them to despise science fiction.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...