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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."
My assumption would be that this would make a great CS graduation project - and I'm being serious here. "Class, we're going to put dialect XYZ into the Linux code base. Now, how do we do this?"
Practical, teaches a good lesson, and helps make the system better.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
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.
Since India has 42 official national languages, they already decided many many years ago to adopt English as the language of the state as a kind of lingua franca. If someone is at the university level in India, it is all but guaranteed that they speak, read, and write English.
A common language, an irrigation system, and a railroad system are the biggest legacies that India got from the British Empire.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Correction: India only has 18 official languages.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Perhaps it's because all the technical people from the East end up in the West?
...and the list goes on.
Look at the listing of graduate students in the CS department of any US university, and you notice a high percentage of them do not appear to be native-born.
examples:
The University of Washington
MIT
Stanford
So, it's not that the East doesn't contribute, it's that Easterners come to the West before they contribute; and who can blame them? Wouldn't you rather be at a well-funded school in an industrialized nation that has the latest equipment than fighting off the roaches while hoping the power doesn't go out to the old VAX in some third-world university?
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Really? I thought India had been known for its rich spiritual heritage that had lasted for thousands of years before any contributions to the software world were made.
It was. And it was also known for its contributions to mathematics. India is known for more than one thing, because India is bigger than an apartment and has more than one person living there...
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat