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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.