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Indian Government Chooses Linux for Academia

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the and-introducing-the-gnu-utilities dept.

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."

16 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Language by Trusty+Penfold · · Score: 5, Interesting


    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.

    1. Re:Language by u19925 · · Score: 5, Interesting
      majority of educated people in india has better command of english only because, the majority of education offered in india is in english. govt subsidizes education in india to the extent that private education is a niche market and govt offers mostly english only education. i studied in one of the IITs (india's premier technology undergrad colleges), and there wasn't a single course (not even a language course) in non-english.

      most schools not english medium, but since the higher education is in english, elite class people send their children to english, thus in cities, english schools are comparatively more. no more than 10% childrens today recv education in english, and one generation ago, the figure was 2-5%.

      in addition to govt subsidizing education, various laws make private education very un-profitable and hence it is nearly impossible to get higher education in non-english. besides, in india, most stuff is govt controlled where english is the official language (in india, govt controls everything from temples, slaughterhouses, hotels, electronics companies, electricy, transport, textile mills, ...). since most money is concentrated in india in english speaking society, lack of non-english support in linux is not going to be an issue there.

    2. Re:Language by fault0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have to agree with the grandparent poster's comments. I'm of Indian origin, but was born and brought up here in the United States. I went to good schools, took good classes, and always got good grades, but my education was no where as rigorous as my parents' was in India. This was especially true in the math and sciences. I think my English education was probably better than that of my parents, but if I had never taken accelerated/honors/AP courses in K-12 education, I doubt this would have been so.

    3. Re:Language by The+Cydonian · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I speak five languages, three of them Indian (see my siggie for more information). I understand that people like me are quite common in India; "someone very low on India's social/ literary echelon" speaks more languages than I do.

      Point #2: There was a story sometime back on /. on how illiterate slum kids figured computers for themselves. One interesting result in that exercise was that the slum kids created metaphors for themselves that didn't quite correspond to Microsoft-suggested ones. ("Arrow Pointer" versus "trishul" for instance). And here's something more damning:- after the experimenter changed the English interface to a Hindi one, they didn't know how to operate the computer! All their traditional metaphors were gone; indeed, any native Hindi speaker would laugh if you say "karyakram ko bhaago" instead of "run the program". It's just too silly, a bit like Coca Cola's alleged mishaps in translating its company name into Chinese.

      Bottomline: The process of internationalization as you describe it is definitely not going to work in India. People there are waaay more multi-lingual than your traditional West European or East Asian.

      --
      More than mere navel gazing.
  2. FreeBSD would have been a better choice. by nickgrieve · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Its used in a lot of universities already, its a standard "distro" Has fantastic documentation and a less restrictive licence.

    Why not *BSD?

    1. Re:FreeBSD would have been a better choice. by kirkjobsluder · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Coming from academia, one of the big problems with the GPL is that not only can you not redistribute the work under less liberal license, but you can't redistribute the work under a more liberal license either. For example, section 3 of the license seems to be overly restrictive in terms of redistribution of object code in a way that is irrelevant to most users. When applied to individual users, this seems a bit problematic. Basically I can see cases where I don't care if a teacher includes the source code when distributing 30 copies to her students. Rather than placing the burden on the teacher to distribute the source code, if access to source code is important, it should be technically embedded in the object code by the creator.

      Section 2 requires that people who distribute source code maintain access to the source code for three years. This seems to be a problematic demand especially for student projects and web sites that may disappear over the course of the year.

      A third problem is that while most people agree that giving back to the community is important, the GPL puts the creator in the position the being the enforcer of other people's morality. There are couple of reasons why a person might be reluctant to do so. First of all, many people are not in the position to enforce the terms of the GPL. If one is not able or unwilling to enforce the GPL, then there is no reason to apply the GPL. The second reason is that the GPL does place restrictions on the modification and distribution of programs. Some people believe that the benefits of placing no restrictions on modification and redistribution outweighs the risk of appropriation.

    2. Re:FreeBSD would have been a better choice. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Think about this one. The TCP/IP stack was orginally released under the BSD license. It has since become very popular. Yes, the very BSD code has been transplanted into a variety of various systems including propietary systems. The results is a very open standard that everyone is using, open source, and commercial operating systems.

      Think what would have happend had it been under the GPL. The commercial vendors (who are very important regardless of what you may think) would not have been able to use it. They could then either write their own TCP/IP stack or create a totally different closed protocal. In short, you can credit the very open BSD license with allowing for the rapid adoption and creation of one of the underlying protocals of the internet. It could still have happened, but certainly with more legal hasseles and not nearly as fast.

      The GPL is for people who have a political agenda. The BSD license is for enthusiasts who just want to make good software.

      Finally, personally, if I create some code that I have any thought of using for commercial purposes, I'd be very afriad to put it under the GPL as I'm not sure what the consequences would be. Hence the 'more restrictive GPL' thoughts going around.

  3. 2 Down by DrugCheese · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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*
  4. Win2k? by Door-opening+Fascist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

  5. Worrysome by God_Retired · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  6. Open Source Contributions. by jericho4.0 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This isn't meant to be a troll, but has anyone ever noticed the lack of GPL projects/work coming out of the 'east'. (this was a /. topic some mos ago), or the lack of commercial projects?

    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
  7. Newsworthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:Am I the only one... by Quixote · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This could be a coincidence, but Bill Gates just announced that he will be going to India early next month. In fact, GoI's Linux announcement seems to have come out the day after Bill announced his trip. Ouch!

  9. Heh! :) Way to go India! by carlmenezes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  10. This is great news by drix · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  11. govt, taxation by fantomas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ..."stuff"..."sounds like"...?


    ...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 )...