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Speaking Out For Free Software In India
inode_buddha writes "We all know how RMS and Bill Gates toured India recently, with mostly mixed reviews. The reviews don't seem so mixed after reading this memo
regarding the use of software in Indian schools... and it's interesting how quickly these people pick up on the business.
IMHO, this letter ranks up there with the Peruvian Congressman's letter to Microsoft in clarity and impact.
People worldwide are beginning to wake up, and this needs to be shouted from the (networked) hills... "
Personally, I think opensource is a great alternative for counteries who are not as wealthy as the united state might be. (I mean, when it comes to public services... schools.. and the like) and would be a great way to save on huge licensing fees... and thus help the technological expansion of said foreign country.
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Rather sad/ironic that the USA is really the last to embrase Open Source. Hey, it's still not legal to play a DVD.
You'd think the PC industry would go to bat against hollywood, since actual illegial copying helps then out a great deal.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
4.1 If our students are to really understand and learn programming and develop software skills, they should learn not only to use computers, but also understand why they function the way they do. This involves learning programing skills. To learn programing, students should have access to source code of the software they use. We trust that you have studied and understood the terms under which the corporation, whose software is currently prescribed for study, licenses its software. It should be emphasised that they do not provide access to source code, which is a a closely guarded secret. By insisting on programs from a particular company, the government is denying our students an opportunity to learn about programs and software development skills. We need not repeat that this policy would not help our community in the long run.
This is exactly why closed source software should banned from educational use. When studying literature you can see how the author strings the words together to create a novel. There is no better way to understand how something works than to examine how the various pieces come together to form the whole.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
OLPC Australia
This letter was submitted by an analogue of a LUG; although it would be nice were it otherwise, a LUG has hardly the influence of a Peruvian Senator.
Still, it's nice to see that someone is fighting the good fight in India.
The memo is about the schools, and learning requires being able to take things apart and see how they work. This is done in biology, literature, history, anthropology, medicine, etc. Even Computer Science / ICT
So in addition to providing a solid IT / ICT infrastructure, OSS and Free Software play a central, pedagogical role that cannot be fulfilled by closed proprietary solutions.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Ordinarily, donations from Bill and Linda Gates come from the Gates Foundation, and are made without press releases and public fanfare. This is how it should be. And don't get me going on how generous they are, with MS giving away such small percentages compared to other corporations...
In the last few weeks, we all saw the headlines about Gates giving India millions to support AIDS groups, and how he intends to invest more to help programmers in India as well. Why was this act a headline, when others are normally done quietly?
Because Gates is trying to buy MS favor with India using the sick and dead as a pole to tie his promotional flag to. It stinks, and no one but the most stubborn is buying it for a minute.
==-==
Remember, investing in MS is asking to have your own money used against you in the market place.
A free app is worthless if it doesn't do what I need.
that is precisely the point -- even if MS would give their software to the IT@SCHOOL project for free it would not be acceptable.
in the larger view, "do what I need" is not as simple as "performance" and "superiority". it is a healthy IT industry in 10 years, a government not controlled, in essence, by a large foreign software company.
The zealots can't seem to grasp this.
at least in some cases, the zealots are not so unfortunately short-sighted.
MORTAR COMBAT!
It's also interesting how recently slashdot editors are picking up on the fact that there is significant technical awareness even in countries they've never heard of.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
I think it's a great letter and I agree with most all of the points made and they are made well...
/. and elsewhere touting the fact that Linux was chosen for this and other academic projects, but from reading this letter it seems now to be in doubt.
But, I don't see why it's so earthshaking. It's basically a letter written to government officials from a free software user's group - what do you expect 'em to say? Its analogous to a Linux User's group somewhere drafting a letter to send to their state officials.
So no, I don't think it ranks up there with the letter by the Peruvian representative. If it were written by a group of government officials to other government officials then it would be a big deal.
Actually reading this letter I was disappointed to find out that Gates' visit apparently had some impact on decisions that were being made by the IT@SCHOOL project in this particular Indian state. A few weeks back there were articles on
How much impact do you think this letter (however good their arguments are) will have on these government officials compared to Bill Gates spreading $millions all over India to buy off these officials?
Somebody stop that man!
No permanent wedding here. Yes there are microsoft lovers and *nix lovers in indian IT. And I dont know for what reason media coverage is goven mostly to MS lovers.... but the ratio is balanced. Companies in CRM, ERM etc are wedded to M$ as their clients in US/Europe are. However go towards IC design, Networking, embedded software the wedding is with *nix... some linux and much solaris.
As far as the upcoming generation, the top rated colleges have LAN's built on linux. I passed out in '01... and we were fed on a linux and solaris diet. The professors, lecturers.. esp the senior folks are very strong advocates of linux coz in the 80's when ernet(out sorf of college internet) came up it was entirely on unix. 8Kbps of blazing speed and mail could be sent within 24 hours. It was a miracle ;-). So I would not worry too much about it. India has been late in linux no doubt.. but we will soon catch up.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
Do you really think that this is ultimately going to come down to a popularity contest between two figureheads?
Eventually it's going to come down to the same cost vs benefits tradeoff that people debate about endlessly around here. That's the real issue, not whether Gates or Stallman is more 1337.
This letter highlights a lot of the key issues going. I think it's interesting to note that the major tech boom of the last twenty or so years came out of the US, where university students had full access to the UNIX source code, where they learned what some of the best developers in the world could put together. Students today who just learn Visual Basic or some such crap aren't going to be the ones changing the tech world in the next twenty years. Countries that realize this and gear their educational programs accordingly will reap the benefits.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I would extend the para by saying that encouraging people to use software that they can not afford later in life is tantamount to encouraging piracy. This is an argument that everyone must agree with even if it goes against Microsoft's unwritten policy:
I don't know if you know the tagline, free as in Freedom, not free as in beer.
The reason people are throwing their voices behind Linux is because of the freedom it affords the users. You are very much in control of your machine. It is yours. The software, that's yours. The data you generate, that's yours too. The documentation, that's also yours. But it's not yours alone, it's everyone else's too.
This is a very powerful idea, and it works in this case because of the negligible cost of duplicating software.
People are not involved in this fight (if a fight it truly is, to many it's not) in order to simply hate something. It is to free themselves, to gain some measure of self-control and power in some small, but substantial way. If Microsoft were to completely vanish from the face of the Earth, I think that people would find other things to rail against, and they would very likely line up along the same path. What would be the next target? Whatever restricted freedoms the most.
And should Linux "win" it would be a win for the BSD's, a win for the Hurd, a win for OpenBeOS, a win for ReactOS, and a win for every other Free OS out there, as well as Free software in general. It's not about Linux, it's about freedom and any free OS would win, it just happens that Linux is in the spotlight moreso than the others.
So if you're running Linux just to save a couple of bucks, then I can't fault you, but what you're missing out is the sensation of freedom and power. I personally love the fact that I can contribute to Debian and various programs wherever I see a need. I could never do this with Windows or my old Mac (pre-OSX). I certaintly can't add a program to Windows the way I can incorporate a program that I like in to Debian, no way no how. That's power and that's freedom and it's an amazing thing to take part in. So rather than whine about your $34, why not think about your windows system and all the ways that you're restricted from it, and then maybe you'll see why people are so excited over this whole Free thing.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
It's true that he was very aware that he was getting free advertising by donating this money - but which would you rather have: MS spending those millions running TV ads and on billboards, or using the money on a good cause?
He may not have 100% selfless motives in this, but that doesn't change the fact that his money is doing good. Think of it as 'ethical advertising'!
Anyway, of all the dodgy business practises that MS gets up to, do you really think giving to charity rates a mention?
Exactly. Use your own brains using neutral and opinions from all views as input and process. Well, maybe I am just odd, but I dislike it when stuff is just thrown on my face. On the other hand, memos like the one linked from this particular article are excellent, because they provide facts on which the resulting conclusion was based. The value of good reports like this can be ruined by religion-like advocatism. Free software advocatism is getting some characteristics like this lately... but maybe in this case I just needed the extra cup of coffee. :)
OSS means nothing (and should not) to these people.
You obviously underestimate people who do not fall into your generic stereotypes of "domesticated American idiot".
Jimmy's braces are way more important than some piece of software.
Exactly. This is why her OS software shouldn't have to cost $99, and her Office software shouldn't have to cost $299. $39 is pretty acceptable for an OS, and $59 is pretty acceptable for an Office suite. If there was an open market with competing products, that would have been $300 more dollars for Jimmy's braces.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Jimmy's orthodontist uses a closed-source OS in the office for everything. This closed-source OS has a security hole. Not only that, but it's a known security hole that the company decided wasn't worth fixing. So even though the computer is regularly auto-updated, this hole remains unpatched because the corporation decided not to. The orthodontist's computer is broken in to and Sally's credit card information is stolen, and all the billing records for the orthodontist is stolen. This causes incredible headache for Sally over the next year or more.
We don't all have to be programmers to benefit from freedoms. We don't all have to be writers to benefit from freedom of speech, because we can all read what others have written and learn from it. We don't all have to be recluses to benefit from a right to privacy. Freedoms benefit you in more ways than you can realize, and it is a sign of enslavement when you're willing to sacrifice them for nothing.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
What it all boils down to is that no one wants a global monopolist and foriegn nationals forcing propeitary software dependence down thier throat...even when MS is trying give away windows. Meanwhile here in the US, the Bush Republicans are actively helping MS shove their PC dictatorship down americans throats....so much for liberty and justice for all. MS knows it really can't compete with linux, and it shows with Palladium. It feels like the IT business is going back in time.. not forward, when will people realize that the MS monopoly does not nothing for innovation and no good for IT business in general?
"You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- 1976." --George W. Bush, to Queen Elizabeth, Wash
USA coders (they are not the only people going OSS, anyway) do OSS dev for the fun of it. Indian coders do whatever they do for a living. Not always but true most of the time. The irony might be true in a sense but it is nevertheless a knee-jerk reaction and parochial.
Science as a way of life.
swatantryam
Something like this?
William Ernest Henley. 1849-1903
7. Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
I honestly believe that Indians in the large would be behind linux and open src. Most at university are. I just get the feeling that gates will prounce around, use a bit of charm and try buy some strategic ppl/companies off with cutbacks and freebies in a lock down approach. Basically, contaminate the strategic centres and the rest will follow. I don't think it bothers them if nerd A uses linux and so does his friends. What matters to them is money and strategic alliances. When Gates talks the ppl in suits listen. The suits just need to realize the cost vs benefits and that goes for open src too.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
I think the last people who will catch on will be the people of the U.S.A. I am a U.S. citizen and it just makes me crazy that people still think computers are expected to crash and "reboot" is how to fix your problems.
Well, Indians have known to be logical and scientific. They contributed the number "0" (zero) to the world of mathematics (and i don't mean zock). The "jantarmantar" which looks like a child's playpark is actually a lifesize astronomical observatory. So why not software? India claims its population is its weakness.. I say , exploit it, it can be India's strength too. If Linux is attacked at such young an age, it won't be non user friendly anymore.... yah.. we'll have a few million plus geeks in a matter of a few years ;)
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Definately not as important as a senator's memo if it was written by members a LUG. I do not in my wildest dreams want to undermine the authors, but would be good to know who they were.
.. don't mean to sound too negative, but there is a long way to go before a nationally important figure comes out and pens a memo as eloquent as the Peruvian Senator. On yeah.. in other news the Indian Prime Minister has switched to using a BMW as his primary mode of transport. :)
I do belive Linux will be one of the mainstream operating systems in India, but not until the govt cracks down hard on piracy. Not until security becomes a major issue (I'm still getting virii on an email address I used 2 years ago to email people who visit one of my websites). Not until a major vendor in India goes all out to support Linux and shows a significant cost differential on the purchase of a PC. Not until a major SI (Tata, HCL etc) comes out with a authorative study which shows a significant difference in TCO. Not until Indian programmers from the SI start contributing to the various OSS development efforts.
Oops
This is the main failing of the OSS community. They all think that EVERYONE in the world is a coder.
I don't think so.
It would be far more correct to say that the main failing of the closed source "community" is that they treat EVERYONE in the world as a consumer.
"Don't create products! That's what we're here for. You want a custom program? Here's Visual Basic, where you can draw and design your GUI and cobble it together from custom parts that we build for you. That'll be $1,079 thank-you. [cha-ching!]
"Oh, I see you've developed the next-big-thing using the tools we sold you? And you're selling it to other people? Here, allow us to
(a) Create an identical product and undercut your price
(b) Buy you out
(c) Claim patent on your idea and shut you down.
(d) Change our API to break your code"
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Why would you want to kill off a market for software companies to code for and sell products? Is this what open source is all about, destroying markets? There's only so much service business around, you gotta have products too.
It's about raising the bar. The basic Office type package has been around for years, and does essentially what most people want. There is no reason why a basically stagnant product line should be a multi billion profit centre.
Really, the most interesting thing happening in Office packages is that we may get back to some sort of sensible standard exchange format. But MS aren't interested in that, so I'm not interested in their product.
I'd like them to stay. Talking with like-minded people is good for your ego, but talking with people with different views is good for your mind.
Ciao
----
FB
Be fair. The guy is giving money to charity, so more sick people are going to be treated. He isn't delaying necessary funding for people, he's giving extra funding.
You can be cynical about the amount of publicity Microsoft gets from it, but I don't think it's fair to be cynical about the fact he gives to charity. He doesn't have to give a single cent of his ill-gotten gains. Compare his donations to (for example) Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos and Scott McNealy (and me, although I'm not quite as rich as them) and I suspect you'll find he's the good guy in this case.
IMHO he does very few things worthy of praise, but this is one of them (or at least, not worthy of scorn).
"Microsoft can't win" is one of the funniest memes I've seen floating about slashdot as of late. Does anybody remember back in the DOS days when you had to type "win" to start the window server...like typing "startx"...it always annoyed me to have to type "win" in order to lose. Now they're a monopoly, and you have to do some clever dancing to be employable without touching their products these days.
Yet they "just can't win". The underdog reflex is so powerful in some people that even Microsoft gets sympathy. Incredible.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I would like to see MS making more real progress, instead of playing with file formats, marketing tricks and FUD. In the old days IBM had 40% share of hardware market and everything they did was automatically standard. They are still alive, but quite far from such a position. And that is forcing IBM to make real progress. MS could make (and sometimes does) good software. But they also make bad software when they can get away with it. As they dominate the desktop market, they can do that far too often. If they lost their monopoly, that would not happen, and the prices would be more reasonable. Instead of paying themselves sick for a load of MS/BS, people would use something else (== alternatives).
And please stop using the phrase "Alternative OS", read the memo for an explanation.
OK, I'll use "Linux" from now on. I think the memo is a typical example of Open Source advocacy, and not focusing to Linux only (I know BSD etc. exist.). The case is also an example of the harm clueless and/or bribed government officials can make. However, I personally prefer focusing on Linux. OpenOffice et al. and Mozilla et al. are good products that can stand on their own, but they are natural choices after you have selected Linux. People who have never used Linux have most likely never heard of Mozilla or Openoffice. Someday we may have MSOffice and IE for Linux, but before that I focus on advocating Linux. Focusing on the essential is much better than philosophing on free software, unless you are talking to a philosopher.
'Alternatives' are required when we are compelled to use one particular thing or product
And that is exactly what many people are facing.
The memo states that the suggested curriculum contains Win98. If this is accepted, Indian schools are forced to use Win98 until the next review (about 2007!).
Several goverment agencies in my country provide on-line information or forms in Word format only. Have you ever tried opening and filling a complex .doc form with OpenOffice? Can you be 100% sure the filled form is printable on a Windows machine? Would you bet your job on that? I didn't.
I have been forced to buy a Windows workstation. This is purely because some of our financiers (I work in a research institute) want reports and applications filled on-line. Only IE version is available, and this is because of 'security', which translates to 'we don't have a clue on security'. The alternative to IE was risking 40%-60% of our funding, including my own salary. I hate the situation, and I have let them know that using IE is waste of their money, but what else could we do? Piracy would mean risking my job with no hope of ever recovering it.
The alternative to buying MS is risking my job and my home (I, my wife and my 2-year-old son live in a rented apartment.) And as it's snowing outside today, the alternative to MS is cool. Putting pressure on the national and local government and increasing the Linux user base in other ways may improve the situation. It may take years or even decades, but it's worth trying.
Oh, the cost of Windows comes around to $34, which is a typical license fee Dell pays to install it. By the way, how much would it cost me to purchase one year of Linux technical support?
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Buying Windows doesn't mean you have technical support. If you purchased a Dell with Windows on it, you have technical support for a certain alloted amount of time from the manufacturer, as is right. It's also the case if you purchase a computer with Linux on it, or a Redhat/Mandrake/Suse/insert-your-favourite-boxed-
Technical Support costs if you pick up Linux or Windows from the store:
Windows XP: $245/Per incident (or you can get a package, but the price is still high) or the online technical support for $99/Per incident.
Information taken from: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh
Redhat:
If you go beyond the timeframe of the technical support that comes with the box set, you can use the "support on demand" for $40/per incident.
(information from Redhat salesperson on telephone)
Mandrake:
Phone support after your tech support is up that came with the box-set: $50/per incident.
Information from http://new.mandrakestore.com/mdksa/index.php?LANG
Suse:
Phone support after your tech support is up that comes with the box-set: $39/Per incident.
Information from http://www.suse.com/us/private/support/private_su
Lycoris: (for completeness)
You can pick up a Lycoris/LX License Certificate for $24.95 which entitles you to their normal technical support for 60 days via email. ( I couldn't find anything in regards to Phone support from them)
Information from http://www.lycoris.com/support/
End result: You don't have to be a coder to get advantages out of Linux. It's just one of those freedoms that you can have when you choose it. (without spending $200+ for the coding environment)
I for one haven't coded in C or C++ to make anything on my system in years. (and that was just for fun) I do however do scripting, but that's only to create my own custom stuff, and I'm picky as hell about that.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Hence, it is essential that software to be used in schools are made available under a license which incorporates freedom of use.
I'll be filing this one away for my next M$ argument. I can't think of a way this could be put more clearly.
It is therefore a prerequisite of free and unhindered computerised communication between humans that computers understand languages 'spoken' by each other.
As an American, proud our legacy of freedom, this point and the conclusions the author draws in following discussion carries a chilling judgement of what we are becoming. If electronic communication is as important to free speech as the document suggests, then the DMCA puts us well ahead of the Victorian British Empire in having corrupted our history of liberty.
The only reason, I repeat, THE ONLY REASON that Gates set up his 'foundation', (in fact, THE ONLY REASON that he started donating ANYTHING AT ALL) was because not that long ago someone took a look at Gate's charitable contributions ...and realized that there ...WERE NONE!!!
...not because of the goodness of their hearts, but because they feared the label of 'stingiest man in the world'.
The resulting onslaught of negative press was so great that the Gates's immediately started 'giving'
It's always amazing to me how quickly people forget the actual facts, and start believing the spinmeister's revisionist history version.