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President Of India Advocates OSS
cOdEgUru writes "I am sure this is a first. The President of India has urged Indian IT Professionals to develop and specialise in OSS rather than Windows. To be noted is that he made the speech (look for the "Think Different" section) at the famous Indian Institute of Information Technology (India's foremost academic institution equivalent to MIT). Also he reminisces that his meeting with Mr.Gates were difficult due to differing views concerning OSS and Security. What should be noted about him is that he is not a politician, but a scientist and an independent thinker foremost."
I have this overwhelming feeling that India will still be enslaved by MS, just like most of the rest of the world. How many years will it take for Linux to become mainstream there? 5? If so, the fight is already over.
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
Even OSS specialists won't be safe from getting laid of by the Indian workers now.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Expose on Indian fascism. They may not be Muslim fanatics, but they are religious fanatics.
India should abandon nuclear weapons and ICBMs.
India should stop tolerating pograms against minorities.
India should address their grievous repression
of "lower castes".
India should allow a referendum in Kashmir,
as specified by the UN.
Maybe if they addressed these, we could take
Indian policy seriously.
What do you consider sizeable? There are over 1 billion people in India. How many of those people are in that sizeable population of yours? How many outside of Bombay? If only 52% of your country is even literate then how many could possibly "earn very well?" 25% of your country is below the poverty level. That is an amount roughly equivalent to the entire population of the US.
There is a HUGE gap between the poor and the rich in India and setting that aside as a small problem is irresponsible.
No wonder the president doesn't like MS, he couldn't use Word to write documents while working on nuclear weapons.
"This is really great statement to be made, but I wonder how well taken by the students it will be."
Considering that Indian students are respected the world over, even by His Billness, while presiding over a meeting of IIT alumni in Clifornia recently, one would assume the students would be clever enough to understand the import of the statement.
"A lot of the students who attend IIT attend so that they can be marketable in a big business like Microsoft."
For your info., ALL IIT students run Linux on their systems in the campus. All the IITs host the local LUGs (Linux User Groups). No self-respecting IITian would touch an MCSE with a bargepole. IITs and indeed most of India have been using computers since the past 15 years or more. Companies like Wipro Infotech even developed their own OSes (WDOS - a menu based OS with Cobol) long ago - 1987. And again, the average MCSE earns less than $100 a month. I'm not joking or trolling here. No wonder Indians consider MSware as expensive disposable junk.
"I seriously doubt in a country where many are trying to break free of poverty that they will work for next to nothing on OSS."
Kudos for making 2 mistakes in 1 sentence! Indian geeks are much sought after by the girls here, make more money, have more fun, and are well respected in society. They live in luxurious apartments, enjoy about 70 channels of television at $3 per month (incldg. CNN and BBC).
Geeks hese days get work only on OSS. The hot thing in India today is embedded devices and mobile phone tech, both of which use OSS as their basis. Indians think little of the 'gratis' WinCE licensing and free access to the VS.Net bait.
Guess you'd do well to take a $2,000 flight to India and watch for yourself.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Take the pharmaceutical industry at the moment, India has big companies manufacturing generic medicines.
Unfortunately, this is one industry that will soon cease to exist, at least if the current US-sponsored World Trade Organisation initiatives to force India to recognise drug patents is successful.
Right now, there are literally millions of people in India, the rest of Asia and elsewhere in the developing world who benefit from cheap pharmaceuticals that have been produced in India by generic drugs manufacturers. These people, 99.99 percent of which would never be able to afford the non-generic variants of their medicines, are totally reliant on the inexpensive medicines that the generic drugs manufacturers currently supply. Cut off the source, and those millions will suffer greatly, and many of them will die.
Obviously, the WTO and the large, western drugs companies are well aware of the consequences of shutting down the Indian pharmaceutical industry. They care more about their lost profits (as if someone who lives in the developing world would ever be able to pay their inflated prices) then they do about human suffering.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the large multinational drugs companies (eg, Glaxo, Monsanto, Novartis, etc) are a plague: they continually put profits before people.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
President Bush has a pilot's license and flew F-102 Delta Darts in the Air National Guard---have you ever flown a plane from Texas to Washington DC? (Bush did that once for a date w/ Pres. Nixon's daughter Pat ;) He's bi-lingual (Spanish) and has an MBA from Yale. I don't see the occasional stutter or mis-wording as that big a deal---character is a lot more important, and he's far more a man of his word than Al Gore. What's ironic is his shift in attitude (influenced by his advisors I believe) on foreign policy---before election, ``humble'', after ``resolute and determined''.
As regards India's president---I really think they need a reformer who's willing to dismantle their caste system rather than a technocrat. Gandhi once said ``an eye for an eye results in a nation of the blind''---I suppose I'd have a similar opinion of human morality / nature if I lived in a nation which tolerates systematic human degradation as India does.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
You are an idiot. Why don't you mention how the Democrats drove vans around gathering up homeless people with promises of buying them cigarettes to vote for Gore? What about illegal aliens casting votes for Gore? What about the (Democratic Party controlled) judicial system in Florida that kept on changing their definitions of what constituted a cast vote? Our President was elected fairly based upon the requirements of the Constitution. If the Democratic Party didn't like the Electoral College so much, they should've put forth a serious Constitutional Amendment to abolish the Electoral College during their 50 year *reign* in Congress. But they didn't. The last time there was a laughable attempt at putting forth such a Constitutional Amendment was back in 1976, during the previously mentioned *reign* of the Democrats. It failed miserably. So if you are going to critique American politics, you might want to actually learn about the mechanics of our government first instead of aping what is fashionable in the ill-informed European press...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
The last thing we need is training Indian
developers on Linux. It will not be great news
to off-load Linux developement to India - not
great news at all, actually, nothing is worse
than this.