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Linux Gaining Ground In India
GillBates0 writes "Yahoo/Reuters is reporting that Linux seems to be gaining over Microsoft in India. According to Red Hat, about 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004, up from nothing in January. Linux already drives India's National Stock Exchange, and the Government of India has been promoting open source lately."
...can be found here.
Yet another GForge installation!
The Army reading list
Almost all of the UK's tech support call centres are located in India because it costs less. Since call centres require so many PCs, I wouldn't be suprised that they don't want to pay high MS prices for OSs. Linux to the rescue, especially for a somewhat poor country.
--- to swing on the spiral...
Actuall, the GNP per capita in USD is only $380 in India. The data is a bit outdated, but things haven't changed much in 6 years. And since the Full Version of Windows XP is $299, that only leaves a family with $81 for food for the rest of the year...Oh, and the computer too...
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
Neither is Hindu. It's a religion too. I think that was the point.
The Asia Open Source Center has news, polls, and such-like for that very topic.
The Army reading list
the rest of us can then get our jobs back.
Nah. They'll just get outsourced somewhere else.
S
actually, they're not in the public domain. they're covered and protected by international copyright laws. that's what prevents anyone from using it if they don't agree with the GPL.
don't confuse freely available for public domain. linux very much relies on copyright law.
http://kered.org
They have one small disadvantage - they barely make a living there.
India has an enormous (and growing) middle class.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No. They're copyright their various authors. It is that copyright which enables those authors to place the programs under the BSD|GPL|some other licence. CMUCL is an example of a program in the public domain: it ISN'T licenced.
I think your point could have been that ideas are free to all, or not free at all. Good point.
See what I've been reading.
That may or may not be (I tend to concur), but there is something about all that that seems much more certain to me: If the folks in India behave themselves in the near future as have the Taiwanese since ~1980's (which is clearly the case), then wealth disparity will be a side issue as the middle classes flourish there. I just hope that folks in other countries (including mine) can also flourish at the same time. Zero-sum games suck.
I've seen a lot of comments here about avoiding the windows tax. This doesn't take into account the fact that very few people actually buy branded computers like HP etc. Most of them are assembled from parts and sold by companies/individuals who ask you what software you want on you computer and then load up pirated versions of everything you ask. Considering that name brand computers are almost 2x or more costly this is what most people buy.
Another things is the whole $380 per year thing is misleading due to disparities in income and because India has a much lower cost of living and fairly large number of middle class families can afford computers. Most of my friends and relatives have computers.
- dharhas
ps. I'm an Indian.
As a person living in India for the greater part pf 6 months in a year: :P
a)Number of people that I know who use Linux (other than myself) : 0
b)Number of companies that I know who use Linux : 0; who use Solaris : 2 (but these are both networking companies.
c)Percentage of people who have and use a windows box as their primary machine : ~100% - not too many Mac users here...
d)Percentage of people who have a legal copy of Windows - ~20%
e)Percentage of people who use legal software : ~10%
In India, Windows IS free...
However I must say that more and more people are beginning to know and understand what Linux is. So... who knows..
This is simply more unwarranted optimism and euphoria.
The whole of India is licking up Microsoft's toilet water.
Microsoft will win, as it does everywhere else, and with even more vigor.
The majority of potential users will want to use their native language on it, and Microsoft has a virtual monoply on it with their agreement with CDAC which essentially holds the monopoly on the established standards for multilingual software --and they only provide Windows software. ONLY for Windows (yeah, some shit for Solaris too, but only limited and who knows up to when)