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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."
That's interesting, because when I was working for Amazon.com, it was a known fact that they had a tech outsourcing in India just so they could fire those people instead of the people working in the American customer service centers when mistakes were made.
+5, Female
Just make sure to blame all those Indians working in Banaglore meat grinders for a quarter of US wages for your lack of a job. Whatever you do, dont blame American companies for your job loss. That would be unpatriotic!
I think the history repeats itself. Back in 1970s, IBM wanted to gain market for its mainframes in India.
But as we all know the Mainframe hardware, software and services costs lots of $$$.
So instead placing bets on a proprietory vendor with lots of money, the government officials decided to go without it.
This presented an opportunity for others. Indian companies like HCL licensed inexpensive Unix from AT&T, built their own hardware and modified the source code to run on their hardware.
All the universities and banks had modest computing power running on a version of Unix.
Students learnt Unix not OS 390 and it turned out that Unix is the future and mainframes were obsolete. We all now know why this is good for India.
The same thing happening now, instead of IBM substitute M$.
So lack of money can sometimes be advantageous.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, too little and too much wealth are not good for well-being of the society.
Just to quote an example: When Microsoft was serious about Office licenses in a certain CMM Level 5 company - The company actually tried to move towards OpenOffice. Complete MS Office install on my workstation was sacrificed to open office.
We do not have a history of profitable operations. Our future SCOsource licensing revenue is uncertain.
DId you notice, according to the article, that out of a country with a billion people, that there are only *8 million* computers (personal?) in India? And as for "cost", let's be real. My Indian friend brought back a CD he got in Bombay that he paid about $1.47 US dollars for. It contained the entire Adobe Suite. He said the same for just about any software you could name, you rarely paid over $5 on the street. No one pays for software in India. No one. What's amazing to me is that even with the availability of "free" Windows, people are still choosing Linux.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I hope they can really get a good jump on Open Source and use it to boost their local economy. I was born and raised in the good ole' USA. However, I am saddened by the fact that Americans make up ONLY 5% of the worlds population yet we have snatched up more then 50% of the worlds wealth. That seems like excessive greed to me. This leaves the other 95% (like India) to fight over less then 50% of the worlds wealth. Again, this just doesn't seem right to me. I hope ALL non-US nations can really build up THEIR OWN IT and not be reliant on the USA and espcially MS. While I think international trade is important, I think the majority of any nations IT should stay in that nation. Maybe India will not be selling it's IT wares internationally, but it could really spark it's own industry and keep India's money where it belongs, in India.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison