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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."
oh please don't use the term "gaining ground". India already has border skirmishes with packistan; losing territory to a penguin is not something they'll appreciate!
This is interesting, especially with all the IT outsourcing to India that we have seen lately. Could mean for yet cheaper outsourcing costs here in the US- if people start using Red Hat at home, maybe they will want to use it at work.
let them spend the next 20 years trying to configure their linux config files.
the rest of us can then get our jobs back.
You can have a unique distro for each of their animal headed, multi-armed gods.
With so many Indians in the software industry already, maybe we will start seeing some more great open source software come from India.
they are fighting poverty by spending less on MS.
Who took my tinfoil hat?
Well, at least all the new linux users in india will have a local number to call for support. The WIPRO guys won't have to speak english either, its a win/win situation.
...can be found here.
Yet another GForge installation!
The Army reading list
Microsoft has such a strong monopoly in the west, breaking ground is hard enough here. So the easy solution seems to be just hook the Chinese and Indians onto Linux and the enormous software base that will result will put Microsoft at a severe disadvantage. It doesnt help either than the average cost of Windows XP is a month's salary of the average person with a computer there. Microsoft can use huge discounts, but they cannot beat the 100% discount Linux/BSD offers.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
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...
I have it on authority that Apu uses a Linux-based register at the Kwik-E-Mart! I can't remember if he uses SuSe, or if that was the name of one of his kids...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Actually it was just a comment from Microsoft and not Reuters so I don't think Reuters should be chastized for this. A quote is a quote, whether it's truthful or not. This wasn't even a direct quote either, just noting what Microsoft has previously said. I don't think it's a bad thing that Reuters included it.
{Apu} Please do not feed [kernels] to my Elephant God.. {/Apu}
Originally it was peanuts, but what the heck.
Linux actually needs to win soon in one of the populous developing countries (I include China in this category); it would've been nice to be China, but I'm under the impression Microsoft doesn't stop copies of it's operating system quite so hard there as it would here.
India would be good, especially since a lot of IT is done over there; with a bit of luck it will lead to another huge influx of Linux developers who speak English
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Now we can get Apple to pull their old ads, knowing that Linux is Ghandi's official OS.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
I'm sure Indians will enjoy getting a high quality freely-modifiable operating system for almost no money.
It will enable more of their domestic industry to gain the advantages of information technology that enable the kinds of productivity growth rates the US has seen in the last decade or so.
Here in the US, as a Linux user, I'm looking forward to gaining from this development as well.
From a population of 1e9, the country produces a fair share of the world's brilliant programmers.
Plus, they can read and write English, which gives them a head start relative to China, which possesses a like number of intelligent programmers.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They have one small disadvantage - they barely make a living there. And when you don't have enough money to feed your family the last thing you'd do is work for free so that some american (or german) company sells your software for profit. Open Source works when it's subsidized by your salary (or time stolen from your employer). If your salary doesn't leave much room for subsidizing anything - you go somewhere and find an evening job.
..that from the article Bill Gates dropping $400million into India helps increase sales of non-Microsoft products.
:-)
Maybe the Indian people are better at seeing through the charade and snake-oil salesmanship than we are... or can you come up with a better reason?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
"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"
And what percentage of the buyers of these computers will be just buying them to only to escape the Microsoft tax and then install a Windows bootleg?
I swear, piracy has to be the biggest threat to Linux in the developing world. Ironically, It's better for Microsoft if you steal their software than it is for you to install Linux.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
I already like Indian food. I can't wait to see what they do with their own distros.
;)
LadoOS... CurryOS... MasalaOS... yum!
In all seriousness, I've read a lot of worried articles recently talking about the mass migration of IT jobs from the US to India (and even the migration of IT jobs from India to Singapore). As much as I hate that people are losing jobs due to shortsighted business practices, this may be how linux finally gains a dominant foothold in the computer market. I've also heard that Bangalore is really nice. Maybe it's time to renew the ol' passport and migrate.
I've been told (by Indians) that Indian students in the US must either 1) go to a really nice school, or 2) stay after their schooling and work at an American company before they have a good chance of getting a job back in India. Does anyone know if Americans with tech experience have a chance of getting a job in India?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
1. What does Bill Gates think of this? He's been donating millions of dollars to India as part of his Bill Gates Foundation philanthropy project, and IIRC some (most?) of it was under the guise of AIDS relief. Being the pessimest that I am, I always felt that Gates pumped so much money into India to prime the tech workers over there for taking over US jobs. Who knows, maybe Gates knew a long time ago that every US programming/tech support job would get moved offshore, and prepared for it by assuring himself that India knew How Microsoft Plays Ball (tm). So with Indians now embracing Linux, are they preparing to ditch MS in favor of other technologies?
On a related note, does that mean that now I have to worry about being beat out of a linux sys admin job by the ever-growing fleet of L-1's? Cnn.com has a good yet depressing look at this today, here. I kind of pride myself on not just being another VB.NET hack or MS2000 Server clone out there looking for jobs. I'd become even more angry at the world if these jobs became a thing of the past (at least here in MN) as well.
Just some thoughts.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
Neither is Hindu. It's a religion too. I think that was the point.
+0, Meh. Welcome to the flip side of the globalization that brings you cheap and plentiful consumer goods.
In any case, I think you're confusing the concept of " bastard Indians stole my job" with "motherfscking greedy employers decided to screw working Americans in order to add a few pennies to the bottom line". Why attack the pawns when the king is in plain view?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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!
no, they are taking a chance on a great product before their infrastructure becomes microsoft dependant. those who can afford computers don't fit my description of poverty level...
peace,
-Grokent
This shouldn't be too surprizing considering:
1. The general education of India is more technical and scientific than in arts and such. Therefore a larger interest in the more "geeky" technical things. This is a big generalization.
2. Given the existance of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) and that it's tougher to get into there than it is MIT and UC Berkely, it just re-itterates #1 above.
3. And of course, the fact that the GNP per capita in USD is $380 per year makes things tough to learn or use anything that costs a significant amount of money. Now, the $380 is very low and is mainly this low because of the VERY rural towns and villages. In the city it is significantly higher, but not enough to call the average high or rich.
4. Given low income and abundance of people, anyone doing any job will have to do it their best, therefore they will try to use the least amount of resources in order to accomplish the most. Using something free helps in this respect as you save on capital - a very important resource.
This post might seem as a very one-sided post, but I can't think of any reason why MS would be at all useful here. If someone doesn't even know how to turn on a computer, using XP is going to be as difficult as using a Linux flavour.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
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.
How comforting it is to know that when my entire tech support dept gets outsourced to India, my former employer will be unwittingly using linux.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
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."
Microsoft appears to be one of the few companies where the management is smarter (in a Machiavellian way, like they're supposed to be) than the coders.
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
Welcome to the flip side of the globalization that brings you cheap and plentiful consumer goods.
Uh-huh. Do you see many of us asking for that? Hell, no. A sizable percentage of Slashdot is rabidly anticonsumerist. And if you remember the comments posted during the anti-globalism rallies during the WTO conference in Seattle a few years back, those were also generally anti"globalist". (Globalist in quotes because what we're seeing is a small upper class looting economies, not real global development)
In any case, I think you're confusing the concept of " bastard Indians stole my job" with "motherfscking greedy employers decided to screw working Americans in order to add a few pennies to the bottom line". Why attack the pawns when the king is in plain view?
On this, we agree. Don't blame the Indians - they'll be in the same place you are in ten years time or worse. (When the companies currently employing them move on to some other third-world country that they've convinced to improve its "high-tech sector") Go after the bastards driving the looting to line their pockets.
"Why attack the pawns when the king is in plain view?" because the king has a machine gun and the pawns just throw rocks.
One of the quotes from a presentation by John "Maddog" Hall a few years ago at ApacheCon was that "with 500 million personal computers in the world, that means that there are still 5.5 billion that haven't chosen their operating system yet." I always liked that saying.
Linux makes quite a bit of practical sense in India. No indian can really afford to pay retail for software. Even the $40 that is the (rumored) cost of windows to PC OEMS is something most people just cannot pay in addition to the huge price of a computer. The OS and the office suite are thus mostly pirated, and usually include a plethora of free viruses...Ditto for the development environments. Everyone who is serious about learning comp/programming realizes sooner o\r later that instead of trying to pirate each and every tool one needs for a dev environment, its just better to move to linux. :P
Ghoul2
In addition to that, there are magazine like PC Quest which have distributed free linux distro CDs (and include loads of good linux articles) with the magazine since around 1994. These CDs are how i got hooked on linux. That helps...
In my college, the IITs linux has long been the OS of choice in comp labs. They would rather buy a few more PCs than spend the huge ammount on WIN+DEV STUDIO, (even after the educational discount), and even when i was there, 5 years back, students, even non power users clearly preferred the linux systems over the NT systems...to the end where they migrated the NT ones to linux too.
blah...i thought i had a point here...DAMN ADD
Sigura Non Grata
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.
> A sizable percentage of Slashdot is rabidly anticonsumerist. :)
Yes, if coffee mugs, air blast cannons and HDDs do not count
While his rant was immature and probably intentionally flamebaity, his point has more validity than yours. How the hell does anyone living in Amerca (or Brittain, or France, etc...) have a chance of competing with someone who will do his/her job for wages that would leave an American/Brit/Frenchie homless and near starvation?
I can't live on what they pay Indian tech people. I can't afford groceries on those wages (and I eat cheap!), to hell with car payments/bus tokens, insurance, my mortgage, or any of the other costs of living my life. And this doesn't even include ANY luxuries like TV, Internet, clothes, pets, etc...
It doesn't matter how much time and energy anyone spends improving their skillsets. There will be people of equal skills in India, Russia, or whatever economically depressed countries out there that will do the same job for almost nothing. It's not the skills you have that matter anymore. It's how little management can pay to get the work done so they can make the next quarterly report look good and collect those fat cost-savings bonuses.
The only point that this guy is really wrong about is that he's hating the wrong people. It's not the Indians that he should be hating. It's the CEO's that are sending his job overseas that he should hate.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
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
The primary appeal of Linux is low cost: $0.00. with Windows being free in India, the typical Indian will not be interested in using Linux. Windows has significantly more applications that run on it than Linux. Off course, those applications are also "free".
Similar comments apply to China. China (which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan) is the software-piracy capital of the world. More then 90% of the software used in China is pirated. Here are some references to solidly support the aforementioned observations.