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Indian President Advises Open Source Approach
geo_2677 writes "The Indian President Dr. A Kalam has advised defense scientists to go for open-source software for software security, rather than be stuck with insecure proprietary software. Being a scientist himself, he surely knows what's good for his country." Speaking at the Indian Navy's Weapons and Electronic System Engineering Establishment, Kalam argued: "Open source codes can easily introduce the users to build security algorithms in the system without the dependence of proprietary platforms", though continues: "We should take maximum care to ensure that our solution is unique to protect our own defence security solutions implemented on open platforms." We previously reported on Richard Stallman's meeting with Dr. Kalam earlier this year.
Being a scientist myself, I had to control my laughter and climb back into my chair before posting this.
Perhaps geo_2677 could explain to the researchers with whom I used to share an equipment room why a) you need to close the lid of a refrigerated centrifuge and b) why, if you're too freaking lazy to do a) at least don't run the goddamn thing with a foot of condensed water in it.
Yeah, if you want good, pragmatic common sense, ask a scientist.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
With respect to logical reasoning maybe? With repsect to scientific methods? taking the sentence out of context opens up a can of worms. leave it in context.
Take a look at our (U.S.) president. "Being a former oil tycoon and son of a former president, surely he knows what's good for his country."
I'd much rather trust a scientist, almost regardless of what type of scientist.
but seriously, to get back on topic, what would you rather use to chain your bike up. a chain that you can inspect only the links that lock together, or all of the links to make sure the chain is strong enough?
1) India has less income that the Europe and US per capita, but lots more people. If India has a choice, it makes sense for them to go with OS (which requires more labor but less money) than with proprietary solutions such as MS (which require more money but (perhaps?) less labor).
2) Using nonproprietary solutions allows countries to develop indigenous software industries; for now, and for awhile, this will probably foster OS in lots of ways. In the pharmaceutical industry, India has started out making lots of generics, but are now looking at developing and selling their own blockbuster drugs. If a similar path is followed by India in software, at some point they will have their own MS; at that point, the continued use and nurturing of OS is not assured - as the relative cost of labor increases, commercial solutions might become more attractive.
While it might be best for India to follow an open source pathway, this is not because it is always right to do so, but because it best fits their current circumstances.
Is it me, or does India continue to make LOGICAL political decisions?
They invested in education and social programs and created a workforce capable of doing our high-paying jobs. They then set up an economic environment where those jobs would come over, including investments in infrastructure and utilities.
Next the middle class over there starts to take off, and they make a national effort to help make sure that the benefit of the boom is extended to the less fortunate, so they can make more of the country self-sufficient.
They've managed to stay out of international conflicts and have sent peace ovetures to Pakistan. Now they're jumping all over Open Source as a way to improve their own efficiency and self-sufficiency.
All this, and I doubt India's federal gov costs anywhere near what these asshats over here who seem to actively work against us cost.
Between Colin Powell telling the Indians that there will be no attempt to curb outsourcing by American companies on the part of the Bush Administration and the following account of Tom Donohue's (CEO of US Chamber of Commerce, really good friend of Bush Administration, kind of like Ken Lay) speech in San Francisco:
Donohue acknowledged the pain for people who have lost jobs to offshoring - an estimated 250,000 a year, according to government estimates. But pockets of unemployment shouldn't lead to "anecdotal politics and policies," he said, and people affected by offshoring should "stop whining." - AP Newswire
Personally, I say we go build a freaking guillotine, cause as far as I'm concerned, he might as well have said, "let them eat cake".
Anyway good luck to India and how much to run our Federal government?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
You should see "Fog of War" and go read some more about Robert MacNamara. He was considered a technocrat who's arrogance led to some mistakes. Many of the Italian and German fascists were also technocrats. I will entirely agree that technocrats are alluring and we should look for some of those qualities in our politicians, but there is also an arrogance in putting complete faith in technocracy.
/. that technocrat is really just a modern term for bureaucrat. In fact, the modern technocracy has all of the same problems as turn of the century republics like France and Italy, where the problems were blamed on the failing of the bureaucrat.
.02 on your statement
I would say that just because someone is not arrogant when confronted by facts and figures, that does not make them a wise leader. They can be just as arrogant and blinded with facts and statistics as their justification.
Seek balance and understanding (empathy) in politicians, those qualities will let them listen to technocrats. Of course, I do want to point out the irony here on
Just my
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
It looks like what happened here is that Stallman went to India, had a talk with their President, talked to him about open source being a good idea, and the President bought it.
This doesn't necessarily say that the Indian President is a brilliant leader; one possibility is that he was swayed by someone's argument, the same way that many other leaders are swayed by Microsoft's argument.
I'm not saying that I'm disappointed, but it's one thing to have a leader be swayed by someone that gave him a convinving argument, and it's entirely another to have that leader come to the conclusion on his own.
Now, the thing is the Indian President is clearly a really smart guy, and he's an accomplished scientist, etc. I don't mean to imply that he ACTUALLY just bought Stallman's line without thinking about it. What I mean to say is that there are plenty of people who would point at the Stallman visit and try to use that to suggest that the Indian President only made his recommendation because he's parroting someone else's words. This is a means for them to dismiss his recommendation.
It's much more satisfying when someone figures out that Free Software is a good idea without activism being involved, so no one can imply that he didn't understand what he was saying.
Argh. I'm having a really hard time expressing what I mean. Oh well.
because they're more inclined to think rationally/logically.
Ask them, which is objectivly better out of these choices:
windows or linux
emacs or vi or notepad
IE or Mozilla
Gimp or Photoshop
closed or open source
We may be generally rational, but we can easily become raving zealots if the right questions were asked.
A secure encryption system should NEVER rely on keeping the algorithm secret. The system factoring of products of very large primes is completely known, yet still forms the basis for the best (economically feasible) cryptosystems out there.
Your enemy should be able to know your system, and still not be able to break your code. Look at PGP (yeah, I know, someone found a flaw in the implementation, but correctly implemented, it's as strong as ever).
A bit colonial isn't it to automatically assume that the Indian president needs an emissary from the US to tell him about open source?
Do you really think that Kalam has never thought about open source? After all he is not the president of the US - he actually has proven that he can think independently as a scientist. If you knew academic scientists you would know that they understand the value of open-source better than anyone.
A much more likely scenario is that Dr. Kalam wanted to meet with someone to discuss some technical details and get some feedback and maybe some publicity for his ideas of implementing open source. As there were noodles before Marco Polo went to Cathay and there was open source before Stallman went India...
If things go by as Dr.Kalam envisioned , Im pretty confident that Open source will gain the biggest momentum worldwide.This is because
reports that there are very few linux users when compared to linux friendly nations.ofcourse i agree this may not be prefectly linear relationship in reality.Neverthelss , a reasonable estimate
1. A majority of Indian techies, might start using some variant of linux in the upcoming years.Rigt now,Most of them are still using Windows only.{ I observed that India ranks very poor in the number of registered Linux users.}
http://counter.li.org/reports/place.php
3.Once Linux Fever is caught up in India , we could expect a good increase in the number of open source projects , growth in popularity and confidence of open source projects.This will impact other developing nations , if they would realise the vast savings of the decision.
4.MS share in India will dwindle big time.. This would affect its revenue as India is such a huge market.
5. Indian colleges then would advance to use and advocate open source platforms and resources.This would help the indian progammers extend their scope and may improve their knowledge standard.Right now , most colleges in semi urban areas use proprietary operating systems.
May be im over optimistic..
Downside:
1. MS is silently attracting the techies and indian public by offering donations to the poor,AIDS victims etc..These will go down eventually.
2.This mite stir up some greedy and filthy politicians who get good bribes from corporate leaders and may work for delay in progress.
It's still a challenge for India to come up in technological arena with the onus of poor political stress on it.
Lets see where this takes !!!
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way