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Indian Government Keen on Open Source

Posted by Zonk on from the subcontinent-with-taste dept.

manugarg writes "The Indian government is distributing free CDs of localized open sorce softwares like Firefox, OpenOffice.org etc. to encourage the use of computers across the country. ZDNet reports, 'The Indian government's decision to ship free software in this way likely will be a blow to Microsoft, which plans to release a low-cost version of Windows in India soon. Microsoft originally hoped to release its Windows XP Starter Edition--a low-cost, feature-restricted version of Windows XP--by the end of March, but it's now aiming for a June release.'"

3 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Re:India likes OS software by jpu8086 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Those 22 languages (AFAIK, there are only 18 official languages, but maybe this has changed recently) are the ones spoken by at least one million people.

    There are many other "minor" languages spoken by other people.

    Mind you, these are not dialects. These are full-blown unique languages with unique written scripts (however, many of them do share common traits).

    It is amazing how we are able to maintain a democracy, let alone a country.

    --
    now supporting:
    cmdrTaco for president '04
    michael for oval office intern summer '05
  2. Downloadable version by TheWingThing · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Indian language CD (currently, Tamil only) can be downloaded from http://www.ildc.in/ - the website maintained by the government. But it's already slowed down, try after a few days. Most SW is available for both Linux and Windows.

  3. Re:India likes OS software by The+Original+Yama · · Score: 3, Informative
    Off the top of my head, India has about 1,600 (yes, that's ONE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED) recognised languages and dialects, and probably many more.

    From the CIA World Factbook:

    English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language
    --
    OLPC Australia