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Indian Government Keen on Open Source
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.'"
Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with >1% marketshare.
/tmp or the installer will dump core. After the installer is done, edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add a section called "GL" and put "driver nv" in it. Make sure you have the latest version of X and Linux kernel 2.6 or else X will segfault when you start. OK, run the Quake 3 installer and make sure you set the proper group and setuid permissions on quake3.bin. If you want sound, look here [link to another obscure web site], which is a short HOWTO on how to get sound in Quake 3. That's all there is to it!"
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".
Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues. Example comments:
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?"
Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.
Great woo hoo I got a CD. Now all i need is a pc, monitor and keyboards.
Bytes - IT Community
Tell us something we didnt know. What was interesting to me though was
Eventually, the government plans to release CDs in all of the 22 official languages of India.
Holy crap, just how many languages exactly does a country need! I know its a big place but 22! It must require 95% of all IT resources just to localise software. How do they manage to find time for offshore work?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
My Indian Dr. thinks so. And he uses WIndows..
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
As an Indian myself, one of the things that really plague users of Indian language versions of software is the non-standardized fonts and encodings. Most of them do not use UTF-8, and non-standard fonts are all over the place. This effort I think will promote the creators of software and content publishers to adhere to a standard, if the Govt initiatives gain a big userbase. Try visiting some Indian language websites, and you'll see what I mean. You need a custom font for every single website, it drives you crazy. I think the Govt efforts will encourage Indian language publishers (all 20+ languages) to adhere to standards like UTF-8.
Current Slashdot Submission - Linux: Indian Government Keen on Open Source
Last Slashdot Submission - Ask Slashdot: Using Computer Stores to Spread Open Source?
Lemmie think here...
Future Submission? Apu: Thank You, Come Again!
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Windows XP Starter Edition is the stupidest idea ever...
Not sure what your trying to get at so I'll cover a wide range of possabilitys.
iSpell vs MsWord: Ms Word has some very bad habbits when it comes to spellchecking. There is some major defect that once triggered Ms Word will produce incorrect results.
One might accuse the Slashdot team of using Ms Word to find spelling errors.
Slashdot: Yeah they are kinda in a hurry. A normal newspaper will have profesional proff readers. Slashdot has nothing, nada, zip and nada III.
Lastly merging points 1 and 2.
Microsoft has a history of screwing up forgen languages.
If Slashdot was using a version of Linux localised for India they probably wouldn't have access to an ENGLISH spell checker.
I don't actually exist.
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.
Shouldn't India be worrying about more important things like reducing the population, and feeding it? Computers, and even moreso such specific things like what development model is used for software, are so trivial when compared with war and starvation.
Well this is good to hear, but the biggest problem in India is software piracy--as long as people continue to get WinXP and MSOffice cdroms for less than a dollar, I don't see how their (our) ignorant minds will agree to trash Microsoft and go open source...
One thing that has always puzzled me is why Microsoft has not verticall segmented windows. It'a a common practice with hardware. Remember all the different model typewriters IBM used to market, or HP and the range of printers.
I used to sell computers back in the 80's. I'd ask the cstomer. What do you want to do with your computer? The usual answer was, "Oh, just some basic word processing". So I'd sell the adequate hardware and software to do that.
These days I bet the most common answer is.
Word processing, internet, photography, and taxes.
Entry level windows, if it did all these things, economically, would sell like hotcakes. Wordpad and notepad are not quite enough and office is way too much for most people. Why doesn't Microsoft have a cokkection of office products. Home office, law office, accountants office, presenters office, Super office(does it all).
They should also split by processor. 32 bit vs 64 bit and not one product for all.
The models for splitting products by functionality and performance to maximize overall profit are well known, yet MS seems to have ignored to opportunity to apply this to software.
IMO they are a decade late and billions short with their entry level windows...
Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package"
Bah, using Linux is much easier than this; all I have to do is turn my computer on with the Knoppix disc in the drive, and I'm good to go; no fuss, no muss.
Seriously, this is a wonderful thing. If Linux can get out there on the desktops in widespread use before Microsoft gets its crippleware in front of everyone, it will set a standard that will be hard for Microsoft to overcome. Somebody (preferably some non-me person) should set up a fund that presses CDs with the goal of getting one in the hands of every country's citizens for free, especially countries where Microsoft doesn't have a firm grasp on the market yet. Hey, it worked for AOL. Before long, maybe zealots will be answering lame questions about how to get Tux Racer to run on Windows for those weird people that are using it instead of the free operating system everyone else is using...
... has actually worked with the Government of India. Suggesting that they have a single preference to something is like suggesting that all beer tastes good. (have you tried that stuff from the UK?).
The GoI is many millions of people scattered through hundreds of local, regional and national departments. The likelihood of seeing a common policy position through all those independent individuals is slim.
The GoI will continue to grow its IT capability through as many channels as possible, promoting many different technologies, of which Linux will be one and Windows will be another. Market forces pretty much make the selection from there forwards.
The OSS community has been all to quick to jump up and down heralding the wonders of other government decisions in the past... there is a lesson that needs to be learned though, things like this are just one small step on a much longer and much more complex journey.
There is still a lot of work to be done...
Linux is free as in chai in India, but so is Windows Server 2003 Enterprise edition.
;)
The localization is the key feature here, and has nothing to do with price. But watch for the 100's of posts about cost anyway
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
An expensive set of brakes will be needed to stop this. Hmmm, a visit by the US trade secretary ? Buying up all the CDs ? I think this is more of a ploy by the policticans to squeeze money out of MS than a real attempt to push the software out there.
This is not a signature.
Simputer
New ! PicoPeta Simputers Pvt Ltd unveils Amida Simputer for the retail market
The Simputer is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man.
It has a special role in the third world because it ensures that illiteracy is no longer a barrier to handling a computer.
The key to bridging the digital divide is to have shared devices that permit truly simple and natural user interfaces based on sight, touch and audio.
The Simputer meets these demands through a browser for the Information Markup Language (IML). IML has been created to provide a uniform experience to users and to allow rapid development of solutions on any platform.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Do you suffer from some weird kind of epistemological dyslexia? Do you, unlike the rest of us, have some grok like, gestalten faculity that allows you to sense whether a post is offensive before you read it? Ah, you are a l337 jedi, able to sense the dark side.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Said .sig makes just as much sense as software EULAs printed on the back of the manual in the box... which you explicitly agreed to implicitly in full by opening the shrinkwrap on the box.
More exposure to tech creates better techies.
Exposure to OSS includes the ability for the exposee to peep under the hood, and have a tweak, if one is that way inclined. And in a country of 1.4 thousand million, (or "billion" as americans insist on calling "thousand million"), more that one person is going to be that way inclined - Increasing the IT savvy of the people can only be good for the economy in the future.
Furthermore, extending the interface to all 22 official languages in India is going to be very useful and poplular, and expensive for closed source software companies to duplicate.
I wouldn't be suprised if there is also a lot of interest in these applications by expatriot Indians interested in bringing up multi-lingual children. (And Sri-Lankans, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis for that matter).
Oh, my god, you're right! if the Indian Government goes through with this, Western companies will move their offshore video game playing from Bangalore to Shanghai.
because they don't want you to be happy with a suitable product. they're trying to make money, not make good software.
the way they've handled office document compatibility is so appalling they must either be completely retarded, or they must intentionally make things difficult so you always need the latest, high-price office suite.
XP Starter is almost completely unusable for modern computing. that's how it's supposed to be. to get you hooked a little, and then pay for the expensive full version.
you have some strong contenders to Windows XP Starter Edition:
maybe time for another /. poll?
You're using a made-for-Windows game as an illustration? Ok.
How do I get regular, made-for-Linux apps to install on Linux? Simple: I fire up Synaptic (a GUI based installer). It prompts me for my root password (same as "Administrator" on a well-managed Windows box). It loads the hundreds and hundreds of packages available to me (which are free). I search for and select a package (or several at once) and click the "Proceed" button.
Is that so tough? Well, perhaps is is if you've NEVER done it before.
And no more difficult than what my clients do, every day: Click Start->Run...->Browse... -- look for setup.exe (but only see 'Setup' and wonder). Then they call me to stop by and install the application for them. No kidding.
I remember before Linux was widely accepted and only the province of masochistic Unix veterans who fervently believed there had to be some way to salvage some of their investment in skill building in that area lest their suffering have truly been for no better reason than to test their endurance come the day when it died.
I remember 12 years ago when my first Linux was trivial to install, with sound and video. Yggdrasil plug and play Linux. I had used BSD at the University so one day I picked up a FreeBSD CD and a Yggdrasil CD at a local computer show, about US$20 all together. I tried FreeBSD first given my background, it crashed while installing on my 486DX2-66. I tried Yggdrasil, it installed, it recognized my ATI Mach32 (I don't think I had a 64 yet but I could be mistaken) and SoundBlaster 16 and configured automatically. How many old timers would have been turned off of Linux if it had not been so simple back then, that first generation of Linux advocates might not gotten the ball rolling.
I hear that the version of these open source packages being distributed in India check the CPU ID and won't work on P-4s and Athalons.
The Internet is generally stupid
I guess that's why Linux is so suitable in India, long a home to every kind of zealot ever found on Earth.
--
make install -not war
I don't hate India. Silly people on Slashdot hate India. Either that, or blame our "By-the-Big-Corporation-for-the-Big-Corporation government". What does the government have to do with outsourcing (companies do it, not the government)? What does India's caste system (which is no longer enforced) have to do with things anyway? And how does the caste system help provide cheap programmers?
Geez, the lack of logic and knowledge is frightening.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
There were versions of Word Perfect for medical and law offices, at a premium price.
Microsoft sold Office components you could mix and match and customize as needed throughout your organization, if your needs were simpler, there was always Microsoft Works or a Works suite with Microsoft Word. Currently, Student-Teacher Office, which might as well be called Office Home Edition, lists for $150 and installs on three PCs.
The Indian Govt. should make it mandatory for all Govt. organisations to use only Open Source software. Will they do that? I doubt.
Satish Talim Software Consultant Learning Ruby: http://sitekreator.com/satishtalim/index.html
Basically, yes. There was a time when the caste system was enforced by law. One day, the anulled that law, and poof, it's no longer enforced. I didn't say it didn't still have an impact on society, I said it was no longer enforced.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I hate Windows and I'm actively trying to get my Linux desktop working. To achieve this, I need it to run all my current programs or equivalent (audio, video, file sharing and programming languages).
My current experience has shown that this task may require the following:
* search for obscure drivers hosted on sites shut-down years ago. * delve into myriads of configuration files (and or GUIs) each with its own (sometimes arbitrary) syntax, even for the most trivial app. * risk messing your OS with a recompile. * read dozens of pages worth of howto webpages that may or may not apply to your machine, man pages and non-sensical error logs among other things, none of which are sure to be worth your time (either because you are looking in the wrong place or because it's something completely arbitrary).
In other words, stuff no normal user is going to bother with (or be able to achieve).
So far it's been 2 weeks and have only been succesful in the audio and programming language categories and it has not been easy. I have run into all sorts of problems since the installation process that have forced me to look into stuff no regular user would bother dealing with. And some things don't even have a solution or workaround such as not being able to write to NTFS partitions due to the current state of the NTFS driver.
To some point I enjoyed working with those problems, but it got ridiculous at times. Part of this is not Linux's fault, for example, many 3rd parties are only interested in Windows, forcing Linux developers to reverse engineer stuff on their own, the results sometimes being stuff that works, but only as a complete hack (in the ugly sense of the word).
Meanwhile, Windows (for the desktop, most of the time) just works. Sorry but it's true. Perhaps I have run into so many problems because I'm not yet a good hacker, but I got the impression that there is a lot of ugly patchwork in Linux, maintained by a few people who stop working on the project when "it's no longer the best use of their time". Sorry, but Linux has a LONG way to go.
Maybe once it becomes more popular with events such as the one described in this article there will be a greater development effort into it.
In India, there are 1.1 billion people.
So when somebody in India says "You're one in a million", there are 1,100 people out there just like you.
The Internet is generally stupid
As software outsourcing to India has been deemed too costly, the Indian government has legislated that it be given away.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
The government i the one that sets tarrifs, trade restrictions, immigration restrictions, etc.
The government is responsible for outsourcing in the same way the Bush administration is responsible for the sky-high gas prices... They've done nothing to prevent it, even though accepted economic theory is that it is their job to take care of it in one way or another.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The more I think about this the more I like it. A computer is _not_ an appliance. It's a tool (that also happens to be able to run games software) - if you can't use it then just buy a PS2 or xbox.
Most significant achievement of this effort is not just releasing free software in a CD. Much of this software is already downloadable from elsewhere. But the government was able to buy a large number of quality Unicode fonts (more than 100) from the publishers and released them in public domain.
Quality and free fonts had long been a problem in the free software development in Tamil language. The OCR software released also would be useful in releasing etexts of the vast literature available in Tamil as part of Project Madurai (like Project Gutenbug). But I believe the OCR software is not released as open souce. It is just free as in beer.
I think that there is a lot going on in the technology front in India - an example being the just released $200 laptop in India. But all this technology is really used by people living in the cities (who have studied in English medium schools) which is a minority. The majority of people who live in the villages of India do not understand English and so will not be able to use the computer. The government's move to release the open-source software in regional languages is a move to bridge this divide. So that even the people in villages will be able to harness the power of a PC - for example to check the latest price of seeds, check what is the best price they could get for their farm produce, gain knowledge about the best farming practices to increase the crop yield, give better education to their children, get up-to-date weather information (remember, India has a good weather satellite and is one of the few countries capable of launching their own satellites in outer space), send and receive email in their own language - these being only some of the uses that come to my mind that the average Indian living in villages could accomplish by using a computer.
The shift to open-source should not be taken as anti-Microsoft or anti-proprietary. I believe the government took this move because of the ready availability of source code, no license restrictions and freedom to distribute the modified software to the masses free of cost.
But the question is will this trend by the Indian government reverse the tide towards the open-source softwares ?
I believe it could significantly increase the use of open source softwares by the people. But for the real movement towards the free software to take place, there should be a significant reduction in the level of piracy of proprietary software happening here.
For example, I could just walk into a shop selling PCs and request them for a copy of windows OS (any version),and if there is enough space remaining on the CD maybe put a copy of latest photoshop and Adobe acrobat and they will gladly give it for around Rupees 50 (just over 1 US dollar), with the hope that in the future if I decide to buy any piece of hardware, I will buy it from them - it is the human psychology working here.
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This is more about localization guys not just being free. Availability of code with Open Source softwares allows easy customization for various Indian languages. And mind you, India has more software developers than any other country.
The government i the one that sets tarrifs, trade restrictions, immigration restrictions, etc.
All of which are anathema to a modern economy.
They've done nothing to prevent it
By that logic, the government is responsible for everything. That's a horrible way to define the role of government in a free society. I don't remember anything in the Constitution that says our government is responsible for ensuring that obsolete workers keep their jobs anyway.
even though accepted economic theory is that it is their job to take care of it in one way or another.
Wrong! Accepted economic theory holds that the government must take care of a specific set of things (namely, any public goods, like defense, the environment, etc). It points out while it is less efficient for government to do these things than for the free market to do them, the free market solutions don't work, so it doesn't matter if they're more efficient.
Jobs, on the other hand, are not a public good (according to the economic definition of public good). Therefore, the government does not need to regulate it, because the free market can do a fine job of it. Accepted economic theory says nothing about tarrifs and trade restrictions other than that they are inefficient and shouldn't be avoided at all costs.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Only in the (made-up) opinions of the richest 1% of the population, and the empty suits they employ to spread their message.
No, you've simply taken this completely out of context. It was a SINGLE SENTENCE for a reason, yet you split it up to make a strawman.
Complete and utter bullshit. Accepted economic theory is that workers are NOT nearly as mobile as corporations, which puts them at a significant disadvantage if they are not protected. Tarrifs and trade restrictions are the accepted way to do this.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Complete and utter bullshit. Accepted economic theory is that workers are NOT nearly as mobile as corporations, which puts them at a significant disadvantage if they are not protected. Tarrifs and trade restrictions are the accepted way to do this
I don't know what economic theory you're reading, but there are few things economists agree upon, and a mutual hatred of taxes, tarrifs, and trade restrictions is one of them. This has been true ever since "The Wealth of Nations" was written.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...