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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.'"
Great woo hoo I got a CD. Now all i need is a pc, monitor and keyboards.
Bytes - IT Community
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.
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.
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
I know you weren't passing a judgment, but the number of languages in a country is not about a "need." It's more about the diversity of cultural/ethnical heritage. Also, I imagine the recognition of different languages as "official" probably contribute quite a bit to the preservation of different culture/ethnicity and improve political relations between them.
I don't know.
:)
I think filling tubes with a flammable liquid and lighting them on fire to simulate light sabers is a little stupider than Windows XP Started Edition
I'm all for cultural diversity but what struck me about it was that if India is anything like Ireland, there will always be someone demanding the govt provide this service ot that in Gailge. For 2 languages its a pain but doable, 22 languages though I would have though would lead to an administrative nighmare.
I assume Hindi is accepted as standard language so people can actually communicate with each other.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
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.
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...
Well. And then there's Linspire.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
... 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/
Um, what war plagues India? Border skirmishes with Pakistan? War plagues the American heartland more than it plagues India...
Anyway, hippies amuse me. What is the only way to deal with starvation? Money! How do you make money? By spending less, and making more. Linux should help the Indian government do both.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
This is absolutely true and though I've been a geekoid sort for years, I don't have the genes for arrogant assumption of superiority based on my interests and likes versus the common world. Therefore, I get called a troll by Linux kids who weren't even alive when I was selling code I'd written.
.ini files was too hard and too often.
.10 and a wobbly axle cycle. Of course, it isn't. And the ease of use and learning curve are only slightly greater than that of the AOL interface software.
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. In that time, the biggest cry of the junior geek brigade against Microsoft was that Windows 3.11 for Workgroups wasn't integrated enough, and configuring DOS
I have not failed to notice that many of the same people are now whining about the totally integrated Windows XP is "teh suxx0r" compared to Linux because Linux has all these powerful command prompt things and all these configuration files and...
The justification for hating Microsoft is just that, a justification for hating Microsoft. And usually by people doing it because it is in and cool in their minds. If you went by most of the Linux crowd's anti-MS rhetoric, you'd swear that Windows XP was harder to use than DOS and less stable than Gary Busey with a
Just because we geeks can do technical things, and do them well, and maybe even love them, does not mean that people who are not like us are losers and unworthy of life. Granted there's plenty of people who fit that bill, but in general our ability to twiddle bits, rewrite build scripts, and so on, does not make us super superior and the fact that it is fashionable to hate on Microsoft doesn't make it right and justified by sheer numbers.
I am angry with them from the point of view of the honor of coders and their tendency to lie regarding the quality of their code and its completion status. (MS: it's finished. Me: no, it's still barely beta as far as stability is concerned. MS: it's finished. Me: hello, is this a recording?)
With respect to India doing this, they're falling for the idea that free beats paid and that the fine points of useability and logical sense and stability will sort themselves out on the backs of the adopters. This is like assuming an endless supply of free hatchets is superior to a well built and maintained chainsaw from the heavy equipment shop. Not if you're taking down fifty trees it isn't, not even if you have five thousand peons to wield the hatchets. The problems are not irrellevant and they won't take care of themselves.
All this assumes of course that FOSS is the only solution. Hello? Megacorporation IBM failed miserably with OS/2 and we all know SCO's history and that Apple is only alive in its current state of health today because they took a monetary injection from Microsoft. Having lots of money is not a guarantee of anything any more than software being free making it inherently more pure and righteous. For fark's sake people, viruses, trojans, and adware are free.
Nevertheless, I am not holding my breath that enough people will read this with a sober mind and clear head without knee-jerk thinking "troll". Just you think that. I'll be building dual-boot Windows/Linux systems for the technically inclined while you try to scream at some more Joe Sixpacks that Linux is superior and they're stupid for using AOL and Windows' point-click simplicity over your OS choice that takes someone whose vocation technology is to install, configure, and use at the same level as their Win boxes.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Not that I'm a big fan of outsourcing because it totally sucks for those of us left in the tech industry in the U.S., but...
By worrying about things such as computers and development models, India is vastly improving its economic situation, raising the standard of living for its citizens and enabling itself to provide basic necessities of which you speak.
If I were Inidan, I would see their (our, I guess, if I were Indian) progress over the past decade as an extremely hopeful sign of economic power that the country has never known before; perhaps even strong enough someday soon to compete with the big bad U.S. We (I'm not Indian any more, I'm referring to the U.S.) may not be the "land of opportunity" much longer, and I'll bet that India is one a lot of places that would be more than willing to take our place.
Remember how Japan dominated our auto industry over the course of less than a decade? It's very possible that we won't hold on to our software development leadership role for much longer precisely because places like India are setting their goals higher than merely managing war and poverty.
Shouldn't India be worrying about more important things like reducing the population, and feeding it?
If you leave those two problems alone long enough, they'll solve each other.
(Note to humorless mods: this is a joke!)
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
From what the article says it seems to be more about the localisation of the software than anything else, in an attempt to encourage computer use.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
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
People who think of India as just another country don't realize how vast and diverse it is. It's really its own continent, with over twice the population of Europe and probably twice the cultural diversity in language, custom, and religion.
If you thought about India as a federation of many different nations with their own markets, languages, and so on, you'd be closer to the mark.
It's a fascinating place and I'd like to visit it someday. India is an enormous and invaluable repository of human culture and history.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
The parent makes 3 assertions:
... Not only that, MEPIS booted to a desktop in the time it took the XP disk to ask me the first text-mode question.
...
1. Linux is hard[er than Windows] to install.
2. Linux doesn't run Windows games well.
3. Linux is hard[er than Windows] for ordinary people to understand.
I have recently installed Windows XP and MEPIS Linux. The latter was much easier. Didn't ask me about domain controllers, or make me hit single keys like "1" and "8" and "y" and choose between NTFS and FAT and choose between quick format and real format
Windows games don't run on Linux. So what? Lots of people use computers for communication, computation, and composition. If you want to play games, fine. Buy Windows or a PS2
You said, "what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy."
I suggest that the fact that Windows geekdom has somewhat more members than Linux geekdom makes Windows neither easy nor natural for "regular people."
Actually, you've got a point. Installing apps on linux can be really overwhelming to new users. But, to moderately experienced users, installing apps does become a smooth process, and when the apps are installed on linux, they are better fit to the system's configuration than corresponding Windows apps. Consequently, they are more stable. They are also (mostly) free and don't have to be replaced or repurchased every couple of years.
What will eventually lead to greater adoption of Linux is the growing number of experienced users available to assist the newcomers. While Windows seems easier to work with, the reality is that it's just user-familiar, not user-friendly.
Now, maybe you can tell me how to install my original version of Quake on Windows XP Pro?
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Wow, TFA didn't mention Linux once, and the first post I see is flaming linux. You say linux Zealot this and linux Zealot that, well I say you are a Winodows Zealot. TFA is about open source software in general, most likely on the Windows platform. If you have a problem with Open source in general... then thats a whole different thing.
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).
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 assume Hindi is accepted as standard language so people can actually communicate with each other.
Actually, they use English. Ended up spending a month or so over there and found I could communicate better with the taxi drivers in New Delhi than NYC.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
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...
From the CIA World Factbook:
OLPC Australia
You forget that the average person doesn't install Windows. It just magically comes with the computer.
The average person wants to use their PC for running what PCs run, which include games. Tell an average person that Linux can't do something they want to do that Windows CAN do, and they'll choose Windows EVERY time. Being able to run games is a core function in many people's minds. My mom, for example, runs Solitaire and Oregon Trail 1. Tell her she couldn't run Oregon Trail 1 on Linux and she would never switch from Windows.
And yes, the fact that Windows has more users than Linux DOES make it easier. When grandma has a question about Windows, she can ask the 12 year old neighbor boy. If grandma had a question about Linux, the 12 year old neighbor boy would go "WTF is this?" Then grandma would be SOL until I take the time to go to grandma's.
"I have not failed to notice that many of the same people are now whining about the totally integrated Windows XP is "teh suxx0r" compared to Linux because Linux has all these powerful command prompt things and all these configuration files and..."
I'm not going to argue with the fact that you can find a troll for any position, but please consider that many (if not most) people who tout Linux over Windows do so based on their professional judgement. I don't think the folks guiding IBM and Novell's Linux policy use the word 'suxx0r' very often, for example.
The problem with the 'totally integrated Windows XP' as you call it has been hashed over so many times, I'm surprised that a silverback like you would have missed why the kind of integration that Microsoft does is a Bad Thing. Read yesterday's thread on browser security for enlightenment if you're still puzzled.
As for command lines and config files, the thing I like best about them is that they allow you to automate just about any process. But most desktop distros these days have GUIs too, so stating that command line and scripting are available for admins does not imply that we expect users to use them as well.
I have a useful little one-line script that allows a new user to reset their desktop environment to the default. So if in the course of exploring their desktop environment things get messed up and they just want to go back to what they had at the start, they can run this script. Rather than force them to understand the CLI, I simply place an icon on their desktop that says, 'Cleanup'.
Now that is the kind of integration that Linux admins love. It's called the 'toolkit approach', and it weaves together the capabilities of thousands of single purpose tools to achieve exactly the desired effect. To the computer user, it's just a 'magic happens' box.
I'm not arguing that you can't do the same thing in Windows, by the way, only that *nix systems are designed to be open and flexible from the ground up, and Linux lovers tend to think that design is superior to Windows' monolithic approach.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
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.
We'll be changed beyond recognition before we, as a species, give up religion. But we can recognize that the modern religion, science, is itself based on faith. Science calls for faith in only two principles, testability for validity and consistency, but both are as metaphysical as any of the other unproveable beliefs which compose much more complex religions. Science is more liberating, empowering everyone equally to experience it directly, without mediation if we wish, than most religions. And it delivers daily the kinds of miracles most religions rely on for most of their power. The only question is whether humans will destroy science by treating it like its less informed predecessors. If we insist on creating churches, as dogmatic versions of Buddhism seems to suggest, maybe we should keep our imaginary monster lords of creation, just to absorb the damage we might otherwise do to science. I suppose we'll just have to see how it goes.
--
make install -not war
Economists amuse me as well. The only way to deal with starvation is food.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
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.
Yup, one more american who "knows" how the world looks like outside the US, and giving "advice". No wonder, really. And not even exasperating anymore.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
1. XP Starter Edition is crippled. Hell, Windows 95 had more functionality.
Either they will use the open source stuff being given out free, or they will pirate XP Pro. Microsoft have got to be worried about the government of the country pushing open source though - you can bet there will be no government contracts coming to MS again from India.2. Microsoft are still going to be selling it at a price that's a months wages for most Indian people.
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.
Apple is only alive in its current state of health today because they took a monetary injection from Microsoft
Really? Well, you probably didn't dwell on the point for brevity but I'd just like to expand that a little lest it become misleading.
According to this article the deal helped to deflect anti trust charges from Microsoft, as the deal included continuation of Office for Mac, and it was also a settlement over disputes with Apple, after MS stole Quicktime code.
The justification for hating Microsoft is just that, a justification for hating Microsoft.
Some people 'hate' Microsoft simply because they dominate using unethical methods and that dominance with their mediocre products threatens the existence of more ethical companies with better products. It's better to deal with an ethical company because then you're less likely to get burnt.
With respect to India doing this, they're falling for the idea that free beats paid and that the fine points of useability and logical sense and stability will sort themselves out on the backs of the adopters.
I agree that there are plenty of people who champion Linux to such a degree that they pretend it's always easier and better. However, I wouldn't be too unkind about that because that 'faith' serves a function; it helps keep the focus and momentum. Linux has great potential to go much much further.
But if we simply sit back and 'rationally' dismiss Linux because sound doesn't work properly, that would be a poor analysis for it ignores the vast potential.
You've criticised the making of assumptions, but making assumptions is sometimes the smart thing to do when creating something new. If we'd all taken your 'sober' attitude, Linux would have died out years ago.