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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.
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
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.
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...
... 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)
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."
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
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.
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.