Slashdot Mirror
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
... 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...
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...
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
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."