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Tamil Nadu (India) Shutting the Door On Microsoft
aprasadh writes "The government of Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, has begun initiatives to convert all of their IT systems fully to OSS-based software. (The link is a copy of a news item that appeared recently in the Deccan Chronicle, an English-language daily.) The managing director of the IT procurement, consulting, and training agency for the Tamil Nadu government describes the reasons why he has chosen OSS, and also how he dealt with Microsoft executives." From the article: "Initially, 99 per cent of government systems have been running on Microsoft systems but then 2007 will be a watershed year for the state IT sector... We have already dispatched 6,500 Linux systems to village panchayats and another 6,100 Acer desktop systems with Suse Linux operating systems are on their way. We are procuring 20,000 desktop systems for schools, which will run only on Suse Linux... I require at least 500 trainers to train 30,000 state officials across Tamil Nadu in the next six months."
Nice attempt at humor. But you should know your history better. These are not the same Tamils.
Tamil Tigers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_tigers
Tamil Nadu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_nadu
This is Tamil Nadu in INDIA. The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) are a Terrorist Faction, which consists of a minority of Sri Lankans who speak tamil. Same Language, different people, Just like Americans and British, both speak english.
Have a nice day!
1 lakh = 21363 USD aprox. lakh 100 000 rupee crone 1 million rupee more ignorance in cultural diversity shining through smile they are your future customer/boss
Mr. Umashankar, IAS officer is a staunch supporter of open source software. You can see his commitment towards opensource in the EGOVINDIA group. He is the popular member of this active group. I believe his actions are in true spirit.
Hari Sarvottama! Vaayu Jeevottama!
The Information and Technology Minister - Dayanidhi Maran belongs to the same political party as the one in Tamil Nadu and he is seen hobnobbing with Billy on launching MS products in India
>> Techflock-flock onto the best bits of technology
It was a former Indian PM who got assassinated by LTTE.
I'm officially speaking out of my glorious backside on this, but I suppose language could be a key issue here. Tamil, famously, was the first Indian language with a full Linux UI. I have no idea (too lazy) to see if there's a Tamil version for Windows, but if there isn't, here's a very good reason. (And our Tamilian brethren, bless their hearts, are rather proud of their linguistic heritage, so there).
More than mere navel gazing.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Passed 62 million six years ago, so more than California and Texas put together. Mind you, the Indian civil service has always had a bit of a reputation for mass employment.
Considering that Kerala has achieved the highest literacy rate in India, and achieved life expectancy and health indexes to rival the first world when it'd been on a third world budget for decades, and is for that matter a leader in that country's impressive development in IT, I should think that its endorsement of Linux should have done folks here proud, whether or not Kerala's government has voted communists in and out and in again or not.
;)
But, Tamilnad has smart people too, so this is good news, especially if you find all that business of helping the working poor help themselves a radioactive concept and are keen to keep your distance from it.
"And so you believe. Who told you ? The chaps who had phantasised WMDs all over the by now destructed place ?"
I am a Tamil, From Sri Lanka.. lets just say I know a bit more than the average person.
Tamils in Sri Lanka have been severely disenfranchised over the years by a few Nationalists.
I was going to write a bit about it, but read up on Black July.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_July is a good starting point.
Tamils have suffered terribly in the years since independence, and organised killing, and rape by groups suspected to be associated or controlled by the Government of Sri Lanka is common.
Although I was born in Sri Lanka, I have lived in the UK since the age of three, having emigrated here since 1979. However, sometimes when I go to Sri Lanka, The fact my passport has my Place of Birth as "Jaffna" I am noticeably treated with suspicion by some people.
The LTTE are seen by many Tamils in Sri Lanka as the only hope for them. In many cases, the LTTE has provided a lot of change in Sri Lanka. However, their overall egalitarian view could cause more issues than solve at this stage. Also the use of killing to achieve the goals is another thing I am a bit objectionable about. This is why they are view by many as terrorists, even though their mandate, and their intentions are Freedom Fighters. Although most of what they do are for self defence, some actions do indeed go far beyond self defence. Certainly the LTTE are NOT on the same scale as Al-Queda, etc.
Yes you are totally correct about the Buddhist Clergy, and certain ultra nationalist factions. A lot of lies and propaganda exist there, were the general populace is hood winkled to believing that Tamils are the cause of every problem.
However, I have many Sinhalese Friends, who are frankly amazing, so maybe now is the time to capitalise on friendships, rather than war. I just feel there is too much bloodshed already, and people have to put behind old prejudices, and actually look forward. I know its not easy, I have been through the heartache of hopes being dashed. Therefore I criticize both the government and the LTTE for not really working hard to capitalising the short lived ceasefire, and showing true leadership rather than rhetoric.
The Problems in Sri Lanka are immense, and rather than tell you everything, I simply invite those who wish to know, to find information, readily available on the Internet from both sides.
One thing for sure, the war back home brings tears to my eyes. Sri Lanka was and in some ways still is a beautiful country, with some very smart educated and intellectual people. Had there not been a war, Sri Lanka would be on a par with Korea and other far east "tigers".
Have a nice day!
Sounds pretty cheap for the US, at least for a smaller shop. Remember, XP and Vista can't be bought through volume licensing, only upgrades are available. You have to buy Windows pre-installed or retail, then buy Windows again though the volume programs. At our size (less than 200 desks), Windows XP Pro (the second purchase) without Software Assurance is $172. With SA for 2 years is $272, SA for 3 years is $313. This is on top of actually getting Windows pre-installed at an unknown price from major vendors or buying it retail at ~$285.
Remembering Dell's claim that they only pay about $10 per PC for Windows, you are looking at a range of $182 (Windows pre-installed plus volume license) to $457 (retail Windows plus volume license) just for the OS licenses per PC, to purchase via volume licensing.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
More examples: Indian Railways reservation system runs unix/vms and it's online sales are the highest ecommerce sales in the entire AsiaPac. Jet Air runs it's in flight video on demand system on a customized linux which is good enough to eat. Over 200 terminals with touch screens, streaming over 100 video options from a single server (cluster). Always reboots during takeoff for some reason though. That's when you can see identical console messages flying by on every screen. All High Courts (over 30 i think) and the supreme court are on RH (judges laptops dual boot to windows for 'watching movies' & voip .... )
Somehow, the cost factors and convenience of fiddling with the system is very attractive to Indians. Don't like to take too much pains to contribute back though.
There used to be some excellent local distros too which died off since there was no quick (as in 1-2 years) revenue models
...it'll be India.
I know a lot of us have experienced the despair of offshore IT "help desks" and many of those are in India. But they're just cowboys jumping on the outsourcing bandwaggon. Their days are numbered, for the most part.
This part of the business gives a false impression of what the state of IT expertise in India is *really* like. It's pretty darn good. There are plenty of highly competent IT people there and, yes they generally have a huge advantage in terms of cost-of-living vs. expected-income. However, despite the rhetoric about the Internet making geographical location irrelevant, I don't see it happening just yet. For most of my work I still have to fly to the client's site.
But, in their own back yard, Indian IT workers are in a position to do what the hell they like. They have the expertise, culture and work ethic to make it work and there is no way that anyone can force a second-choice solution on them. And if they see MS as second choice...
The prostration starts with rampant piracy and ubiquitousness of Windows and Office. Then there is a whole bunch of idiots developing everything on Visual Studio (again, mostly pirated).
Microsoft indulges in heavy influence peddling by donating to schools, states' education programs etc. by one or other means. Their motto is to catch 'em young.
The media is mostly bought off with huge spends on Microsoft ads, and journalists hardly know the difference between Free Software, Open Source and their own hindsides. (If it weren't for the FSF India chapter, which is based in a state dominated by Communist parties, software patents would have crept in unnoticed when the Indian polity prostrated to the US' WTO hegemony in IPRs.)
Corporates will be corporates, and choose that which gives them the quickest advantage. Profits always beat ideology, or if I rephrase it, profits are the best ideology. If Microsoft gives the most integrated solutions with widespread support, they will naturally not want to squander their resources on experiments.
Still, it is a good sign that sane voices within various State and Central govt. bodies are being heard. Southern states are more open to FOSS, Gujarat also seems to be heading that way, but Maharashtra, which is the new IT destination seems to be leaning towards Microsoft due to the aforesaid lobbying.
Perhaps Vista and its strict DRM/License enforcement will turn more people away from free software to Free software, within a year or two. More eye-candy introduced to Linux with Compiz and Beryl will certainly help, I believe. Now we need more games and driver support for 3D in Linux. Oh, and a unified package installation system.
Wishful thinking, I know.
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Yeah - they don't provide certain packages, such as the MP3 stuff, to avoid potential legal problems. There is a simple way to fix it though - add a Packman repository to your list of sources in YaST, and update/install whatever you need. Here's one location:
http://packman.iu-bremen.de/suse/10.2/
After you've added it, start the software manager and add/update "lame" and "xine-lib". It will automatically add any other libraries you need, except for libdvdcss (required for watching DVDs) - the RPM package that Packman has does not contain the source, but the site does give you some tips about how to get it and build the package; it's not difficult.
Another tip: set the filter to "Installation Summary", check all the boxes except "Do not install", then click the menu item Packages->All in This List->Update if newer version available. That will mark the newer Packman versions for installation over the original SuSE versions. Uncheck "Keep" and "Protected" to see a list of which packages it wants to change before clicking "Accept". There will probably be quite a few, so you may not want to do them all at once.
-- Steve