Slashdot Mirror
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."
Am I the only one that was excited to read about this, until it said Suse Linux?
Kerala was the first state to do this - slashdot story (and the oblig. dupe).
But those stories paint Kerala as some hippie commune full of comrades - I've been following the developments in Kerala for a while and in general all that makes sense.
Of course, most of these states are picking F/OSS for economic reasons - but not exactly about freedom and stuff. I've heard whispers from the gubment that it is the support contracts which are deal killers for F/OSS in general, but of late the government has started taking a socialist approach of doing it in-house rather than contracting it out to vendors (well, it doesn't sound socialist when a company does I.T, right).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
And since they went with Suse, they're safe from being sued by Microsoft, thanks to the Microsoft-Novell deal.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I am cynical about this. Large scale migrations are usually not successful. And when they happen in govt. enterprises you have every reason to be cynical. Nearly eight years back, treasury department of MP (another Indian state) had adopted Linux in a big way. The project was more or less successful. The erstwhile Chief Minister had made his preference for Linux/OSS clear for the forthcoming govt. projects. But then his govt. got voted out in next elections, new CM took over the reins and announced her allegiance to Microsoft. MP is not as financially well-off state as Tamil Nadu and could have saved a lots of money by adopting Linux. Let's see what happens in TN.
7000 rupees is about $150 USD right? That's not cheap at all. Not for XP volume licensing. Not in India. Not in the US.
As Good as this news in, does the slashdot community have to constantly reminded not only of the benifits of open source but more annoyingly, of every single government and private organisation which switches from Microsoft to oss?
Free Land
....just kidding- TN is pretty good when it comes to most things comparitively.
Glad that they went through with this - whatever their reasons may be (empty coffers must likely), the path they have taken is a brave one. There may be some FUD initially, but typically these govt. officials do nothing more than what they are told to do on the PC (i.e. press ALT-P, type, click on OK etc... - of course in TN, everything must be in Tamil as well). So there wont be any complaints like "This new Nvidia card is not working on my PC" OR "how can I get this to recognize my new USB external hard drive"...
Free TV
Free GOLD!!!!
The only complaint is rice is cheap not free - can you imagine paying nearly $0.50 for 10 Kilograms (22 lbs)? Govt. these days....
Congrats SUSE - you got yourself 30,000+ new users who wont complain much. Having said that, everything will get blamed on the "new SW" - including printer jams, network failures - anything.
And this is what (imho) we westerners seem not to get: when (not if) the switch to OSS happens it won't be here in the west: China and India make up some (half?) of the world's population, and once they come on board ... MS et.all are toast. And with them out, our IT staff becomes second-rate as they become irrelevant.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
The proper solution for governments, indicidentally, is OPEN SOURCE SOTWARE, that is OPERATING SYSTEM NEUTRAL/AGNOSTIC. That is to say, it should run equally on Windows, Linux and Macintosh without too much problem. the operating system is not an interesting question (in fact, it can be OSS but microsoft only... i dont care)
I certainly agree, to the point where a lot of what I write now has Web browser implementation rather than any specific processor/OS implementation. And that has worried Microsoft. Why do you think they have tried so hard (and successfully, I might add) to coopt Web standards and force the world to their particular flavor of Web and browser?
OSS but microsoft only is a contradiction in terms. Anything implemented like that will only find, as so many of Microsoft's competitors has, that one fine day, it simply will not work any more. And, if you respond to that and change things every interation to make it work, then Microsoft has won. They like that "churn"; it keeps people working on "catching up", rather than doing any innovation that might overtake Microsoft.
No, no matter what you say, the choice has been framed by Microsoft, enforced by Microsoft's actions and Vista will only further enhance that with more incompatibilities with established standards. It reads like this: you can use Microsoft and nobody else OR you can use anybody else and not Microsoft.
Given that, my choice was easy! It looks as though India's choice was easy, too!
Doubtless the likes of Fxxx and their right-wing backers want you to believe everything is terrible so you will accept lower wages and poor working conditions to protect you from the terrifying march of the Chinese, but it would be a good idea to look a little outside the US internal FUD industry and see what the world is really like.
Pining for the fjords
And coming back to India - that's brilliant news. Think that India has over 1 billion people. All of them will be Linux users. And finally they will come as cheap labour (IT support) to UK/US to promote FOSS. And don't forget about opportunities of opening cheap Linux support call centres there.
By my calculation we're talking about 0.003% of those 1 billion people. And Indian call centres for linux will likely be pricier than their Windows counterparts (smaller pool, rising demand). Those call centres are already rising in cost anyway.
Not that it isn't a promising sign... but to suggest all of India will embrace linux seems unrealistic.
MS et.all are toast. And with them out, our IT staff becomes second-rate as they become irrelevant.
Your perspective has drifted and needs to be fixed. You seem to equate M$ with US and US technical excellence. Most people would throw away a meter like you, but a new faceplate and a few twists should have you back in operation.
Developers and IT staff at IBM, Red Hat, Novel, Ubuntoo, Mepis, Chrysler, Lowes, GE, and so on and so forth, would tell you that M$ and those who know only that are already second rate. They would not share you assessment of "our IT staff," nor do they fear foreign "competition". In their world, the more the merrier. American excellence does not have to be anti-social.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.