Slashdot Mirror
Another Indian State Moving To FOSS
james.infidel writes "The Hindu, a leading national newspaper, reports that the Communist government of Kerala (the state with the highest literacy rate in India) has announced its all-out support for FOSS in the draft IT policy announced yesterday. The draft also calls for preferential treatment for companies coming forward to work in the FOSS domain.
Once you have news that a country that actually matters is swtiching, then great.. Utill then, who really cares?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It just makes sense that a communist government would adopt linux. These headlines will become too common as the developing world steps into the computer age.
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Thank you, come again!
Am I missing something? What does the literacy rate have to do with the story?
Even though the color of the flag is red and they adopt the name Communists, they are far from it. And atleast a little bit of why this measure suddenly took off has to do with the Communist Party wanting to align itself to the more conservative communist ideals than what West Bengal (another Communist state) has done, which is to embrace more private investment.
But I am glad to find my state laying out the red carpet for FOSS.
Rapid Nirvana
While some may be concerned about the mass exodus of an entire Indian state to Foss, on behalf of the people of Oklahoma I say welcome!
The less literate someone is, the more likely they are to use windows? Now all we need to do is prove causality and have Windows disbarred from use in education.
1.1Developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are transforming the society in dramatic ways. These developments are creating hitherto unimaginable opportunities and possibilities, even as they pose new challenges for a society like ours
Computers make a difference.
1.2 In the production processes of today's world, information and knowledge mean a great deal more than material resources and physical inputs.
Knowing how to use them is good
1.3 ICT has opened up the possibility of radically different information exchange patterns by facilitating faster and more efficient dissemination of information. It can play a vital role in sustaining the democratic ethos of the Indian society and ensuring a high level of transparency in governance
Nobody controls the net
1.4 Having achieved high physical quality of life index and social infrastructure development, Kerala is ideally positioned to use ICT as a catalyst for the all-round economic prosperity and social uplift of its people
We haven't completely exhausted the budget
1.5 ICT and Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) have by now turned into major sectors of economic activity in the country. Over the past one-and-a-half decades, these sectors have shown remarkable growth in the country, both in terms of export revenue and employment generation
This is a good source of tax revenue
1.6 In almost every sector of socio-economic activity ranging from industrial production to education and public healthcare, ICT now plays an important role in optimizing the processes, thereby improving the quality and efficiency of human endeavors
The net is cool
1.7 Growing importance of ICT in the present-day world leads to the emergence of a divide, which can be called the "digital-divide," between those who have access to sophisticated ICT infrastructure and those who do not. This is a matter of concern to civil society at large; and a challenge that has to be overcome through conscious intervention, both from the Government and the sections on the privileged side of the "digital divide
Web junkies don't riot
1.8 The Government has a comprehensive view of ICT as a vehicle for transforming Kerala into a knowledge-based, economically vibrant, democratic and inclusive society. By the term "inclusive," the Government means that the benefits of the socio-economic transformation possible through ICT should reach every single citizen of the State. This policy document defines the Government's vision, mission and strategy for achieving the same.
We're gonna spend lots of money
God, that was back in October http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=kerala+linu x&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Search+Archives
1. "Avoid total dependence on select vendors"- has there ever been a more p.c. way to say "Microsoft lock-in"? 2. Has anyone ever explored the effects that adopting FOSS has on the computer literacy of a population? Can a case be made that adopting FOSS, and having locals trained in its implementation, upkeep, and improvement, brings more intellectual growth to a nation than adopting commercial, closed-source software? We talk about TCO in the closed-source vs. OSS debates, but how about the educational value of OSS for creating computer literate populations? Or, are we still too early in the life cycle of OSS to make this determination?
It is obviously a Microsoft conspiracy to perpetuate their monopoly and keep Linux down.
Do a little homework. It's an Indian state. ALL of India is a democracy, politically. Where economy is concerned, Kerala operates under welfare based democratic socialism. They have a parliamentary system of representative democracy, just like most of the democratic world. A quick google/wiki search might help james.infidel avoid sounding like an ignorant in the future.
Handy, you .are free
I will probably get a zero or minus for this. I don't understand how Slashdot can publish this in this way. Is the 'james.infidel' that published the story someone from Microsoft? What has "communist government" to do with this? It's nothing in the referred articles that says anything about 'communist government'! I think Slashdot has been taken over by an organized campaign - guess where from? We use to call it FUD! The articles referred to are interesting but NOT the Slashdot ingress!
once wine reaches 1.0 who will want the disadvantage of moving to microsoft's 64-bit platform? I imagine if microsoft decides not to continue to support win32, ISV's will. although i have to admit short of drivers for devices, i don't really see a need for win32, but there is a ton of software that is written for it. I suspect once wine comes close to 1.0 microsoft will anounce it's own version of wine on linux. As much money has been invested in java as a hedged bet against microsoft, ppl could have invested in C and gtk+ and linux, because like java, linux runs on everything. However it's good to know if you have the java source you can make it to compile on linux and run it, without ibm or sun's java. Linux is the glue that is ruling the world and microsoft will not be able to successfully abandon the win32 api, without going bankrupt first.
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Just to make it clear, India is a democracy. In fact, India is world's largest democracy. The government in Kerala is also chosen democratically.
When people say "Communist government of Kerala", they actually mean a democratically chosen government which is influenced by some Marxist concepts.
I'm not sure what your 700 million is supposed to refer to, but if you're referring to the population of India, it's almost 1.1 billion now.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Not to me it doesnt. And that is all that matters.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Are you confusing literacy with illiteracy, or is there something I'm missing?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
This just in: poor people like free stuff.
I'm so glad we have the news media to tell us these things.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
Now, wait a minute. It is, or it isn't. With US, or against US. The Free Democratic Society or commie terrorists...... Which is it? Let's ask President Bush........
Governments rarely choose anything that makes economic sense. I don't want FOSS to be compared to the $600 toilet seat or the "Big Dig." I'm more impressed when FOSS software is chosen because it actually makes sense and not as some part of political agenda.
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
Of course the Indians also manufactured drugs that were patented in the United States and didn't give a damn. What's going to happen when Indians start selling software built on open source code to the rest of the world? You can't touch them. So all of you guys jumping up and down for India adopting OSS, this just means that all your work will go into making someone else rich. Well played.
I saw you made that comment (or similar) a few times, and no one else called you on it - by the time I saw the summary it said highest literacy rate - so I suspected it might have been a case of fixing the summary.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I'm really interested as a whole state means quite a population. I wonder if India might become the first major country to move beyond rhetoric and really take on FOSS. It would be quite a driver if this actually happens.
Surely the fact that Kerala has a communist majority in its democratically elected government is pretty irrelevant beyond making a headline to get USians excited?
So it IS a communist government.
Democracy and communism aren't mutually exclusive, you know.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
Anyone care to explain how this is already at +3 interesting, instead of -1 offtopic?
India is profiting from outsourcing of American jobs. But, what are they suppose to buy from us. Software seems to be one of the last industries to actually employed Americans. If India is going to FOSS, then software industry would suffer from the lost customers. Call me stupid, but isn't trade done best when the door swings both ways. I don't see how we are to sustain our economy with growing trade deficits with Asian countries. I don't see the silver lining in India going FOSS.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
...with $24 worth of beads. Ballmer threw a chair when he found out they were the wrong kind of Indians.
More like, MSNBC headline...
I didn't agree or disagree with calling the Kerala government communist. Anyway, according to wikipedia, a communist state is a term used by many political scientists to describe a form of government in which the state operates under a one-party system and declares allegiance to Marxism-Leninism or a derivative thereof. Communist states may have several legal political parties, but the Communist Party is constitutionally guaranteed a dominant role in government. Consequently, the institutions of the state and of the Communist Party become intimately entwined.
The government in Kerala is elected by the public. Even a government dominated by communists cannot impose a truly communist state. Private enterprise exists in Kerala, which could not in a communist system. And the state government does not control the economy the way it would in a communist system. People can democratically remove the government in elections and choose a non-communist government. Because of all these reasons, I thought it was important to make this distinction clear.
Incidently, Kerala happens to be most literate state of India. Though ppl have been electing communist govt mostly and the state is notoriously known for "too many unions - too less work". I would really doubt if any vendor would be willing to step in even if the govt there bans the FOSS.
Eclipse PDE and Me
When an old article on Slashdot is posted, everyone gets on top of it like white on rice. But when an old article about Linux is posted, it seems to be coined as "another victory..."
This began in August 2006.
How about Microsoft had us by the balls, but FOSS "castrated" us to freedom....
*SNIP*
On second thought, don't say that. What was that about my high pitched voice!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
*21st Century* FOSS?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
They think it is "OUT Source" Software
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Wikipedia is full of crap, then. (Surprise, surprise.) Non-marxist communists exist, as do non-statist Marxists. Hell, the Amish run a communist society within the United States -- they're anarcho-communists.
Despite the poor slashdot summary, the interesting info from the article was that this Indian state will give preference to FOSS companies. If Indian states adopt FOSS on a large scale, it will give enormous lift to the FOSS community worldwide. By adopt I mean using FOSS alone in all state institutions, funding FOSS projects especially in Indian languages and providing tax benefits etc to private enterprises which adopt FOSS. Will Kerala or any other Indian government go to that extent? They can start by making gov.in websites browser neutral.
Slightly off topic : How many of you know what a Hindu is. I am in US and interacted with a lot of folks here who think all Brown skins Indian looking folks are Muslims. Never realizing that 80% of Indians are Hindu's, a religion older than Christianity or Islam. Buddhas are an offshoot of Hinduism. Another interesting fact in Terms of numbers India has the largest population of Muslims.
I like how OSS can't compete on its own, but only thru govt mandate. And this particular government is run by the Communist party. Big surprise there. Both OSS disciples and Communists are ideological utopianists that try to ram their utopias down everyone's throats. And they do that ramming thru government, meaning, at the point of a gun, ultimately.
This makes perfect sense. Neither group bathes!
Check out my foes list to see who is so retarded that they can't use the signature line!!!
Rgt. if it is true that they work on marxist-leninits principles i will eat my head.
I personally feel that such a move by a communist govt. may actually spoil the chances for FOSS. Communists are known to fight for supposedly pro-poor causes (fuel price cuts, subsidy hikes, PSU disinvestment opposition etc) which are largely populist in nature. Going by that, Communist support for Open Source may be deemed as adoption of software for the poor, technology for have-nots and so on. It can thus run at a risk of being branded something as "not so good as proprietary software but still FREE" which won't exactly help. Open Source should be marketed as something that is technologically superior than it's proprietary counterparts, not merely as a free second-rate product which 'almost' gets done what you want.
International trade is not circumscribed to software and a few outsourced jobs.
Jeeeez.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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Although I don't live there, with this being a Communist state, I see two different possibilities here:-
(a) The literacy claim is propoganda, or
(b) The literacy claim is true, but for reasons entirely unrelated to Communism, and that the Communist state government is causing a large number of other social and economic problems.
I realise that this isn't a popular attitude around here, but contrary to what is popular, Communism is *not* a viable answer to all the world's ills, any more than Steve Ballmer's interpretation of Capitalist philosophy is. Anyone here who is deluded into thinking that Marx was some kind of saviour needs to do some research on the North Korean government some time, and see how well the Communist experiment worked out there. Even in Venezuela, the country club still exists, along with all the exclusionary elitism that goes with it. A lot of people think Hugo Chavez is a wonderful human being. He may well be, but I try and remember that he's still a human being, and that in itself means that whatever system he's going to have isn't going to be perfect, regardless of how good he might try and make it look.
Hard core leftists like Castro and Stallman are very good at making the ideas of Communism look great...but the superficial appearance is an utter crock...the reality is very different.