Indian Government Goes For Free Software 319
Geekonomical writes "Economic Times has an article that says Indian Government's Department of IT is going to encourage Linux and OSS on all fronts including college education! The article has more details (eventhough it has a misleading title!) The reasoning being more of plain economics than security or other reasons."
so... (Score:2, Funny)
Big surprise! (Score:2)
Forget the *government* being smart... (Score:2)
India is beating the living crap out of the US in CS. Some damn fine intellectuals, and lots of software shops.
They're going to drive down our luxurious US salaries...:-(
Pack your bags, Bill! (Score:2, Funny)
The popularity of these "special offers" must be getting expensive for Microsoft.
Re: Pack your bags, Bill! (Score:2)
> They aren't losing any money from these switches.
No, I'm talking about the very predictable "good will visit", where BG or one of his top officers will visit India and throw lots of money around in order to buy off the government and deep six this program.
Re:Pack your bags, Bill! (Score:3, Insightful)
So? You don't actually believe that the combined economies of two of the most populous countries on Earth is somehow smaller than that of two countries (North America is the U.S.A and Canada). Do you?
This isn't even getting into the fact that most service industries outsource to Indian companies, nor the expected growth of the Chinese economy alone...look, the board of Microsoft should be shitting their pants right about now.
Re:Pack your bags, Bill! (Score:2, Informative)
Actually they are not two of the most populous countries on Earth. They are the two most populous contries on Earth. But the U.S.A. economy alone do outstrip the combined economy of these two countries. You second comment however is right on spot, their economy is growing a lot faster and will eventually become the worlds largest economies.
Re:Pack your bags, Bill! (Score:2)
Well, let's look up [cia.gov] the answer, shall we?
Year 2000 GDP
USA - $9.963 trillion
China - $4.5 trillion
India - $2.2 trillion
Canada - $774.7 billion
So in fact it's not even very close (even without counting Canada.)
Dont worry! (Score:2, Interesting)
I am an Indian.
Let me tell you, most of the software used in India is pirated and we like get almost every software produced on earth for 5 dollars for the pirated copies. Only the big companies use licensed software.
US Companies are hardly making any money out of India. And even after this Government initiative of Linux, the big companies will continue to use Windows. So this hardly affects anything to the US.
Re:Pack your bags, Bill! (Score:2)
I think that it's worse than that. I think MS makes money when it gives away these gifts. The reality is that it costs them say 100k to send Bill and Co to some country to convince them to stop going over to FS/OSS. They then "give away" 1 billion dollars worth of software to that country that actually costs them say a few million dollars to actually produce the packaging and do the copying.
Therefore, their real cost is about a few million dollars, but they can write off a billion dollars in losses for advertising or marketing or whatever they want to call it, and they get to keep hundreds of millions from the billions of dollars in actual profits that they get from the people who really do buy the software. They can do this because this billion can then get counted against their expenses so their taxes are lower. It's kind of like printing money.
So, in effect, as long as people keep buying MS software in the US, whenever these other governments try to go over to OSS/FS, they actually make money for MS if they take the MS bribe.
Just one question... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:please mod down racist humour (Score:2, Informative)
It is not all india that holds cows sacred, or don't believe in eating meat, just certain religion followers, and they don't care about the race of the belivers.
Re:please mod down racist humour (Score:2)
That's sectarian humour, BTW.
Re:please mod down racist humour (Score:2)
It's not exactly racist humor. Not all Indians are hindu, and most hindus are vegetarians. Some hindus even eat beef (like myself).
One of the interesting implications.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Programmers that had been using it at colleges were keen to use it in the workplace. I think it's likely that Linux will follow this pattern.
The things that have kept Micro$o£t so popular are that people tend to pirate a copy and that it is installed on just about every new PC. Arguably making their software harder to copy will damage them in the long run.
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Arguably making their software harder to copy will damage them in the long run.
Which is why M$ cd's are able to be copied, even when the game industry has proven that copying can be made so much harder. Sure, all games can (and will) be cracked. But it is so much easier to just copy the windoze *cough* OS *cough* because they want people to be using it. They make the money not from the average user, but from businesses, governments and universities that use hundreds or thousands at a time.
Having Joe Average use it at home means that he is less likely to want to change the work policy. Have it installed at work, and it's too much hassle for him to change his home system.
Fortunately, this can work both ways now.
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I somehow think that the windows piracy thing is going to slow down from the fact that faking activation is similar to cracking a game.
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The good news about this, one would think, is that countries are less likely to screw around with compatibility in the name of market share.
The bad news is that the US love affair with Redmond starts to look like a highly protectionist trade policy. OOPs.
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, the NBT in low-cost programming resource will be none other than North Korea. China and South Korea stand to take best advantage. Film at eleven...
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:2, Insightful)
You obviously know nothing about the difference between a "coder" and a "software engineer".
Yes I'm serious - and I'm both a Mechanical Engineer and Software Engineer. The actual time "coding" is almost the smallest part of a well designed project. You need engineers to take care of the rest that if(5!=duh) doesn't really do well.
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not trying to troll, i'm just saying that most my CS friends are in it for the fun, the knowledge, and getting computers to crunch bits. where most my software engineering friends are microsoft praisers who think that c# is the greatest invention since the stone age since it has delegates and get/set{} operators now (to make their design better?).
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:2, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. I'd distinguish between the "software engineers" and the "CS folks" by saying that the former are soulless code grinders who slave away and fuel the "software industry" which is not too hot in itself (as Jamie Zawinski rightly pointed out, "whole sick, navel-gazing mess we called the software industry"). The latter people on the other hand are the people that keep the earth spinning. Whether their percentage is dwindling or growing is anyone's guess.
It's a mistake IMO to think that "standard software engineering practices" are some kind of panacea that can correct bad coders and produce good code.
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW, you come off as really condescending, you might want to work on that;-)
Steve
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:2)
If done properly, it is possible to spend 85% of the time designing the stuff, 14% on testing it, 5% on coding it and 1% on support. At least in my experience, but then again, I've never really worked on huge projects with idiots running the sub-projects and thus screwing things up.
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:2)
I'm so fed up with the single-digit percentage of time alotted for design where I work that I seriously consider finding another job.
Is this as common as I think, or have I had rotten luck with employers three times in a row?
I work for some consulting engineers (Score:2)
I think working in a company where they are from a culture that are proponents of blueprints is a VERY BIG advantage compared to the regular IT industry.
And yes - it is apparantly as common as you feel; at least that's the concensus from the people I graduated with - and that TRUELY sucks.
I'm considdering starting an OSS group called "The Lazy Procrastinators - too lazy not to design!"
Unfortunatly I'm too lazy and unmotivated to actually get it up and running. But hey
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:2)
And obviously, a "sanitation engineer" is higher up on the food chain than a "trash man"?
No one where I've ever been expects a "coder" to do nothing but code. Everyone does some design, and unless they're strictly project management only, probably some coding and debugging.
"Coder" is just an informal term for "software engineer", which could be someone with a computer science, math, or hell, physics degree.
Seriously, do you know anyone that does nothing but "coding", that would qualify to be a "coder" under your definition? That does absolutely no design at all?
Technicians think engineers aren't in touch with the real world and are overpaid. Engineers think that scientists aren't practical. Scientists thing that engineers are a bit too dim-witted to do something lofty like "advancing their field".
It's all semantics, and if you let it go, you wind up a lot happier and getting along those "other classes" quite a bit better.
Re:One of the interesting implications.. (Score:4, Insightful)
All the companies I talked for assistance in development work only with Microsoft solutions and were not willing to consider my project. Finally I decided to hire two fresh graduates, they are bright guys fresh out of college (no prior Linux exposure) with a little Unix usage.
They saw my system, there were immediately hooked and installed Linux in their home computers also to play around. Initially they could not write html by hand. After a couple of days they were comfortable
The government promoting open source will have broader implications, since the middle class in India puts a great faith in everything Government. If the government says it will be good. When a boy/girl wants to do a course on Linux, the parents will be more willing to spare the cash, if there is a government label on it.
Good signs in Europe as well (Score:5, Interesting)
It is interesting to see where we are in say after 10 more years.
If the World Wants to Free Itself ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is indeed good news.
The fact of the matter is that if the world wants to free itself from the American hegemony and economic dominance in the 21st century, one of the critical things it must do is free itself from dependence on American Proprietary software, particularly operating systems, with all of their NSA backdoors, NSA-inspired weak cryptography, deliberate incompatabilities, moving development targets, subscription pricing, and so on. Probably the smartest and best approach is to leverage software freedom by using Free Software and developing home-grown talent and expertise in customizing it for local or regional use. Not only does that allow a solid audit of existing code (and help insure against malicious code a la Microsoft's NSA_KEY), but it creates a breeding ground for local expertise and a local software industry.
Of course, Europe is already on par with the United States in this area despite our home-grown software monopoly, but for the developing world this is a tremendous boon, and it is exciting to see countries like China and India embrace software freedom.
China: ~1 Billion
India: ~1 Billion
That is already about a third of humanity. Add to that Germany, Brazil, Colombia, etc. and you have a ground swell that must boggle Bill Gate's mind. Even if Palladium and DRM were to do their worst, effectively banning Free Software in the United States, it would only be the United States that suffers
Next time we feel depressed, or run down, in hearing the latest bad news from Washington we can take heart that, at worst, it is only the United States emasculating its own information industry, not humanity as a whole. I, for one (despite being an American who will undoubtably suffer both economically and intellectually if the battles against Palladium and DRM are lost), take heart in that.
Re:If the World Wants to Free Itself ... (Score:2)
The govt can encourage any technology it wants if it's in the interest of national security or the general welfare of it's citizens.
The US govt is very busy standardising on MS products in order to help an American company and there is no reason why other countries can't do similar things to help out their own companies.
Re:If the World Wants to Free Itself ... (Score:2)
You currently have large corporations bribing standards bodies and government agencies to make their proprietary products a standard. (Microsoft)
If all standards were required to be LGPLed you'd always be able to come along and work with a competitors product, regardless of their wishes.
I'd also say that operating systems and interconnection systems (file system drivers, etc) should all be required to be GPLed. (If you wish to sell to government or government funded industry.) OSes aren't a commodity in the same way as the software that runs on them. They exist just to enable software to work. Competition in this area always seems to involve sabotage of APIs and hiding functionality to allow some products to work better than others.
But, other than the OS and the protocols/file formats/etc, I don't think software needs to be GPLed. And before you ask, that leaves a lot.
few Linux inroads in India yet (Score:5, Interesting)
at how strong the presence of Microsoft was in
science. Virtually none of the people
I spoke to had had any Linux exposure, let alone
Linux experience. This is in stark contrast with
'the West'; Linux prospers in most of the sciences.
This makes this movement all the more remarkable.
Re:few Linux inroads in India yet (Score:4, Informative)
However, things are changing now. There is a lot more media coverage on "Free" software and its advantages. Computer Magazines in India have been distributing Linux CDs for a long time now, so the level of Linux knowledge is increasing. There are LUGs in a number of cities in India.
The reason to be skeptical of this initiative is that Microsoft has traditionally invested heavily in India, and Indian politicians love to be seen with Bill. And the widespread corruption doesnt help either.
Re:few Linux inroads in India yet (Score:2)
at how strong the presence of Microsoft was in
science.
Hardly surprising considering Microsoft's active sponsorship of the IITs. I don't doubt that if Red Hat start funding research, professorships, scholarships etc that Linux will become equally as popular.
Re:few Linux inroads in India yet (Score:5, Informative)
Re:few Linux inroads in India yet (Score:2)
Makes perfect sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:3, Insightful)
That's assuming that Microsoft only sell in USD and require local currencies to be converted to dollars and US prices to be paid before they'll make a sale. However, MS, like McDonalds, Sony, Pepsi and other global corporations, tailor their prices to the local markets. Products of these corporations are generally as "affordable" wherever you are.
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:3, Insightful)
This won't work for McDonald's, because a cheeseburger is stale if you ship it (and because the shipping is higher than the difference), but why not for software or consumer electronics? I'm surprised this hasn't become the standard way to buy stuff.
I'd like to get some of the gadgets they get in Asian markets that never make it to the West; if you could get them at bargain prices because of currency exchanges, so much the better!
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:2)
Well, many things are cheaper, some are not. The last time I was in India (this summer), things like cell phones, mobile phones, printers, and speakers were extremely cheap. CPU's and memory were also somewhat cheap.
Other things, like monitors and video cards were extremely expensive (there were no Geforce4's out even).
If you tried to bring something like a whole packaged set of computers from there to the US, customs would likely stop you. But of course, if you have the right connections, the import/export buisness can be very *profitable*. I was on a flight from Calcutta, India to Bangkok, Thailand, and nearly 80% of the people on the plane were smugglers of electronic/commodity goods. It was funny because when they landed, they had about 7-8 suitcases each. They obviously knew the airport people. In Bangkok, there were people there to help collect the suitcases. I'm not sure if the final destination was Bangkok or not, but the process seemed to be pretty efficient.
Re:Makes perfect sense (Score:4, Informative)
People do do this, it's called the "grey market". The EU say it's illegal, but retailers are doing it anyway [bbc.co.uk].
I guess with software, you might only sell localized versions overseas which would be useless in domestic markets. IIRC, the licence you get with certain products only allows it to be used in the territory in which it was bought (someone told me this when we were thinking of going into the grey market to supply just-released Apple Powerbooks to Europe).
I'd like to get some of the gadgets they get in Asian markets that never make it to the West; if you could get them at bargain prices because of currency exchanges, so much the better!
There's no reason you can't do this, unless import tarriffs make it economically unfeasible. If there was a good economic case, I'm sure the Asian companies would be doing it already.
Plain wrong, it seems (Score:2)
Free software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like their going for open source software, not free software. A nice coincidence is of course that they will end up with free software anyway, but "going for free software" is more what the people in Peru are trying to do IMO.
Local language software (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH 900 million people *worldwide* (not just in India) understand Hindi. However there are very few applications and operating systems that do support Indic scripts.
http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix/ , http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Indic-Fonts-HOWTO/ , and http://www.geocities.com/hanu_man_ji are some efforts in this direction.
Instead of making them dream about making dough in the US, the Indian college students and programmers should be encouraged if not forced to develop tools, utilities and applications in the Indian languages. Not only will it boost the demand for PC's - many Indian homes have white goods in the range of $400 or so, but no PC's - who'll use them if you don't know English? - it will give a big boost to the quality of programming; there are many smart people in India but they are limited by a lack of knowledge of English.
Re:Local language software (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say most of the people who can read and write, and certainly those wealthy enough to have access to a computer, know English.
Local language support (Hindi is one, don't forget the other major languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Telugu, etc.) seems more appropriate when Linux usage extends beyond gov't/academia to home and commercial situations.
I skeptical that social change (i.e., adoption of computers/internet across the population) can be effected by supply-side pressure when there are such high barriers to adoption
Re:Local language software (Score:3, Informative)
In order to get a railway reservation in India, you have to go to the Booking office, stand in a line, wait for your turn(could take anywhere from 30 to 120 min), and get your ticket. Yes, the ticket system is networked nationwide, you can buy a ticket from A to B from any booking office, that may be located in C.
Recently the government(owns the Railways in India, and it happens to be the world's 4th largest network) started online railway ticket booking.
The people who book online, have an advantage of 30 to 120 minutes over the ones who don't - they don't need to stand in the line and wait, while someone ahead of them can book on the same train and deny them a ticket.
The trouble is, the website's interface is in English; whereas in the booking office, the forms can be filled in the local language - they're bilingual.
So, the English speakers not only get the ticket without having to stand in line, they also get an (unfair) advantage because they know English, they're more likely to get the ticket, or will have a earlier position in the waiting list.
Now, if the same interface was also there in the local languages, wouldn't people be eager to use it? You don't need to buy a computer to access the web, cyber cafe charges are ~40c an hour, so on spending 15 minutes in the cybercafe, you would spend the same amount as for when you go to the booking office.
So, a supply side pressure, as you rightly put it, may not always increase demand, but it's things like these
Re:Local language software (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is it unfair? There are no barriers to learning English, after all. And given that English is the de facto lingua franca (yes, I am aware of the irony of using that phrase), anything that encourages more people to learn English can only be a good thing.
I don't know much about Hindi, but can it be represented and manipulated by a computer as easily as US7ASCII? That is a crucial advantage of English over non-ASCII (or EBCDIC) languages, Unicode or no.
Re:Local language software (Score:2)
Huh? Moderated as Interesting? It is highly ignorant. Have you ever tried to learn foreign languages yourself? As a person who is not English native I can say that it is simply not true. Learning foreign languages beyound simple "How are you? Thanks, I'm fine" requires noticable effort and for most people who have no special talent for learning languages means spending a lot of time and/or money on studying. This is the barrier.
Re:Local language software (Score:2)
Take for example, my mother a retired high school teacher and my father a retired government employee, both are educated (post graduate/graduate), but are not willing to start using the computer because of the language barrier. Once there is a popular, tamil interface conveniently available, they and many more will start using computers.
Re:Local language software (Score:2)
I find that number incredibly hard to believe. India has IIRC, some 14 official languages and 8 official alphabets. (And we in Canada complain about bilingualism.) As a result of the fact that nobody really wants to help make their neighbor's language dominant, and the fact that England ruled India for many years, English is the second language of most.
I still remember driving (okay, being driven
It was taught at the nearby school.
Re:Local language software (Score:3, Informative)
The problems faced are lack of free opentype fonts(preferred for handling numerous ligatures & glyphs & their substitution), support for opentype fonts at the X-level. No, indix(linked by another user) won't solve the issue atleast in the present form, since it breaks a lot of X-protocols. Pango [pango.org] holds promise, but it is not being adopted by QT & it will take some time for rendering engines of all indic languages for Pango to be developed.
The plus side is serious efforts are being made to resolve the issue. OT Fonts are available for a few indic languages & existing ttf's are being converted into otf's,Gnome & KDE translation work is going on (some like my own mother tongue 'kannada' is being translated on WinXP) for some indic languages like hindi,kannada, tamil(one of the first indic languages to be translated), etc.,
The things that we should be alarmed is Microsoft's is on the upper hand: It has OT font's for all indic languages besides input engines, OTF rendering support & BillG who is making his 3rd visit to India has already signalled the need for localisation. And if i am not wrong the fonts have been developed with the aid of the local govt. And they are not in public domain or atleast freely usable on linux.
For more details, see: Indic computing mailing lists [sourceforge.net]-search the indic_computing_devel mailing list for extensive criticism of indix & also the kde 18n mailing list. indlinux,kannada mailing list [sharma-home.net]
Btw, here's another example [kar.nic.in] of MS cosying upto the karnataka govt. The bhoomi s/w(up for this year's stockholmn tech award) may cost nearly 40 lakhs per taluk. A NGO, I currently am in touch with was successful in persuading the officials to look at the possibility of developing it on linux. And projects like this need indic support urgently.
Re:Local language software (Score:2)
It has these things because it spent time and money to make them. Even tho' it can be reproduced for negligible cost, information of any kind is not free.
The ethos of the Open SOurce movement was always that if you needed something and it didn't exist, you had the tools and simply made it. Nowadays if it doesn't show up on Google stright away, people just give up or worse, complain without actually doing anything themselves.
Re:Local language software (Score:2)
If the awareness about such projects spread in colleges and schools, the students can be organized to keep the translation of these two and mamy other open source application complete and current.
The status of other Indian languages are still worse.
Re: There is an Indian Linux distro in development (Score:2, Informative)
Indian Linux [indlinux.org] is your answer. The website says it will be developed in all 18 official Indian languages.
Might be slightly misleading of course; I'm presuming they really meant all 10 ISCII ("Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange") alphabets in transmutation to give, I don't know, 12 or so languages. Will be interesting to see if they later provide for transcribing the Arabic script as well; the website at present seems to be suggesting only native Indian scripts. Not to accuse them of ethnic bias; I'm pretty sure it's plain intellectual laziness.
A More Detailed Explanation:- Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi and Nepali use the Devnagri script; a few languages such as Konkani, Manipuri use the Roman script and scripts of other languages. Sindhi, Kashmiri and Urdu use the Arabic script (or modifications of it thereof). Unicode [unicode.org] doesn't recognise the Assamese script to be different from the Bengali one, but provides for two additional Assamese-only characters [ntlworld.com]; not sure if ISCII does that as well. (IndLinux's page gives seperate keymaps for Assamese [indlinux.org] and Bengali [indlinux.org]; I neither speak nor read these languages, so I don't know if they are significantly distinct.) All other languages, namely, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada have their own unique scripts.
Tamil is way ahead in implementation though; the Tamil Linux [tamillinux.org] group is very active; the website says you can use Tamil in Mandrake 9.0. Can't read Tamil myself, but the KDE snapshots [tamillinux.org] provided look extremely cool to me.
I dont think your numbers are quite right (Score:2)
I'm not arguing with the 2% number you mention for English-speaking folks - that seems about right. I think your numbers about Hindi speaking is way overinflated. The three South Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu speak little or no Hindi at all. Lets factor in the fact that the literacy rate stands at around 55% and therefore it can be reasonably assumed that 45% of the population know only one language. Now add in the fact that there are 21 major languages in India, and you'll see why I say that 90% of the population speaking Hindi is too high a figure. I would place it down to around 65%. Still a rather large number though.
On an interesting side note - the IBM announcement for AIXv5.2 states that the locale for Hindi will now be supported.
Re:Local language software (Score:5, Informative)
But there are *at least* 15 languages in India(_not_dialects_) whose speakers exceed English speakers in India.
To name a few:
Hindi,
Tamil,
Gujarati,
Malayalam
Telug
Bengali,
Marathi,
etc.
Most Indians - (not most Indians in the US, not most Indians on slashdot, not most Indian programmers) - most Indians don't know English.
There appear to be so many Indian programmers because despite being a miniscule percentage, 2% of 1 billion is still a huge number.
Not having software applications in the local languages is only going to increase the digital divide in India.
China's population is higher than India, and the Chinese use Chinese for computing.
In order of number of speakers of languages, the highest is Chinese, followed by English, and next comes Hindi.
Do you know how many websites there are in Hindi? Less than 500.
And Chinese? More than 10,000 and growing.
Now, please don't conclude that this is because the Chinese don't understand English and Indians do. That's specious reasoning.
The Indians who don't know English are denied a lot, that includes computing tools.
Re:Local language software (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Local language software (Score:2, Insightful)
Concluding that 98% of Indians are illiterate, is a little off the mark.
When software can be developed for use in Icelandic, Korean, Greek - all these languages have less sepeakers than most Indian languages, why not in Indian languages? Multiplicity of languages is not the issue, you develop the content or software in the language you use.
You go English because the tools are already there, not because you're scared of alienating the other languages.
Re:Local language software (Score:2)
Re:Local language software (Score:2, Informative)
The percentage of English speaking Indians is not 2%. But quite close.
http://www.victorianweb.org/post/india/hohentha
English in India -- and Who Speaks English to Whom and When?
Annika Hohenthal, Department of English, University of Turku, Finland
In terms of numbers of English speakers, the Indian subcontinent ranks third in the world, after the USA and UK. An estimated 4% of the Indian population use English; although the number might seem small, out of the total population that is about 35 million people (in 1994)(Crystal 1995:101). Although the number of speakers of English in India is somewhat limited (as compared to the total population), that small segment of the population controls domains that have professional prestige (Kachru 1986a: 8).
Those are 1995 statistics, so you might add a few million to the 35 mil. mentioned above.
4% of 1 billion still leaves 960 million in the lurch.
The literacy rate of India is
http://www.cyberjournalist.org.in/census/cenl
(takes time to load)
65.38%. (2001 census statistics)
This means,
60% of the population, ie 600 million literate people in India are denied the use of computers and internet services(note that I distinguish between programmers and the users of the programmers because they don't know English.
These are the figures.
These 600 mill are the ones I'm drawing attention to.
Re:Local language software (Score:2)
They might not know Hindi as well. I know many fully literate people in my home state (west bengal), who know much better English than Hindi. The state requires students to learn Hindi, but either Bengali or English is stressed much more, depending on if they goto a Bengali-standard or English-standard school.
> 4% of 1 billion still leaves 960 million in the lurch.
7 years ago, it was 4%. I beleive it's significantly higher now, as knowing English has become somewhat "chic". Funny what the boob tube and movies can do.
Re:English already the language of modern Indian l (Score:2)
> 2. There are more Indian language movies watched and made in India than in English.
Except that now days, English words are intersperced in the shows and movies.
> So you can see what is popular with the _people_.
Their own native tongue, not English, not Hindi. I'd love to see figures showing what percentage of non-literate Indians speak Hindi when it's not their mother tongue.
So, does this mean ... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, you mean the other Indians
That's one thing India and Pakistan agree on.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:That's one thing India and Pakistan agree on.. (Score:2)
They're not idiots. They'll understand that the first hit is always free. Microsoft can discount all they like, but once they've wiped out the competition, they know that can charge whatever they want. Unfortunately for them, we know that too.
Just not depending on foreign companies??? (Score:5, Interesting)
I feel any country or group of countries (EU?) would do a smart thing if they started to develop their own application software and OSes (this could go even further to running their own Certificate authorities).
Just to make sure there is no foreign entity (no matter from which country) that can "pull the plug" on them.
Its about time (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason was that they always had other options, namely pirated MS software.When you can get Visual Studio for Rs 150 (about $3) and Windows for Rs 100(about $2), and even for getting linux you have to buy a computer mag for Rs100 (Hey, broadband in India sucks, even in Universities), do you think anyone will actually use Linux??
So what I am really happy about is that now they are planning to introduce linux courses in the colleges... that will force them to finally get them to install linux on their PCs and I know for sure that once they get tinkering around, they can't resist the FORCE. It happened to me, and I am sure it will happen to others too.
Besides it will also lead to they syllabi being changed abit which haven't been revised in a Decade or so.
Alll I can say is if this actually happens( Do u think MS will saty silent and let so many potential MS technology developers just get out of their hands?? U must be kidding), it will be one of the best things to ever happen to linux.
Re:Its about time (Score:2, Funny)
Have you recovered yet or this post comes from a deep coma?
Re:Its about time (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Its about time (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Its about time (Score:5, Informative)
No wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't read too much into this (Score:4, Informative)
While India is *extremely* strong on the OpenSource front, it is not unreasonable to expect that this particular news item (which isn't one - it doesn't state anything new) sets the stage for some (fairly common) government-level arm twisting. Remember Peru?
Don't get me wrong - I know what the "DIT" (actually Ministry of Information technology, but who has time to nitpick) is doing, and it is heading in the right direction, and pushing hard for open standards and open technologies.
It is just that this particular article does not appear to to be related to their efforts. Also note that this appears to be more of a commercial booster - the government has done nothing to interact with the astonishingly large OpenSource user base in India, which is sad.
Not surprisingly (Score:3, Interesting)
Picking up the pace. (Score:2)
Indian GNU/Linux distro (Score:3, Informative)
Just shows that GNU/Linux has already made a place for itself in India. Governments always start out late but its great to know that they are getting there.
- Jalil Vaidya
Disclaimer: Yes, I am an Indian. No, I do not work for ELX Linux or have anything to gain from them. Yes, I have used other GNU/Linux distros like Knoppix/Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat.
Promoting Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
the computer science student organisation was
very active in promoting unix and specifically
linux to other schools and colleges in the area.
We students used to visit colleges in the area
and conduct unix workshops for a small fee.
The money collected would go into our student
organisation's fund.
Back then most colleges were on dos/windows.
We used to go in and install linux and then have
a 2 day workshop of lectures and hands-on
tutorials. It was a fun experience. We had
transparancies and nicely printed manuals.
Being students,we did manage to do a pretty professional job.
Does anyone know what the this refers to (Score:2)
Many analysts believe that China's growing dominance in the IT space is fuelled by its low cost open source bias.
I'm just wondering what the author is referring to. Among the developing nations, I'd expect most people would consider India to be dominant in IT.
Tax took Gandhi to Dandi,now even cynics get Linux (Score:2)
Three cheers for Richard Stallman (Score:2)
It's just too bad that Linus is getting all the credit. I hate the name "GNU/Linux" as much as the next guy, but these events are a direct result of Stallman's vision and hard work. Linus and Stallman both wrote code, but Stallman was the one promoting freedom.
If only Stallman had chosen a better name in the first place...
So.... (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, my government also switched to Linux! (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not a billion heads, just a million or two.
Perhaps this is will be one of the positive legacies of this recession?
Once a certain fraction of organisations use Linux seriously, it will be an unstoppable movement.
Businesses and governments have no loyalties, only interests.
Changing the Hiring Pool (Score:3)
Since almost everything has been said already... (Score:2)
I can't wait til MS send the rep out there to put India back on track to freedom and democracy The American Way (TM & Copyright), as opposed to suffering under the evil leftie Open Source Software regime.
Considering that, in my experience, few Americans know what a curry is, this could be highly amusing if the rep were to be treated to one of the more "warming" dishes such as a tasty Madras or Vindaloo ;-)
Oh the look on his face while eating the gut-meltingly spicey dish, and having to finish it for the sake of politeness, with a smile, and converse at the same time.
Oh, and it usually burns just the same on the way out! The intestinal irritation caused in unaccustomed/non native diners can also hinder the absorbtion of adequate moisture from the meal, leading to... Ahh, you get the idea. :) You can see why Curry is the most popular dish in Britain!
Ali
P.S. I make no guarantees as to the accuracy of any of the biological info in this post, so it may be bollocks.
Re:Text of the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Another big factor is microsofts refusal to remove Taiwan as a independent country. With the source-code they can remove it themselves. In the latest Redhat 8.0, Redhat has removed Taiwans status as a independent country (listed as part of China with their flag removed).
Re:Text of the article (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft already own 95%+ of the Chinese market on desktop. Microsoft has traditionally used "give them copies, make them depend on it, and bully them into paying" approach of marketing in most of Asian countries. This has worked well in the past in poor small Asian countries who depends on the US domestic market for their exports.
However, Microsoft may just not make the case in China.
First, China isn't some small Asian countries. It's domestic market will grow to a fairly large size so it could defense the bully action from Microsoft as well as Washington.
Second, Linux and other free OS have become viable alternative to Windows in recent years. By the time, China has developed into a viable market for Microsoft to "harvest," there will be choice.
Third, Chinese government is so focusing on not letting money goes out of its boarder. It's taking preventive action in ensuring the choice exists for them.
A couple weeks after Ballmer's $750 millions check is cut to Chinese government, the government announce its Yanfang Linux project [theregister.co.uk] which is posted to replace Windows in governmental computing environment.
With a couple more years to bring Linux environment to maturity, China is on the right track to defeat Microsoft in its plot to dominate Chinese's computing environment.
How to up your karma Re:Text of the article (Score:2, Insightful)
Apparently this qualifies as informative!
Re:How to up your karma Re:Text of the article (Score:2)
The thing is, when I saw this story appear, I went to read the article and the website seemed very slow. So I copy/pasted the article here just in case the website went *poof*. There's no way to tell morons to go read the article if they can't read it, heh :-)
(and just FYI, I hit Karma 50 (or whatever it's called these days) a long time ago. I'll post anonymously next time though...)
Re:Not enough GDP per capita (Score:5, Informative)
India has a large middle-class and many wealthy people (even some extremely weathly people). But for argument, let's say that 5% are as wealthy as your average American. That's 50 million people. You think that's trivial?
I find the current usage of that word disturbing. (Score:2, Offtopic)
When did the word change to mean "Jewish" and disenfranchise other semitic peoples? According to USians, palestinians are anti-semitic? What, they don't like themselves???
Re:I find the current usage of that word disturbin (Score:2)
Going by the root meaning of the word, "Semite" could potentially apply to anyone who claimed descent from Shem. Current place of residence wouldn't matter. Arabs are, by biblical and quranic recknoning, even more closely related to Jews -- they are reckoned as descending from Ishmael, Abraham's oldest son, whereas the Jews are reckoned to have been descended from Isaac, Abraham's second son. Ishmael's mother was Hagar, an Egyptian (thus descended from Ham), whereas Isaac's mother was Sarai (Sarah), a Semite. This is probably the reason that Jewishness is held to descent matrilineally: otherwise Ishmael would, in a sense, have a suprior claim to Abrahamic descent. By subtle implication, Arabs are not Semites by matrilineal descent, although clearly they are descended from Shem.
In any case "Semitic" has always more or less meant "Jewish", although others not so called are considered as Shem's descendents. The term was coined to describe Jews, not living in the Middle East, but Europe. Before the twentieth century, many other kinds of biblical words where used to describe Jews: "Hebrews", "Isrealite" etc.
The attempt to spread the meaning of "anti-semitism" to cover predjudice against Arabs is an attempt to give the term new meaning. It's an exercise in debating tactics, no matter how well motivated it may be.
Re:I find the current usage of that word disturbin (Score:2)
Re:Answer (Score:2)
LOL, it seems that anything ever said against Israel is anti-semitic. Will you call them Nazis now? Well, it _is_ anti-semitic, but it's not the right word to use in this cases because it has a bad stigma to it.
Re:Keep the politics out of this (Score:2)
Taiwan wasn't exactly democratic until the mid 90's. Of course, granted, the government in the mainland did a lot more human rights abuses than the Taiwan government, but the role was reveresed before 1949.
Anyways, the mainland will probably eventually have a freely elected governemnt, and Taiwan will probably be a part of it. I support the idea of Taiwan being a independent region until then, however.
Re:Keep the politics out of this (Score:2)
China has lots of people but is relatively poor. Democracy only works if the country has a strong middle class. Making poor countries democratic can only be counterproductive.
Re:A good thing. (Score:2)
I agree with you in most parts of your post, but not in this part.
First of all, it's saving American companies cash. This is really quite important in the state of the economy right now.
Second, programmers who come from India to the US often don't return. Where does the money go? Yup, back into the *US* Economy.
Anyways, the trend has always been like this. I'm sure in the distant future, when China and India are the world's largest economies, Chinese and Indian companies will ship jobs to the US. I know this sounds horribly politically incorrect, but it's bound to happen
Re: outsourcing is not a catch-all (Score:2)
And never will be.
The dynamics of having a small and agile team that is all under one roof, with the managment will never go away.
We outsourced a team of romanians for 2 years, and it ended up costing us more money and probably not the level of productivity we would of had from two very high paid and very professional local engineers. I guess we all have to learn that lesson from somewhere.
Sure, some jobs are shoe-in for outsourcing work. We still outsource a lot of my companies development to a guy in the Ukraine, he is good at what he does, and has been quite reliable and fair priced.
But, as our application is very customized and niche, and we require a LOT of agility, we do better keeping the work in house.
I am sure that a lot of IT directors feel the same way.
Cheers