Indian State Encourages Microsoft Removal

cultrhetor writes "The New York Times reports that the communist government in the Indian state of Kerala is trying to remove Microsoft from its public institutions, as part of a campaign against monopolistic corporations. From the article: 'schools and public offices across the state are being encouraged to install free software systems instead of purchasing Microsoft's Windows programs. "It is well-known that Microsoft wants to have a monopoly in the field of computer technology. Naturally, being a democratic and progressive government, we want to encourage the spread of free software," M. A. Baby, the state's education minister, said by telephone.' The government is not banning Microsoft, but it is actively encouraging all 12,500 public schools in the state to install Linux."

Re:Boo

[babbling]

The US is a fascist state - they like to tell people what they can and cannot do [copyright.gov]. That's nothing to be proud of.

Re:Cautiously optimistic

[babbling]

If Linux starts to take off, you'll see Microsoft themselves start a distribution. I actually find it amazing that they have stuck with Windows. If they used Linux, they would be able to forget about needing to maintain all of the low-level operating system stuff and could put more effort into locking people into their brand of Linux.

This is something that the Free Software community will need to start thinking about, soon. How do we prevent that from happening?

Re:Boo

[boater rich]

Coke and Pepsi in the US and WEST won't contain the pesticides. The issue was the use of pesticide contaminated water in the LOCAL manufacturing plants... hence the ban. Rich

Re:Boo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Kerala particularly (and sadly) has a problem with over-education of the population compared to the number of skilled jobs. Their education system is exceptional, but often people can't find relevant employment afterwards.

I met a fisherman on the Keralan coastline, fishing with the villagers using a technique 1000s of years old. He had a degree and masters in informatics, could develop in Java and others, and spoke four languages. OSS is an amazing solution here. The government can soak up some of the highly skilled people and kick start an industry, rather than just hand all their cash overseas. In the western world, time is expensive, so it is often preferable to buy in software rather than put in development effort. In india, the dividing line is moved much further across. Skilled labour is comparatively much cheaper, so a wider range of tasks are suitable to be done in house.

Re:Boo

[Ekimus]

And exactly why is being a communist bad?

It is just another idea that tries to create a perfect world.

Aside from that it is not a good idea to ban any product. This will just lead faster to more idiots.

About being anti-western, in my point of view being anti-western is actually a good thing although I do live in a western country, but when I look at what the western world does to the non-western countries it seems to me we are way off track by trying to

a) tell other people what's good and what's not good (tell as in force them to...)
b) not trying to understand that there are other cultures that simply don't work in the same way

Re:the communist government in the Indian state of

[Rakshasa Taisab]

That's nothing, consider this headline from reuters yesterday, I'm left wondering what Hizbollah really wants:

"Annan urges quick end to Israel, Hizbollah disputes"

Re:Cautiously optimistic

[ajs318]

Closed-source software is no more nor less than electronic subjugation; and subjugation is evil whatever form it takes. Therefore, it deserves to be banned.

On the other hand, it might not need to be banned: it's possible that a technological development could make it obsolete. Closed-source software survives only because the operation of taking some binary machine code and generating equivalent source code -- that is, source code which, when compiled, will produce a bitwise identical binary -- is currently hard. However, it is certainly not impossible. When there exists a viable "uncc", everyone's rights to STUDY and ADAPT will be upheld.

Of course, there is no reason why a program written in one language should not be decompiled into another language. This would enable two people who do not have a programming language in common to collaborate on a project.

Re:why oss/linux ?

[Gonoff]

How much more support does someone using a Linux PC use than someone using a Windows one? I would suggest that the difference for the average office worker, the difference is zero, or less.

Why? A word processor is that, no more and no less. A web browser should just work. Email is email, whatever you are running. And so on...

I would suggest that people need less support once things are up and running. They need exactly the same training to get started. The technicians who set up or image the PCs in the first place will likely have an easier time too. Ubuntu, for example, is a LOT easier and faster to install than XP. It doesn't need hand-holding anti-virus software it is far better at network updates and is a lot more secure from the start.

But many/most(?) people here knew this anyway.