Free software wave in an Indian state
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Computerization of government functions, if standardized, can use Linux/OpenOffice/Mozilla browser, and web based applications with offices connected by leased lines or point to point VPNs through broadband internet connections. Government may further benefit from using the new open document formats instead of the proprietary MS formats. There is no doubt that significant amount of money can be saved with the Linux/Openoffice route. . . . and it is not that the politicians know much about a telecom network/construction technology/defense technology etc. . . yet they decide on all those, so their lack of knowledge should not be a concern specific to operating systems. The more important problem is that whether governments choose to use Linux or Microsoft Windows, they do not give proper thought to the processes that they intend to computerize; nor do they have people qualified to do the job. It is always some discussion about the merits of this system versus that system. I think some of these guys should visit stock exchanges, and banks that have computerized effectively. In India, majority of civil cases are land disputes, and yet, no one has taken the initiative to computerize this and use high precison GPS/GIS equipment to measure land by co-ordinates, and store them on computers. I cannot still pay my vehicle taxes in ANY Road Transport Office in my state. Computerization in government has been a failure -- not because of software choices; but, because of no planning.
I agree with your remarks, but I was not speaking about computerization of government departments,but the initiative to promote FSF over microsoft.States like Karnataka and Andhra pradesh have already became models in implementing ESeva projects for rural India. But here the problem is the state is vehemently promoting FSF. Compulsory IT training provided for school children would be entirely focused on linux and open source technology.Teachers are being given traing in linux and free software. The state has rejected microsoft offern in education. In all other states microsoft is active in school level education.They know the potential danger of moving away from this as these children are the future of IT in india
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I agree with your remarks, but I was not speaking about computerization of government departments,but the initiative to promote FSF over microsoft.States like Karnataka and Andhra pradesh have already became models in implementing ESeva projects for rural India. But here the problem is the state is vehemently promoting FSF. Compulsory IT training provided for school children would be entirely focused on linux and open source technology.Teachers are being given traing in linux and free software. The state has rejected microsoft offern in education. In all other states microsoft is active in school level education.They know the potential danger of moving away from this as these children are the future of IT in india
A highly placed official in Kerala IT Mission told me that the Microsoft offer remains only on paper. That is, they had offered services against purchases that hey did not honour. The lack of followup by government officials allows companies like Microsoft and SNC Lavalin to get away with such atrocities. If you did not know, SNC Lavalin, a canadian company, made an offer to sell transformers at 220 crores, which was offered by BHEL at 98 crores. In addition, SNC Lavalin was supposed to fund a huge cancer hospital in Kerala along the tune of some 90 crores. The hospital funding never happened! So, instead of offering perks, MS should just reduce the price. The future free services "carrot" is now ignored by most government departments. As long as I need to leave my home to get some routine services like paying taxes, filing applications for certain certificates, getting information about the status of an application etc., I do not consider it successful. The success has nothing to do with Windows or Linux on the desktop, or on the server. Just because someone learns their basic computer skills on Linux at their school does not rob them of any future opportunities they may have. Microsoft is fairly prevalant everywhere. Government sponsored schemes are not the only way that children learn about computers. I prefer government schools teaching about open source because most people in India now equate computers to Microsoft. Children will see and use MS products at home, cyber cafes, at their friends' home etc. Let the government give an awareness that there are some alternatives like Linux, BSD etc. My uncle "learned" to use computers from a local tutoring place, and what does that guy do? Put in pirated copies of MS Office on his computer. I removed that, downloaded OpenOffice, and showed him how to create documents, spreadsheets etc., and told him that it costs him nothing whereas the MS products actually cost tens of thousands of rupees depending on what version and features. Considering that almost all editors are fairly alike, spreadsheets are fairly alike, browsers are fairly alike, what difference does it make if the low cost option is chosen. Thomas
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A highly placed official in Kerala IT Mission told me that the Microsoft offer remains only on paper. That is, they had offered services against purchases that hey did not honour. The lack of followup by government officials allows companies like Microsoft and SNC Lavalin to get away with such atrocities. If you did not know, SNC Lavalin, a canadian company, made an offer to sell transformers at 220 crores, which was offered by BHEL at 98 crores. In addition, SNC Lavalin was supposed to fund a huge cancer hospital in Kerala along the tune of some 90 crores. The hospital funding never happened! So, instead of offering perks, MS should just reduce the price. The future free services "carrot" is now ignored by most government departments. As long as I need to leave my home to get some routine services like paying taxes, filing applications for certain certificates, getting information about the status of an application etc., I do not consider it successful. The success has nothing to do with Windows or Linux on the desktop, or on the server. Just because someone learns their basic computer skills on Linux at their school does not rob them of any future opportunities they may have. Microsoft is fairly prevalant everywhere. Government sponsored schemes are not the only way that children learn about computers. I prefer government schools teaching about open source because most people in India now equate computers to Microsoft. Children will see and use MS products at home, cyber cafes, at their friends' home etc. Let the government give an awareness that there are some alternatives like Linux, BSD etc. My uncle "learned" to use computers from a local tutoring place, and what does that guy do? Put in pirated copies of MS Office on his computer. I removed that, downloaded OpenOffice, and showed him how to create documents, spreadsheets etc., and told him that it costs him nothing whereas the MS products actually cost tens of thousands of rupees depending on what version and features. Considering that almost all editors are fairly alike, spreadsheets are fairly alike, browsers are fairly alike, what difference does it make if the low cost option is chosen. Thomas
If you are viewing with a social perspective this has to be welcomed.But there are reasons for microsoft to worry.we can clearly figure out the intensity of the growinganti microsoft feelings here in India, when we equate with the popularity of Free software and java. If students started loving the complexity and possibilities of linux ,then it is not easy to bring them back to microsoft platform. So most of the biggies are competing in providing projects to college students.Novell,Redhat,Micosoft and now sun also joins the track.
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If you are viewing with a social perspective this has to be welcomed.But there are reasons for microsoft to worry.we can clearly figure out the intensity of the growinganti microsoft feelings here in India, when we equate with the popularity of Free software and java. If students started loving the complexity and possibilities of linux ,then it is not easy to bring them back to microsoft platform. So most of the biggies are competing in providing projects to college students.Novell,Redhat,Micosoft and now sun also joins the track.
I am certainly viewing this from a social perspective. Why is Microsoft Office so expensive? Do they cut down the price? No. Instead, they offer promises that they do not intend to keep. Linux is as simple/complex as Windows. Now, the new distributions like Ubuntu are so easy to use, that it is difficult to put that factor in favour of Microsoft. Personally, I like BSD, and now use a Mac. The problem with Linux acceptance have always been the *zealots*, who drive away people with *real* usability complaints. Now, there are many distributions of Linux that make it very easy to use. Firefox and Safari has given me better user experience than Internet Explorer. Why does Microsoft expect me (and others using Firefox, Opera, Safari etc.) to switch back, when they were not considerate enough to create a popup blocker and tabbed browsing for many years? Openoffice has not been as user-friendly as Microsoft Office; but, once you get used to it, it does everything you need pretty well. Gaim and Adium have given me better experience than AOL's AIM. Yahoo! is so unfriendly to any OS other than Windows that they should put up a signboard -"Windows only". Now voice chat has been rendered fairly useless by Skype, that use VoIP services instead of the proprietary formats followed by Yahoo!, AIM, MSN etc. Google has created Google Talk that uses an open protocol, and allows interconnectivity with other servers. Has any of the other vendors responded? In general terms, I should be able to chat using my Google id to my sister with a Yahoo id and my firnd with an MSN id using a third party chat application like Adium or iChat or Gaim. But, even on technologies that have lost novelty, these companies are not willing to interoperate. Imagine a situation where you can talk only to subscribers of your telephone company. This is happening in the IM space now. In conclusion, given a chance, most companies build barriers to prevent users from switching to competing products. All majors are competing to win favour with the new generation, and making them *zealots* to fight for their cause -- without understanding that they have been suckered into this. Personally, I don't care whether Microsoft or Novell or Yahoo! or Google survives. I just choose the best suited software, that provides me value for money. I think, in public domain use, our people should do the same. Thomas Footnote: If you have not already done do, please install Openoffice and experience it. Install Linux, preferably something like Ubuntu, an
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I am certainly viewing this from a social perspective. Why is Microsoft Office so expensive? Do they cut down the price? No. Instead, they offer promises that they do not intend to keep. Linux is as simple/complex as Windows. Now, the new distributions like Ubuntu are so easy to use, that it is difficult to put that factor in favour of Microsoft. Personally, I like BSD, and now use a Mac. The problem with Linux acceptance have always been the *zealots*, who drive away people with *real* usability complaints. Now, there are many distributions of Linux that make it very easy to use. Firefox and Safari has given me better user experience than Internet Explorer. Why does Microsoft expect me (and others using Firefox, Opera, Safari etc.) to switch back, when they were not considerate enough to create a popup blocker and tabbed browsing for many years? Openoffice has not been as user-friendly as Microsoft Office; but, once you get used to it, it does everything you need pretty well. Gaim and Adium have given me better experience than AOL's AIM. Yahoo! is so unfriendly to any OS other than Windows that they should put up a signboard -"Windows only". Now voice chat has been rendered fairly useless by Skype, that use VoIP services instead of the proprietary formats followed by Yahoo!, AIM, MSN etc. Google has created Google Talk that uses an open protocol, and allows interconnectivity with other servers. Has any of the other vendors responded? In general terms, I should be able to chat using my Google id to my sister with a Yahoo id and my firnd with an MSN id using a third party chat application like Adium or iChat or Gaim. But, even on technologies that have lost novelty, these companies are not willing to interoperate. Imagine a situation where you can talk only to subscribers of your telephone company. This is happening in the IM space now. In conclusion, given a chance, most companies build barriers to prevent users from switching to competing products. All majors are competing to win favour with the new generation, and making them *zealots* to fight for their cause -- without understanding that they have been suckered into this. Personally, I don't care whether Microsoft or Novell or Yahoo! or Google survives. I just choose the best suited software, that provides me value for money. I think, in public domain use, our people should do the same. Thomas Footnote: If you have not already done do, please install Openoffice and experience it. Install Linux, preferably something like Ubuntu, an
I too supprot open source .There are great products in open source arena. openvpn can very well compete with that of microsoft's or cisco's vpn.I dont find star office that much attractive.calc in open office appeared more complex ,but I am using openoffice now(ofcourse,the major problem was reading excel data through code).And also presence of companies like google is a relief. But we can't simply ignore the contributions from vendors like microsoft.Besides,that I always feel CP is the group of microsoft sympathisers.Yeah ,I know there are lot of opensource fans over here.Since we can dissassemble the .net BCL I don't think DotGNU is a that much big achievement.BSD projects are getting more popular in India too.Free BSD and open BSD are more popular nowadays(I haven't experienced,but I have friends who are crazy over daemonnews and BSDfreak). But despite being the outsourcing hub there are very few innovations happening from India.It's surprising that there is no Indian innovators in the web 2.0 arena/ So Indian market says like this. So will blindly opposing microsoft work in India ,since nobody is willing to come up with innovations. -- modified at 9:07 Thursday 31st August, 2006
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I too supprot open source .There are great products in open source arena. openvpn can very well compete with that of microsoft's or cisco's vpn.I dont find star office that much attractive.calc in open office appeared more complex ,but I am using openoffice now(ofcourse,the major problem was reading excel data through code).And also presence of companies like google is a relief. But we can't simply ignore the contributions from vendors like microsoft.Besides,that I always feel CP is the group of microsoft sympathisers.Yeah ,I know there are lot of opensource fans over here.Since we can dissassemble the .net BCL I don't think DotGNU is a that much big achievement.BSD projects are getting more popular in India too.Free BSD and open BSD are more popular nowadays(I haven't experienced,but I have friends who are crazy over daemonnews and BSDfreak). But despite being the outsourcing hub there are very few innovations happening from India.It's surprising that there is no Indian innovators in the web 2.0 arena/ So Indian market says like this. So will blindly opposing microsoft work in India ,since nobody is willing to come up with innovations. -- modified at 9:07 Thursday 31st August, 2006
I find Openoffice attractive (I think although it shares a significant codebase, it is slightly different in its presentation) because of the price of Microsoft products -- and despite being quite easy to do in a place like Trivandrum, I don't want to use any pirated products. If I had a spare Rs. 10 K lying around, I would buy Microsoft Office. :) Now, after using openoffice for 2 years, I am quite used to it, and does not bother about some features not being available, or implemented differently. Small Indian software companies have a serious disadvantage -- most of them are not familiar with the real market for software -- which is USA and Europe. Any product, that does not cater to the demands of that market, will not succeed. I am disappointed with the bigger companies because despite having no debt, and being cash surplus, they have shown no inclination to launch any serious products. They have also shown some "extreme whining" behaviour. Infosys management went to public saying that they made serious contributions to Indian economy and the government did not do their bit. Infosys has revenues of 1 billion dollars a year. If we assume that they have 30% profits (quite likely in this business), 300 million dollars is their profits. On a 30% corporate tax, they owed the government apprx. 100 million dollars, which was waived! Now, think about the amount of money that the government has contributed to Infosys vis-a-vis startup companies, say, in construction or telecom. . . . and they are still whining, instead of doing something about it. If the government does not have funds, some of the big names in Bangalore could put together a serious sum of money, and offer to build infrastructure themselves in a timely manner. What politician would not jump at the opportunity, if given a chance to claim publicly that he brokered this deal? I don't expect any serious products with current managements -- they are blinded by outsourcing profits, and does not want to take ANY risks. Very sad indeed! One of the fundamental aspects of building products is product management. On a day to day basis, someone should sit down, take a critical look at the product, and seek to improve it, to provide that something extra that will pull customers to it. When doing an outsourced project, this part is already done. Many software professionals underestimate this activity, and think that it is the technical team that builds the product. No.. the vision comes from product management (a marketing activity). They set the priorities, an
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I find Openoffice attractive (I think although it shares a significant codebase, it is slightly different in its presentation) because of the price of Microsoft products -- and despite being quite easy to do in a place like Trivandrum, I don't want to use any pirated products. If I had a spare Rs. 10 K lying around, I would buy Microsoft Office. :) Now, after using openoffice for 2 years, I am quite used to it, and does not bother about some features not being available, or implemented differently. Small Indian software companies have a serious disadvantage -- most of them are not familiar with the real market for software -- which is USA and Europe. Any product, that does not cater to the demands of that market, will not succeed. I am disappointed with the bigger companies because despite having no debt, and being cash surplus, they have shown no inclination to launch any serious products. They have also shown some "extreme whining" behaviour. Infosys management went to public saying that they made serious contributions to Indian economy and the government did not do their bit. Infosys has revenues of 1 billion dollars a year. If we assume that they have 30% profits (quite likely in this business), 300 million dollars is their profits. On a 30% corporate tax, they owed the government apprx. 100 million dollars, which was waived! Now, think about the amount of money that the government has contributed to Infosys vis-a-vis startup companies, say, in construction or telecom. . . . and they are still whining, instead of doing something about it. If the government does not have funds, some of the big names in Bangalore could put together a serious sum of money, and offer to build infrastructure themselves in a timely manner. What politician would not jump at the opportunity, if given a chance to claim publicly that he brokered this deal? I don't expect any serious products with current managements -- they are blinded by outsourcing profits, and does not want to take ANY risks. Very sad indeed! One of the fundamental aspects of building products is product management. On a day to day basis, someone should sit down, take a critical look at the product, and seek to improve it, to provide that something extra that will pull customers to it. When doing an outsourced project, this part is already done. Many software professionals underestimate this activity, and think that it is the technical team that builds the product. No.. the vision comes from product management (a marketing activity). They set the priorities, an
Most of the IT professionals in India would not have got IT education during their school days.Before 10 years computer was a luxuary in India.But today the scenario has changed .We are living in a period where a primary school boy clears all microsoft certifications. We would not easily forget the physics and chemistry that we have been taught in school.Like that computer education has become a part of school education. Microsoft and others realizes this and that's why they are spending these much to canvas the students into their technology. And regarding products,yes,India do have some companies playing in that field.Infosys has come up with it's popular Finnacle which is indeed a product for banking domain .Subex systems has come up with ther fraud management system.There are all small sized product makers like stellarinfo and simputers. But, infact it's foreign MNC's like google,microsoft and novell are tapping the Indian potential in research and developement.
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Most of the IT professionals in India would not have got IT education during their school days.Before 10 years computer was a luxuary in India.But today the scenario has changed .We are living in a period where a primary school boy clears all microsoft certifications. We would not easily forget the physics and chemistry that we have been taught in school.Like that computer education has become a part of school education. Microsoft and others realizes this and that's why they are spending these much to canvas the students into their technology. And regarding products,yes,India do have some companies playing in that field.Infosys has come up with it's popular Finnacle which is indeed a product for banking domain .Subex systems has come up with ther fraud management system.There are all small sized product makers like stellarinfo and simputers. But, infact it's foreign MNC's like google,microsoft and novell are tapping the Indian potential in research and developement.
When I say products, I mean products that are sold without customization say, like a Microsoft SQL Server. Finacle and Subex systems products are high priced and highly customized for individual demands (of course, from what I have heard. I have no means to verify those statements) Simputer was a "dead on arrival". It did not take too much to figure out that their Rs. 10000 would be beaten by regular PC manufactures very soon. The only way to reduce prices for electronic products is to increase customer base. If you get only 5% of the customer base by reducing 50% of the components, your product will cost more. Simputer was not an attractive proposition for most people. I have no idea about stellarinfo. The "Indian potential" just means getting the best people in the country to work for them. They do that because some of these people may not be inclined to re-locate. Otherwise, research groups are small enough to be planted anywhere in the world without significant cost changes. AFAIK, most companies were unwilling to bring their latest and greatest to India because of inadequate IP protection laws -- but, I think that situation is changing. I think that it is all the more important that children get exposed to open source software at a young age, based on your arguments. Big companies will spend big bucks to gain exposure anyway. By the way, I have not seen any primary school boy who "can" clear Microsoft certifications. Maybe, it is my neighbourhood! :) Of course, they IM, mail, browse etc. -- most of them just show no inclination to program.
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