Personal Computer World is reporting that the Indian government is making efforts to allow and even encourage the use of Linux in govenrment projects.
Personal Computer World is reporting that the Indian government is making efforts to allow and even encourage the use of Linux in govenrment projects.
Everytime some company, government, or somebody’s grandma decides to use Linux, it makes headlines. Why do we care?
This is actually big news, because as the world’s biggest democracy, this has bound to change the percentage by a little, at least. Besides, this is the government’s biggest move (or rather only major move) towards Linux.
‘cause they stop using MS and since the world consists of companies, governments, or somebody’s ‘grandma’ the more these entities decide to change the better.
Because a pathetic megalomaniac scumbag from the NW US starts down the path to obscurity as a result. (and begins to become poorer in the process)
i thought MS was bribing the Indian Govn. with money, software, etc…???
If “OS News” does not report about some company, government, or somebody’s grandma possible changing their “OS”, what exactly should they post stories on?
frankly I don’t see enough Grandma stories switching to Linux. More please.
😉
I say go for it. We’ve already seen stories so far that other nations are backing off of Microsoft. Looks like Linux will make inroads in government by this year.
Didn’t you hear that grandma got run over by a reindeer last month?
No more grandma stories
<Why do we care?>
Who is WE ?
It may not be a big deal if you are not directly involved in the implementation/maintenance of your company network. If more and more company making the switch to Linux, more experience can be gained and passed on to those who are interested.
can any Indian taxpayer who is paying the government’s tab get access to the source code of any project that uses GPL’d source?
will Indian government workers be free to release source without repercussions? Will they be able to see the source code of software they are using – I’m sure they would want to see any modifications to code that the government has made?
Open source is great for governments because it is easier to add surveillance code to it…the GPL is supposed to prevent that by forcing users to have access to the code. Will India comply?
etc. etc. etc.
This is good PR for open source but I wonder how free open source software will be when used by governments. Governments like things cheap, secure and tightly controlled. The article indicates that choice of open source is for the practical reasons (cheap and secure) and not the philosophic.
Expect the far East and sub-continent to be pillars of Linux and other open source software but expect results to be treated as proprietary. The writing is already starting to appear even here in the West where some writer was explaining away how to avoid GPL restrictions when using GPL software in derivative works…sheesh!
all your desktop are belong to us
… a hostile takeover of microsoft by India, and then have at least
have a good OS from M$
In fact, any company or gov in the world would make big save by buying M$ and use it for free from within inside of the consortium/alliance. I wonder why this have not happen yet, probably stupid regulation that allow M$ to do it but nobody to do it to M$ because the give money to rich texan.
If more and more company making the switch to Linux, more experience can be gained and passed on to those who are interested.
Yes, I understand that. But my point is, what is the story doing HERE? Yeah, I know it’s OS-related, but I doubt seriously if some company/government going from (anything) to Windows would make headlines, so why does this? Sounds like someone is playing favorites here.
“Yes, I understand that. But my point is, what is the story doing HERE? Yeah, I know it’s OS-related, but I doubt seriously if some company/government going from (anything) to Windows would make headlines, so why does this? Sounds like someone is playing favorites here.”
As a fan of HP Basic, Sheperdson Basic, and all the other BASIC interpreters that were around in the late 1970’s, I find it a bit odd that anyone would complain about somebody playing “favorites” against Microsoft.
But then, *somebody* has to speak for them.
The fact is, nobody talks about people switching from XXX to Windows because it happens all the time, every day, to people who don’t necessarily *want* to switch to Windows.
I’d just love to see the reaction if OS News started reporting every time THAT happened:
“We just received word that Joe Blow was forced to start using Windows, and to give up his Mac/OSX/Unix/whatever box in favor of the Redmond, Washington product known as Microsoft Windows.
“‘I guess the “windows” on my existing computer weren’t good enough. We had to buy Microsoft’s windows.’
“Microsoft immediately issued a comment protesting Joe Blow’s misuse of a Microsoft trademark.
“Next week, we’ll feature an interview with Bill Gates, on the subject: Why should you lease your Windows(R) Operating System?”
Wouldn’t ZDNet be a better place to look if you want Microsoft advancement news? I mean, my boss got all bent out of shape when I wasn’t going to ZDNet, instead of those linux-loving web sites I was using to get news…..we can’t have none o’ them OS-agnostic people ’round here—you either is, or you ain’t. If you ain’t, then git.
Hey…..I remmeber the days when people were being stuffy about my support of Microsoft instead of IBM. I was getting a tad bit tired of using COBOL for everything and anything, but gee wiz—what would I want to use something line Visual Basic for, in an enterprise setting?
In short, Microsoft no longer needs to prove itself to many managers. Alternative approaches to Microsoft do need to prove themselves. That’s news. Status-quo is not news.
This is good PR for open source but I wonder how free open source software will be when used by governments. Governments like things cheap, secure and tightly controlled. The article indicates that choice of open source is for the practical reasons (cheap and secure) and not the philosophic.
First, yes, to a large extent the choices must be based on economic considerations. The cheaper the better and nothing’s cheaper than free. It’s not a rich country and money saved on software can be used for things (which are often more necessary). Yes, it’s just a computer and this is just software we’re talking about.
Then, when it comes to tightly controlled, I am not so sure. Primarily, I don’t think it will really result in anything more than l18n of software (on the part of the govt. or mass scale “deploying body”), and there are no reasons (security or otherwise) to “hide” the changes.
The source will be open and free.
Wouldn’t ZDNet be a better place to look if you want Microsoft advancement news? I mean, my boss got all bent out of shape when I wasn’t going to ZDNet, instead of those linux-loving web sites I was using to get news…..
Actually, I’ve enjoyed reading this site because it prided itself as being OS-independent. However, it seems as though it is starting to shift in a pro-Linux direction. I guess that’s not an entirely bad thing, considering most of the people who read (or at least post) are running some flavor of *nix. It just gets old seeing all of the “Linux .. the desktop of the future” articles.
I agree stories of people/companies switching to Linux are a dime a dozen but if the world’s largest Democracy switching to Linux doesn’t warrant a news story, what does?
Your complaint seems to be that OSnews is not entirely US-centric. Would anyone question the importance of a front page news story stating that the US government has decided to migrate ALL government servers and desktops to Linux (or any other non-MS OS)? I doubt it.
Pro-Linux or not, this is news, and any choice the Indian government had made in this matter easily deserves a news story.
Given the no. of languages that are spoken in INdia it will be really big achievement if they complete a proper translation for all the languages….
There is one good reason for goverments to switch to open source software. This has nothing to do with open source beeing cheaper. This doesn’t mather.
The main reason is Being the Boss over youre own Bytes. Why would you trust youre computer-data to a company in a foreign country. This is imo the only reason for any goverment to use open source software.
Actually, they gave software *donations*, and is given for certain parts of the government, not as a whole. Bribing? I would only consider something as bribing if Microsoft gave *money* in secret to do something illegal… which anyway is pretty rampant in India..
I believe Malaysia too is moving towards and adopting Linux. Year 2002 there was the big launch of PC Suria.. a PC on Linux. Good news for Linux community in Malaysia.
praveen: Given the no. of languages that are spoken in INdia it will be really big achievement if they complete a proper translation for all the languages….
I doubt they would support all the languages, just the main ones used in the government, including Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi.
Banzai: I believe Malaysia too is moving towards and adopting Linux. Year 2002 there was the big launch of PC Suria.. a PC on Linux. Good news for Linux community in Malaysia.
There is no Suria Linux machines in Malaysia. Suria is a trademark by MIMOS, and used for a computer model using Windows XP. I think you mean KosNas twenty20, which isn’t a pheonomenal success in its target market – the consumer market.
That would be called Nationalisation if done by the US gov which is probably the only gov that could even afford such a stupid mistake. That kind of policy is long discredited and brought most of the govs that practiced it to their economic knees. Even if it were done, the resulting gov owned entity would be ultimately fail as most gov industries do.
On the other hand, even 1% of MS cap value if used wisely to sponsor OS development could totally change the picture. Imagine many of the better Windows type programs could be brought to Linux (and Open BeOS) for pennies on the $ compared to what MS & co needs to do the same. I am not suggesting that this is the right way though, but if the stock market had been kinder to me, I probably would have sponsored some of my fav efforts for BeOS/Linux.
>>>In fact, any company or gov in the world would make big save by buying M$ and use it for free from within inside of the consortium/alliance.
Considering that almost 99% of the world’s public employees have pretty much a guaranteed job for life — i.e. can’t fire civil servants even if they are grossly imcompetent.
For a government to increase their payroll to house linux hackers is the WORST financial decision for them — because once you get into the civil service, be they the post worker, or street cleaner, they can’t fire you.
>>>>On the other hand, even 1% of MS cap value if used wisely to sponsor OS development could totally change the picture.
Considering the MS market cap is about 250 billion dollars, 1% of that is 2.5 billion. IBM already spent $1 billion. The market cap for RedHat is $1 billion. So basically your theory doesn’t really work.
>>>>Imagine many of the better Windows type programs could be brought to Linux (and Open BeOS) for pennies on the $ compared to what MS & co needs to do the same.
Netscape probably spent much more $$$ on its opensource browser development than Microsoft. Yet, netscape came out with a vastly inferior product that was years behind schedule.
It’s been proven to death that Linux does have a lower TCO. Not to mention that you don’t need a army of half-assed clueless MSCE’s to manage it all and protect it from virii, hackers, etc….
P.S. Of course if you read the M$ sponsered and paid for TCO reports then I would understand where you are coming from.
They tried money, source code and free apps but in the end the Indian government looked at the future costs of Linux and the costs of MS software and said “Hell no !” to MS. Not to mention the fact that MS insulted them by suggesting that all they needed for their universities and college graduates to compete in the high tech world market was to learn a little Office and Excel. I said it before I’ll say it again. India wants to compete ! They don’t want to be treated like a bunch of poor retards or as only consumer of software goods. This is what MS did not understand and why they failed in India and most likely fail in other parts of the world besides the U.S.
So there were 2 factors in this whole thing.
1.) Like the U.S. India wants to promote Indian software companies but it does not want to make the mistake the U.S. made when it allowed MS to become this huge monster that it is now. They want to foster competition because they know that competition always breeds innovation and helps to keep costs down. This is why they choose Linux instead of MS. With Linux anyone can jump in and become a contender. If you need an example then imagine if Nvidia and Intel were the only ones you could buy CPUs and video cards from. I guarantee they you would be paying $1500 bucks for a CPU and $600 bucks for a video card. Thank god for AMD and ATI !!!!
2.) They want to compete !! You can’t compete in the high tech world as a nation if you rely on using and buying all your core OS from another nation. Especially if that OS company that the software runs on was caught putting in NSA keys into said OS!!
I am also pretty sure that they might be more then just 2 factors determining this decision but l think those two above are the biggest.
Rajan wrote: “There is no Suria Linux machines in Malaysia. Suria is a trademark by MIMOS, and used for a computer model using Windows XP. I think you mean KosNas twenty20, which isn’t a pheonomenal success in its target market – the consumer market.”
My mistake… you are right.. its KosNas PC2020..
It is my impression that by KosNas going into Linux PCs, shows adoption for Linux as desktops is starting in Malaysia. How much influence it will have on swaying MS Windows users in the future is yet to be seen. Rumours has it that university(ies) in Malaysia too will move towards adopting Linux. (not sure how true that is)
8^)