On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 17:31:00 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@thenilgiris.com wrote:
On Monday 03 January 2005 04:57 pm, Vinayak Hegde wrote:
what has this got to do with involvement in FOSS? - i know for a fact that one indian contributor to XFCE did a major part of his work on diallup - i have done so on a much lesser scale on sloooow diallup. I was even involved in one project where contribution was by email.
Does this apply to all/most of the people who contribute all over the world to FOSS ??
yes - FOSS long preceeded broadband
Yeah but look at where most contribution for FOSS came from. UCB,Univ of Helsinki,MIT,Stanford ..etc. They came from universities or organisations where connectivity to the internet was good. Again when I am saying this, there will be exceptions but look where the concentration is. Besides there was no broadband back then :). Internet makes it possible for people to collaborate which is necessary if the software being written is good and useful to many people. This is what I was hinting at, in an earlier post. This is also why FOSS succeeds. It lets the developers listen to the users.
This has everything to do with the subject. Do you mean to say that more than a billion people in India with access to computers and are developers as well not contributing to FOSS ??
this does not deserve a comment
(as you don't have an answer :()
In a country where drinking water and food are still major issues, contributing to free software is least of the troubles.
have you considered the faint possibility (ridiculous as it may sound) that conributing to free software could help in some small way to solve these major issues?
Not unless you can grow food on computers and write programs to make driniking water come out of floppy drives :). Feel free to supplement my stunted imagination. But seriously, FOSS can help the common man like getting land records (done in Karnataka) / getting price of crop in the market etc. But I doubt it can solve basic problems like food and water. But then I can be wrong.
You need to get the facts right (reread my post above and ask the question again).
ive got my facts right
but the source wrong ?? I still maintain that the figures are wrong though I agree that FOSS can do with a lot more developers. But there are definitely more than 150-200 developers that you are quoting.
Contribute and spread the word and let people do the rest. Don't take the arguments personally. There are not directed at anyone. I am just trying to arrive at a consensus in the collaborative spirit.