Re: [ILUG-BOM] Request support : Gujarat governments possible move to have FOSS in schools state-wide
This is the big mistake that people not familiar with IT (and FOSS ) make. It's not the price, it's the Freedom. One should stress that IT is crucially dependent on the software to achieve it's magic.
We completely agree. Governments look at cost in a big way and we have been try ing to get across the point that freedom matters and what advantages freedom br ings. However, while we do not stress on the cost angle, we cannot ignore it either. For eg.when governments can use Open Office and save lakhs of rupees on license fee for MS office, they should be going for Open Office and should not spend p ublic money on proprietary software.
ANY lug group will be very supportive.
Thanks!
Vinay Sreenivasa IT for Change 91-98805-95032 [1]vinay@itforchange.net
[2]http://itforchange.net [3]http://india.is-watch.net/ [4]http://is-watch.net
References
1. mailto:vinay@itforchange.net 2. http://itforchange.net/ 3. http://india.is-watch.net/ 4. http://is-watch.net/
On Wednesday 21 Jan 2009, vinay sreenivasa wrote:
[snip] We completely agree. Governments look at cost in a big way and we have been try ing to get across the point that freedom matters and what advantages freedom br ings. However, while we do not stress on the cost angle, we cannot ignore it either. For eg.when governments can use Open Office and save lakhs of rupees on license fee for MS office, they should be going for Open Office and should not spend p ublic money on proprietary software.
Unfortunately that argument falls through if MS gives their products away for free (as they're doing increasingly more often). If I push FOSS because it is cheaper/faster/better then I don't have any retort when MS starts giving away better, even faster software for free.
I'd try to focus on the inherent advantages of FOSS: not tied to any company, easily extensible, easy to localise, easy to customise for specific environments (there's no separate LinuxME :) , etc. And when all else fails throw up the ``foreign hand'' bogey and spread FUD about the NSAKEY and similar backdoors put into Winduhs by a foreign government and how they'll be able to track our every confidential communication if we use Winduhs :)
FUD rocks!
Regards,
-- Raju
On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 7:41 PM, vinay sreenivasa vinay@itforchange.netwrote:
This is the big mistake that people not familiar with IT (and FOSS ) make. It's not the price, it's the Freedom. One should stress that IT is crucially dependent on the software to achieve it's magic.
We completely agree. Governments look at cost in a big way and we have been try ing to get across the point that freedom matters and what advantages freedom br ings. However, while we do not stress on the cost angle, we cannot ignore it either. For eg.when governments can use Open Office and save lakhs of rupees on license fee for MS office, they should be going for Open Office and should not spend p ublic money on proprietary software.
Your notion of free as in free beer is skewed, Projects at this scale would
have Sun and so many vendors salvating for a Pie.
vinay sreenivasa wrote:
This is the big mistake that people not familiar with IT (and FOSS ) make. It's not the price, it's the Freedom. One should stress that IT is crucially dependent on the software to achieve it's magic.
We completely agree. Governments look at cost in a big way and we have been try ing to get across the point that freedom matters and what advantages freedom br ings. However, while we do not stress on the cost angle, we cannot ignore it either. For eg.when governments can use Open Office and save lakhs of rupees on license fee for MS office, they should be going for Open Office and should not spend p ublic money on proprietary software.
Talking about freedom to newbies should always be accompanied with practical examples, case studies or experiences or else people generally don't understand what is software freedom.
vinay sreenivasa wrote:
This is the big mistake that people not familiar with IT (and FOSS ) make. It's not the price, it's the Freedom. One should stress that IT is crucially dependent on the software to achieve it's magic.
We completely agree. Governments look at cost in a big way and we have been try ing to get across the point that freedom matters and what advantages freedom br ings. However, while we do not stress on the cost angle, we cannot ignore it either. For eg.when governments can use Open Office and save lakhs of rupees on license fee for MS office, they should be going for Open Office and should not spend p ublic money on proprietary software.
ANY lug group will be very supportive.
Even if Open Office or other FOSS packages are free as in beer, please take into account the cost of installation, training and annual support for thousands of PCs in located diverse areas.
Reply in-line :-
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 17:54, Rony gnulinuxist@gmail.com wrote:
vinay sreenivasa wrote:
<snip>
However, while we do not stress on the cost angle, we cannot ignore it either. For eg.when governments can use Open Office and save lakhs of rupees on license fee for MS office, they should be going for Open Office and should not spend p ublic money on proprietary software.
<snip>
Even if Open Office or other FOSS packages are free as in beer, please take into account the cost of installation, training and annual support for thousands of PCs in located diverse areas.
Hi all, I support Rony's views. There are few challenges for a good implementation specifically with the scale that Vinay you are looking at.
Any implementation is bound to have X.org, Openoffice.org, GNOME at the very basic level (apart from one or few educational softwares)
Alongwith the above also have to make a choice of distribution to help maintain.
apart from system-admin issues of working with diverse range of hardware and networking infrastructure you would also have to have developers and techies report, patch and help maintain some packages at least at the distribution level.
While some of it could be outsourced, but some resources would need to be in-house.
One of the other issues which I see outright is documentation. Unlike other software development ideologies which give a change once 4-5 years the changes are fast and furious,
Examples galore from the shift to pulseaudio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulseaudio to something simplest such as the change to the recent change of gnome-volume-control or gnome-media. http://live.gnome.org/media-applet
The change may be for the better to worse but knowing, understanding and communicating to your users would also be interesting.
It is all fascinating and interesting but yes, one would have to invest in these kind of resources.
-- Regards,
Rony.
GNU/Linux ! No Viruses No Spyware Only Freedom.
On Wednesday 21 January 2009 19:41, vinay sreenivasa wrote:
This is the big mistake that people not familiar with IT (and FOSS ) make. It's not the price, it's the Freedom. One should stress that IT is crucially dependent on the software to achieve it's magic.
We completely agree. Governments look at cost in a big way and we have been try ing to get across the point that freedom matters and what advantages freedom br ings. However, while we do not stress on the cost angle, we cannot ignore it either. For eg.when governments can use Open Office and save lakhs of rupees on license fee for MS office, they should be going for Open Office and should not spend p ublic money on proprietary software.
I am talking of strategy and you are talking of brownie points. Cost is a brownie point - mine is cheaper by ten paise. Strategy is making the ground rules. With cost you are playing on M$ strength. They could subsidise until your grandchildren are dead. With Features again the same - they can add stupid trash features and your grandchildren will be playing catch up. Stability - got their balls Security - they are screaming in pain Freedom - they are dead DEAD DEAAAAD.
I might have a very interesting piece to put up in a few days on this.
So you got to talk freedom and link how THIS is the key to everything else. If YOU dont have the key you are a puppet on all counts. Freedom ensures that whatever you have now will be worth a million times more and create 10 million times more in the future. That is why we educate ourselves for 20+ yrs - to create a better future AND be in control of that future. Quite different from recieving trash hand me downs (search for the PL480 food program), whose subsidy is recovered by mining and trade rights.
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jtd -
Raj Mathur -
Rony -
satyaakam goswami -
shirish -
vinay sreenivasa