[Fsf-friends] fsf must rate and talk about application softwares too

[Kush]

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
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> Kush wrote:
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>   
>> I don't know any place where such information can be easily read and
>> found. and these are the things which really matter for laymen to come
>> to speed in the adoption of open source software in India.
>> Sourceforge.net earlier used to  give a maturity rating (development
>> status) for an application but it does not do so now. Even earlier the
>> application software results could never be ordered by the development
>> status (except for paid customers of sourceforge) It would be great if
>> fsfindia or somebody could enhance the work of sourceforge by having
>> some ratings and categorisation of key application development
>> tools/catalysts.
>>     
>
> Umm...tools are normally used by 'users' and 'developers'. They
> constitute part of FSF (and various other FLOSS organisations/forums).
> Why would you think that it should exclusively be the FSF that gets into
> a rating system. I would like to know more since it appears that you
> have more ideas at the back of your head and would like to put on paper
> (the mail appeared to me like testing the waters).
>
> Most application/service level softwares require testing in a mock setup
> - - so do you suggest that the FSF open up a software testing lab of some
> scale ?
>
> :Sankarshan
>
>
>   
I can't say whether FSF should or should not rate the application 
development softwares or application softwares (i have no idea of the 
swot of fsfindia or knowledge beyond its mission statement) but somebody 
will have to do this job as it is very important to increase the spread 
of knowhow on whats good and whats available in open source. Open source 
software adoption can't really take off without proper knowledge in 
India and it seems that we at fsfindia are either developers or geeks or 
following agendas set by others outside India and our main focus is only 
on a few  areas such as localisation of fonts, scripts etc without 
understanding the economics and the problems of an average user we are 
now targeting.

We need to think of IT as an enabling tool but which is constrained by a 
few things in India's interior (the first is lack of reliable 
electricity, the 2nd is cost of the hardware/software and the most 
important is the knowledge and training on using the software with a 
lowered cost to benefit ratio).

We need more forums like epinions.com linuxquestions.org and reduction 
in the amount of duplicate knowledge available from so many sources.

I for one, only came to know about other possible solutions for enabling 
libraries thru Frederick Noronha mentioning koha first and then in a 
subsequent mail open source softwares such as emilda.org, phpmylibrary, 
olibrary, elibrary etc.

We sorely lack access to good libraries (and good books) as a  critical 
part of our  infrastructure to propel our HUGE population into the 
knowledge age  --the west has a huge collection of public and private 
libraries and other ways of interacting and gathering 
knowledge(community and recreation centres) but in India, public 
libraries are totally in the hands of unaccountable govt agencies and 
not under public minded private trusts etc, relatively speaking. Nobody 
compares/considers the impact of declining access to libraries on our 
ability to become a developed nation  --eg in the planning commission's 
budgeting process papers etc. Our intelligentsia looks upto the american 
consulate library or british council libraries for the latest and the 
best information and therefore we see good things happenning only in the 
west and merely copy them - -here i am talking about the general 
populations' access to libraries and not those who are in good private 
companies or renowned institutions like the IITs, IIMs, etc.

Even access to patent databases is easier via the internet to sources 
outside India.

I was looking at the prime minister's office in Iceland's website and 
they said(in a pdf file) that ICELANd is at the forefront of technology 
adoption in the developed world, relatively speaking. What is most 
interesting is that tiny country has made use of some form of groupware 
application which is used *thruout *its govt machinery to give a uniform 
interface and this sort of thing is needed for duplication here in India 
to reduce size of organisations and make them competitive. But we do not 
build on other's mistakes/lessons to form a paperless office -- our 
vendors still hype about applications like openoffice (which is 
propreitary to sun/java )whereas we now need things like egroupware or 
jboss enabled open source document management systems which allow 
collaboration and monitoring so that our private enterprises can more 
easily network with each other. I don't think egovernance is possible in 
India at present given the lack of political will to re-engineer a 
bloated mega monster but surely our budding small businesses and small 
organisations/entrepreneurs can create a super world shattering effect 
if they could properly network and work as rapidly changing teams thru 
open source tools.

We need a site to counter the effects of sites like techsoup.org etc 
made by microsoft and others to push their technology

Kush