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

[Kush]

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
> I would like to hear more about your
> comprehension of 'agendas set by others' - the true nature of Free
> Software development is working together in a collaborative community
> where your work gets shared and used and modified by the greatest
> possible number under appropriate licensing regime. That phrase you used
> appears oxymoronic to me - could you explain ?
>
>   
I would not like to contest the oxymoronic nature of the phrase "agendas 
set by others" --you are right about this observation. This is loose 
talk, in a way. In the end, all work is influenced by somebody else.
> The very fact that there is work going on in L10n/i18n including
> developing and releasing fonts and other toolkits does mean that the
> developers are keenly aware of what it takes to get a working desktop to
> the average user. When you mention 'economics and problems' what exactly
> do you refer to ?
>   
I was referring to cost to benefit ratio of going the IT way FOR most of 
the INDIAN population as a panacea to all ills. An assumption is made 
that localised IT tools will help India improve much more than now but 
the assumption also must consider that far greater things have to happen 
in the environment side by side for this to succeed. some examples are
1 people have to learn to read and write (for those in the community who 
are illiterate unless we are thinking of only targeting those who can 
read and write CLEARLY at present)
2 there have to be common and standardised applications to increase the 
familarity and usage of IT products as a way of life--graded learning 
processes/stages have to be thought about.
3 people have to be shown success stories on how IT products changed 
their lifestyles and this has to be made part of the neighbourhood talk 
scene
4 electricity has to become regular or workarounds found such as cheaper 
laptops,ups,batteries, solar chargers etc in the neglected geographical 
areas
5 sometimes bread and butter issues are far more important than IT products.
6 IT will work on a mass scale only when our governance/politics is 
re-engineered. Otherwise the benefits will be for a few people only. The 
rest will continue to struggle.
7 in some cases better and cheaper options exist for networking (such as 
cultural practices, ways and means etc) and in others IT is far ahead. 
People cannot jump on the IT bandwagon blindly without analysing pros 
and cons.
8 cheaper technological innovations such as wireless networking, 
community wireless etc have to be jump started by increasing number of 
tech savvy entrepreneurs to increase the competition and thus fuel 
greater adoption of IT

My thoughts are getting jumbled up at this stage. Maybe I need to take a 
break.
>   
>> 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).
>>     
>
> True.
>
>   
>> We need more forums like epinions.com linuxquestions.org and reduction
>> in the amount of duplicate knowledge available from so many sources.
>>     
>
> If you look closely, the quantum of documentation being added to TLDP
> nowadays is measly. This is a bit frightening in the context of the
> number of new projects coming up on sf.net, berlios.de and sarovar.
> Surely we are moving towards a situation where knowledge (or working
> knowledge) of applications and perhaps architectures are limited to a
> chosen elite.
>
>   
yes and this could be an area (documentation building) which may bring 
more people into the open source/free software fold in India
>> 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.
>>     
>
> Ohh...then I would ask you to hone your search skills :).
> http://dmoz.org/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information_Science/Software/
> throws up a lot of links and if you go to http://www.koha.org/, you
> might just end up at www.l2c2.org who are doing some good deployment of
> Koha based solutions (in fact doing work upstream)
>   
Thanks for the info. It will certainly help.
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> Aren't you putting in too many thoughts into one paragraph - I am a bit
> puzzled as to where this is going. The work of getting works released
> under the umbrella of entities like PLoS, BOAI is being taken up albeit
> in small doses since moving the mammoth that is called the establishment
> takes time.
>
>   
Yes there are too many thoughts.
>> 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.
>>     
>
> Have you looked at the intentions of NEGAP ?
>
>   
No, but will have a look.

Thanks
Kush

> :Sankarshan
>
> - --
>
>