Fwd: [ATPS] Re: Fwd: [Fsf-friends] BSNL should find a place in "Hall of Shame"

Mahesh T. Pai paivakil@[EMAIL-PROTECTED]
Fri Mar 9 21:27:54 IST 2007


(slightly off topic for the  _thread_ but today, the Kerala budget has
allocated  50 lakh  rupees for  setting  up a  Free Software  Resource
Center please  see first few  lines of  page 32 (p.  42 of the  pdf of
http://kerala.gov.in/budget2007_08/bud_sp_mal.pdf  -   looks  like  an
English version will be available shortly).

cvr3 at river-valley.org said on Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 10:09:24AM -0000,:

 > softwares. The today's decision makers  are all products of our own
 > Universities, and had our Universities inculcated some semblance of
 > social values in the minds of the people they have created, this

This is a chicken-and-egg situation, and can be solved only with
patience. 
 
 > are required. and  we (the GNU enthusiasts) never  take any pain to
 > develop these  and instead  we wait for  the American  free sotware
 > people to write something to  automate their offices in GPL. And as
 > soon as we  come across these pieces our GNU  people pounce on them
 > to take other people to task, leading to them to the Hall of Shame.

(snip)

 > released   robust   White   House   GPLed   software   for   office
 > automation. And  if they  defy we  will tell them  that we  have no
 > other alternative than to send you all to the Hall of Shame.

(snip)
 
 > Government are M$  based, and we have no  other alternative than to
 > work  overtime to develop  customised secured  software for  use in
 > Government as replacements to  the former. Unless you motivate Free
 > software people to

Will the government throw the kind of resources it is throwing at
proprietary software at the volunteers?

I remember the experience of the IndLinux people, who approached the
(central) govt. for assistance in the localisation efforts. They were
told that funds will be available, as long as the project `employs'
people specified by the babudom.
 
 > develop  GNU/Linux  based  softwares  for use  in  Government,  the
 > Government will keep going as it  is and you keep sending people to
 > the Hall of Shame.

+1 to that.

 > I am single handedly managing nearly sixty GNU/Linux systems in and
 > around Trivandrum in various Government offices. The result is that
 > I  am virtually  swamped by  telephone  calls for  support. Lot  of
 > people are around me and when  I ask them to spare their little bit
 > of  time for  the cause  of Free  Software they  are full  of GPLed
 > logics to find out excuses.

Once again,  why cannot the government approach  an organisation which
provides paid support for this kind of things?

If  the government  cannot find  organisations capable  of  doing, the
government  can  certainly spend  the  money  to  build the  necessary
capacity.

The government certainly  can afford that - it  is spending 473 crores
on     IT    enabled    services     and    the     Akshaya    project
(http://www.akshaya.net). That is what the budget speech says.

 > Please tell me  if any free time is available with  you so that you
 > too can share with me the  work (or pleasure) I am doing right now.
 > The kind of  support calls are to copy files  to USB memory sticks,
 > to play  some videos,  to install drivers  for new printers  in old
 > Linux boxes which won't support  the new ones because of low memory
 > limitations etc.   Some time the works  takes lots of  time and you
 > may need to do all kinds of works starting source code compilation,
 > searching the web for sources  for new drivers or sometimes you may
 > have to play  with the drivers sources too.  Come forward and share
 > the pain and pleasure  of development, installation and maintenance
 > of Linux systems and spirit.

The government has (ought to have) a bunch of people in charge of
doing the sysadmin work. (my information comes from
http://linuxgazette.net/issue77/sunil.html

It should not be very difficult to form a team which does this.

Alternatively, IMHO, we  should get the government to  hire people who
know this  kind fo stuff. Surely, this  would be a way  of helping the
Free Software community than forming  a bunch of volunteers who do the
foot work while a group of paid workers sit idle ``eating'' the money?

With your influence  in the government (the govt is  not going to give
60  servers to somebody  it does  not know  well), you  can get  it to
channelise the 473 crores it proposes to spend on creating the akshaya
bondage into free software? 

 > Do we have an Office Automation software customised for our office
 > culture?

Will mydms help? (http://dms.markuswestphal.de) 
   
 > Do we have an Accounting Software for use in our Government
 > offices?

Government accounts are single entry; no ledgers. Just cash books. All
transactions  are  only  on  ``receipts''  basis only.   What  is  the
difficulty here? A simple spread shit (OO.o, gnumeric, etc. will do).
 
 > Do we have an inventory package?
 > Do we have a project management for use in Government?

egroupware has the necessary infrastructure for this. Should not be
too difficult to customise them.

 > Do we have a home grown software to manage to Educational
 > Institutions? 

1. Please see http://www.schooltool.org/
2. Why should it have to be ``homegrown''?
3. Why discuss educational institutions while discussing government?
   Surely, you have a reason?

-- 
 Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.blogspot.com/
Netiquette Guidelines ==>> http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1855



More information about the Fsf-friends mailing list