[ILUG-BOM] Linux India Initiative

[Nikhil Joshi]

On Wed, 25 Dec 2002, Nagarjuna G. wrote:

> Ministry of Information Technology organized a meeting, called `Linux
> India Initiative' where more than 40 people from various depts of govt
> IITs, NCST, BARC, CDAC, NIC, main companies like IBM, redhat, netcore,
> exocore etc., and also from the state govts (secreatary level
> representatives.)  It was rather surprising that there is so much of
> awareness in the Govt circles. This meeting tookplace in Delhi in the
> Electronics Niketan close to the Nehru Stadium on Lodhi Road.
<snip> 

ah,
finally "bureaucratization" of Linux too.
Welcome to India.
guys pls dont get offended but come on lets have a pragmatic view of the 
situation.
While boardroom discussions are great have we given a thought to:

1. The local cyber-cafe wallah (who probably took a loan) and is more
   concerned in making money than learning a new OS

2. The DTP shop-wallah who has Photoshop,CorelDraw,I-leap,Pagemaker.... at his 
   disposal, who is more concerned in getting the job done rather than fiddling 
   with GIMP,postscript ...

3. The Photo-studio guy who just bought an 15,000 worth printer with the
   driver CD's

4. The engg. (CS) student who took a paid seat, invested more than 2 lakhs and
   (maybe rightfully) is aspiring to make big bucks by writing software 
   for Microsoft.

I can go on and on ....
Come on who are we kidding?
Do these ppl really care (and why should they?) if theres Linux or 
GNU/Linux or whatever and what is the right (read purists) way of saying 
it?

The shopowners and home users already use free (read pirated) software.
There are raids on the shops for storing pirated movies/porno movies.
Never heard of a raid for using illegal software.
Just take a walk outside VT station 
You'll get a Win XP cd for 100 bucks flat. (In fact one of my friends who 
is a real good bargainer got it for 80 bucks ;)
Kinda cheap for a Microsoft OS right ?

These discussions IMHO are just intellectual exercises and nothing more.
People who know/are interested in Linux are already using it.
While the step is very welcome it would be really good to see the lowest 
denominator using Linux apart from scientists,sarkari babus,geeks ...


Nikhil