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Subject: [bytesforall_readers] COMMENT: Free software... making its impact in Goa Date: Wednesday 04 June 2003 01:57 From: "Frederick Noronha (FN)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] FREE SOFTWARE... MAKING ITS IMPACT IN GOA By Frederick Noronha FOR SOMEONE who believes that IT can be a force-multiplier for a tiny place like Goa, things can indeed be frustrating. Slow adoption of IT by small businesses and the general populace, the inability of the professional and IT vendor to make his services and products relevant to the man in the street, and the zig-zagging official course on IT policies for Goa... these are only some of woes that Goa has to cope with. To make matters worse, Goa lives in the shadow of IT-savvy Karnataka and Andhra. Even late-starters Kerala have clearly overtaken us by now. Parrikar may have done excellent things to expand engineering education in the state, but IT projects seem to get low priority, bogged down in controversy and even the occasional allegation. But all is not bleak in this background. You may not believe it, but Free Software is enacting a quiet revolution in India's smallest state. Take a few facts: o A mailing list that sees an average or 2-3 messages a day has some 220+ members, following discussions on various 'threads' and engaging in one of the most ambitious -- if little noticed, and quite voluntary -- knowledge-sharing exercises of its kind in the state. o For newbies who don't need that level of detail (someone less charitable would term it email clutter), there's a teach-yourself-linux mailing list with over 30 readers tuned in. o Goa has three LUGs, or GNU/Linux Users Groups. Panjim's LUG, the first to start thanks to the efforts of veterans like Arvind Yadav and Prof Gurunandan Bhat, has anything between seven to 25 GNU/Linux fans meeting on the fourth Saturday of each month. Margao's is a smaller group, and meets on the second Saturday. Farmagudi's GEC group is meant for students and, as expected, is scheduled to their convenience. More groups are welcome. But it's not a matter of figures or frequency alone. Free Software (or, as some prefer to use the more business-friendly term, Open Source) changes the way you think. It makes so much available just for the asking. Even though, as the saying goes, 'when we talk of free software we refer to freedom, not price'. Yet, the logic of free software should not stop with software alone. It's about a different way of thinking. Control and ownership is not important. Sharing is. By giving others and receiving from the generosity of others, we all stand to gain. There's proof to show that this counter-intuitive way of thinking is actually working. Today, the GNU/Linux networks are among the most active networks among computer alliances in the state. In some three years of activity, this kind of knowledge sharing has already achieved things that would otherwise not be possible. Elsewhere, if you share software, you're compared to a violent thief who plundered ships at high sea, and are quickly labelled a 'pirate'. Here, copyleft policies turns this logic on its head. Ajay Cuncolienkar, a third year college student at Khandola, saw the potential of such a tool and set up a site http://sofall.vze.com In case you were wondering, the term 'Sofall' stands for Software For All. It works simply like this: anyone willing to share software (free software, naturally, which is copylefted) goes and enters his name on this database. Today, it's very easy to locate what resources are available in which part of the state, and how to copy this, in case one needs to. Check out the wide list availabls. Three other students who recently graduated from the PCC, Goa's second college of engineering, took their project work seriously. Instead of doing something just for the sake of it, they went about building a free software library package. Today the work of Sharmad Naik, Hiren Lodhiya, and Gaurav Priyolkar has been well recognised in India and beyond. In fact, Sharmad who is now on the staff at PCC, is working to polish this package with support from the Delhi-based supporter of free software www.sarai.net. Needless to say, it will be out there, for whoever wants to make good use of it. To ask a question like whether this could become a viable business model, simply misses the point. It overlooks the reality that people often do work for different kinds of rewards -- not just the financial -- and that some of the best software in the world has been produced for reasons other than money. It's ironical, that often the money comes too. Sometimes in greater measure than to those who don't believe in sharing. One may never be able to make obscene amounts of money from software that, by its very definition, can be copied, changed, replicated and shared. But then, a number of Goan youth are already using it effectively. While others moan about the dotcom bust, the software meltdown and the global recession, some of the bright young men (and hopefully women too) from the GNU/Linux network in Goa are busy honing their skills, and gaining from it. Bliston, popularly known to the group as B2 and one of the committed developers around, got quickly noticed and whisked off to Mumbai. He wrote back recently to say: "(I'm) enjoying myself... tinkering with GNU/Linux all day and night. Am currently working on the thin-client architecture. Cool work... great fun." Gaurav Priyolkar similarly moved on to South India, while Animesh Nerurkar went in for training to Mumbai is back at work in Goa. Is it any coincidence that the youngsters who's appetite gets whetted by the quest for knowledge of the software sort quickly get noticed and picked up for jobs that fall into their laps? Free software has been driven by volunteerism. This means that there are enough energies to tap when there's a request for knowledge to be shared. Engineer Bijon Shaha was ready at a short notice to talk at a college in Ponda. Software CDs are easy to come by. Word of new developments in the field get shared and replicated at short notice. Some ILUG-Goa members are supporting the Goa Sudharop initiative at giving schools access to once-used computers. But then, free software services are also available at a price, for the commercial world. It is only fair to expect those benefitting from it to contribute back to the free software 'community' in some way. Sharing makes this endeavour part of a wider network. In mid-March, Goa was to team up with nearby Belgaum for a free software programme there. CDs get shared with places like Bangalore and Pondicherry. A friend in Finland volunteers to download new software releases and send them across. John Fort from Cannonvale, Australia sent across two packages of free software books -- subsequently mostly passed on to the Goa Engineering College -- with a note that said 'share the knowledge'. Yes, it's true. We all have a lot to gain. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- The FarsiKDE Project www.farsikde.org _______________________________________________ bna-linuxiran mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bna-linuxiran
