On Sun, 28 Aug 2005 Charles-H.Schulz wrote : [...] >They do however contribute strongly to create awareness and "buzz" >which is very important for Free Software. If it was so worthless, >how come the people handing out the CDs in Chennai witnessed a riot >from people who were eager to get them?
Hadn't heard about that, but, well, maybe it was the thought of getting something free of cost. About the only worthwhile things on the Hindi CD (I cannot evaluate the Tamil one, as I do not speak Tamil), were localized OpenOffice and Mozilla. [...] >Thanks for your point, Gora. What you're saying basically is that >these CDs end up harming more the cause of Free Software than >serving it because of quality problems (esp. concerning the fonts)? >Raman, Rajesh, what is your answer to that? No, my main point was that the poor quality reflects on the lackadaisical approach of TDIL, CDAC, and Government of India organizations. By no stretch of the imagination was this a free (in the sense of libre) CD, nor was it promoted as such. No licensing terms were described, and, in fact they are probably in violation of the Mozilla licence for a failure to contribute back their localization work. Many free/open source people have undoubtedly made significant contributions to the OpenOffice and the Mozilla stuff on the CD, and I do not wish to denigrate their work. However, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that these releases make no significant impact on native-language or open-source computing in India. Regards, Gora
