On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 RKVS Raman wrote : [...] >People like Gora Mohanty have set such a high standards for themselves >that anything done at a lesser magnitude fails to please them.
I don't think that I have ever claimed to have yet done something extraordinary in the field of localization, either as an individual, or as part of a group. Likewise, I welcome all criticism of IndLinux software, e.g., the beta CD available now, or the polished one to be released later. What I get fed up with is claims of great accomplishments without supporting facts. I also absolutely do stand by the view that at least in India, community- based efforts will continue to outstrip government-funded ones, notwithstanding the enormous gap in the availability of resources. >Anyway what was done was not something small. These launches have >contributed a lot in way of creating some major policy changes. For >first time people in India have looked at Non-English computing as a >possiblity. People have become aware of the amount of localisation >work happening in India. More and more development teams are getting >interested. There is a new sense of pride in working on localization. I am sorry. I must disagree. There is indeed a growing interest in localization, but I do not see how you can claim that the CD releases have spurred that. Could you point me to some facts that back up this statement? >Government is issuing policies which direct OEMs to bundle local >language softwares in their products. HCL has come up with a low-cost >PC (<Rs 10000) which is Linux driven. All these are not stories but >plain facts. How is this government-driven? What happened to the idea of the Simputer? > Gora in his criticism has commented about Mozilla >violation without checking on the facts. I request him to see the >following issue that was filed much before the release. > >https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=293850 [...] OK, I take back that comment, and apologize for being too general. You have certainly tried to contact Mozilla. But, where exactly are you making the source available? Where is the "conspicuous notice" as to where to find the source? Plus, while this comment was filed on 25/5, as of date I can find no Hindi or Tamil language pack available from the Mozilla site. Where is the involvement with the community? >Well I agree some fonts were not free but that does not mean they are >not accessible. They are always available for download. We had to take >the interests of the contributers into account while packaging the CD. I am sorry. It is more than about a few fonts not being free. For example, I was particularly interested in the Hindi OCR, developed by CDAC (a government institution). It does not install on Windows, saying that it needs some other components. If I was unable to make it work, what hope do you think a home user sitting in some remote corner of India has? What exactly are my options when stuff does not work? And, I hope that you understand the difference between free in cost, and free as in libre (or mukta in the Indian context). It does me no good if I do not pay for the fonts on the CD, but cannot freely redistribute them. I am particularly piqued at this lack of licensing information, as in the TDIL office, we were explicitly promised a GPL licence for all material on the CD. Even public domain, which is what we were suggesting, would have been fine. Are you making an official statement that the CDAC fonts on the CD are freely redistributable? >On the whole, we need people like Gora to comment on it so that we can >avoid or try to avoid some mistakes in the future releases. Sorry if my anger makes my comments intemperate. I am frustrated at trying to work with government agencies as part of a FLOSS community. Please do not take my remarks personally, as they are definitely not meant that way. Regards, Gora
