On 8 July 2011 12:42, Kenneth Gonsalves <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-07-08 at 12:19 +0530, Debayan Banerjee wrote: > > Creating an environment where FOSS platforms are used for development > > will > > foster the growth of an industry that has 0 input cost in buying > > licenses > > and hence will be able to turn out products which are not as > > expensive. > > Unless a big 'customer' like the Govt of India takes a stand like > > this, the > > required eco-system of support for FOSS is not going to grow. > > Govt *is* taking a stand on this - the various governments in India are > among the most FOSS friendly in the world. > Yes but they are yet to figure out how to do this properly and effectively, especially the training part. Even with BOSS Linux they are somewhat clueless with upstreaming their contributions and pushing it into Govt institutions. We need to help them out somehow, but I dont know how exactly. In college I was involved in a few training programmes where we trained school teachers from across West Bengal to use Linux, but we did not recommend BOSS Linux. We also knew that this training being imparted was woefully inadequate, considering that most of the schools did not even have functioning computers. > > Replacing > > Windows with Linux will certainly save on licensing costs. There is > > the > > issue of retraining costs involved, but it will repay itself in the > > longer > > run. > > agreed, but in the short run it is much more expensive. > I consider this a mass de-addiction drive. It is beneficial to the society at large. It's the kind of cost we pay taxes for. > > > > For backend uses such as web servers, announcement systems, public > > display > > systems, route navigation systems etc there is no mass retraining cost > > either. > > you will have to retrain the developers - and that is non-trivial. > Or find new developers, which might be trivial. Re-writing the code is the non-trivial part in my opinion. > > > So what is broken currently, in the Govt's perspective, is the Govt's > > helpless dependence on Windows as a platform (pertaining to the draft > > under > > discussion). > > are we discussing the same thing here? > I guess not. -- Debayan Banerjee -- Mailing list guidelines and other related articles: http://lug-iitd.org/Footer
