On July 4, 1999 Russell McOrmond wrote:
>
> As you'll know, Linux groups have a very diverse population, and knowing
> this can help in not getting upset by the diverse viewpoints of postings
> you will see.
Absolutely, I was not at all upset --I just didn't like the personal
slant with the baby involved.
I understand the feeling behind that post. We in India can tell you, and
I am sure you know, what it takes to acquire the power of computing.
Apart from the language orientation i.e. English (less than 5 % ?) of
population, we have to shell out huge sums of money thanks to the
exchange rate and the Govt. import policy.
>Some of us actually have a problem with the person even more
> than we have a problem with the technology (Assuming you believe Microsoft
> is a technology company - I don't.
Neither do I. But assumming an average hardware vendor explaining to a
client that in order to use the Internet on his Win95 box he has to
enable the "Microsoft TCP/IP software", you can pretty well judge the
level of technology he has acquired. :-)
> If Microsoft technology products were 100% reliable, sold for the price
> you can get Linux via Cheapbytes and available in all languages I would
> still have a problem with Bill Gates himself.
That's exactly the reason why they do not sell as much they are 'used'.
Much of the software is pirated by the grey market hardware vendors and
computer institutes who then propagate their way of making software and
imbibe the culture in their students. Most computer users do not even
suspect that they are using pirated software given by their friendly
neighbourhood hardware vendor. This was the first obstacle that I had to
encouter in convincing my hardware vendor to install linux. I took my
PCQ Cd (RH 5.2) to install in his machine and he asked me "can I make a
pirated copy on my CD?" I told him not only was Linux free but he can
encourage other people to install it from his CD. It is slowly catching
on but will take time and effort I think.
> I use Linux not because of the technology, but because of the license
> and philosophy behind the license. When I started using Linux the various
> *BSD systems were orders of magnitude ahead and are still more reliable
> and robust systems. That didn't matter to me as much as the fight against
> monopolies and the legal tools (Copyright, Patents, other IP, WIPO, WTO,
> World Bank) which encourage/enforce them.
>
I am using Linux because I have found a whole lot of usefull tools that
I can work with and that doesn't cost the earth. I am a self-employed
person and have recently gone open source with the tools that I use. As
of now, all the clients that I have worked with in Calcutta designing
their information systems (6 in total) have the source code of their
info systems (yes, M$ FoxPro and most of them have the licensed copy)
with them, where the standard practice is to give the binary exec and
hope for the best.
> P.S. I'm one of those lucky people who are self employed and run an
> almost 'proprietary free' business. While some of my customers use
> Microsoft, Apple, Sun and other proprietary products on their desktop
> which I support with their connectivity to the LAN/Internet, and I do have
> StarOffice and Netscape on my own computers, I otherwise deal with
> non-proprietary software systems.
>
I installed Red Hat Linux 5.2 on 13th May 1999. I have not worked with
my C:\ partition(Win 95) since :-)
Regards,
Arup Bhanja
Calcutta,INDIA.
Website coming soon.
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