On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: > dear russell, > somehow the massive walmart or dell -like PC makers are absent in the > country.
Please don't accept that as a bad thing. There is "unity in diversity", and you do not want the 'one size fits all' type attitude that is prevalent here in North America. There are extremely rare cases when the centralization *seems* beneficial, but normally it is a considerable disadvantage. The Walmart and Dell's of the world have always been trivial corruption targets by various special interests. Remember: The number of instances of bribery and corruption in India (IE: when dealing with government) may be higher, but with the centralization of power on this side of the big-drink the numbers may be lower but the scale of each is considerably higher (and more hidden). > But given the scenario over here, i doubt even box assemblers will be > able to get people interested in it. I do believe that Microsoft is helping us here here. Anything that is done to cut down on the illegal copying of the software of Software Manufacturing, the more people will realize all the advantages of FLOSS. On the other hand, they are using obviously bogus statistics to try to prove their point. Have you read some of the reports on the BSA "Piracy" studies? ---cut--- http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/consumer-license-study.html Consumer license study: software "piracy", free software, and economic impacts Summary The Business Software Alliance (BSA) produces a yearly North American Software Piracy Study. The Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST) then sends out media releases into the Canadian market, as well as lobbying the Government of Canada, based on these studies. These studies have critical flaws due to the fact that they are focused entirely on the perspective of the vendors who are members of the alliance. Two areas are of particular concern: * Their methodology does not differentiate between reasons why member software are not being purchased. Most critical is the fact that users switching to Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) or other alternatives to their software are not differentiated from illegal copying of member software. ...etc... ---cut--- > By the way [i realise that on a Linux list this is inflammable], do you > notice that with the release after release of Windows versions and flavors, > the free/share toolsets-suites-utilities for Win9x are slowly drying up. FreeWare/ShareWare was always doomed to die as it is attacked from both sides. As a way of distributing proprietary software, it simply cannot compete with FLOSS nor with the large monopoly channels that exist with the dominant proprietary vendors. My perception is that FreeWare/ShareWare served a very temporary need while FLOSS on legacy platforms became popular. You can now see CD's such as http://www.theopencd.org/ which are all FLOSS where CD's like this in the past would be FreeWare/ShareWare. > It is like your valve radio set days. One day those users will have to > migrate to higher platforms or be isolated... Shocking thought The amount of FLOSS for Win 9x/ME is increasing, and I expect as the number of proprietary vendors that drop this platform that this will continue. I suspect that this will be of benefit to us in the long term. People who want to upgrade their applications without learning a new OS will be moving to FLOSS... and their next OS upgrade would then be more likely to be a FLOSS OS. They need to know that they have a choice -- and I do hope that even though this is a "Linux" users group that promoting FLOSS on legacy platforms (Microsoft, Apple, etc) will also be part of your work. --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen and not a third party. -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/ -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3
