At 1:35 PM +0530 12/8/05, Anand M R wrote:
> So just cause MS software is inferrior and we choose
to use alternatives we have no right to enforce our
decision on others. I am not trying to make a case for
MS or for not purchasing RH. My point is that
companies like MS have far more $$$ to throw about and
bait the ministers/beaureaucrats than most of the
other teeny-meeny FLOSS companies. And this is what it
takes to buy a deal of this size.
>
Everyone wants to make money, no doubt and they should, how else
will the economy progress?
Two very interesting points, but fortunately both have their answers
floating around here and there on the net.
The first is that even FLOSS can be expensive, and so why should the
government be put in the position of having to choose between two
(probably foreign) vendors?
One significant answer that even a minister (and yes, even a minister
of the apparent education and learning of Arun Shourie) should
realise that our tech advances are nearly all commercial, with very
few based on a defensible leadership position. It is product
orientation, sadly lacking in the larger part of Indian IT business -
and in product orientation I include application services and
everything else that can be more or less slotted into that definition
- which can be supported by (not exclusively, but someone has to make
a serious start) government focus on FLOSS. The future economic
benefits will be hard to dispute.
The second answer is about making money, at the cost of doing well,
life-wise. I saw this very funny email joke about how the US, with
its wildly consumerist life-style, is said to be a strong economy,
while Japan is sick, and China is out of it, naturally. The trade
balance between Japan and the US favours Japan by some 3 trillion
USD, and China by 5 trillion. Whatever. Logical answer is borrow
wildly and spend like crazy - just find some poor idiot country like
Japan whose national propensity to save is so high that they have to
look around for countries to indebt themselves too, they have so much
of the green stuff coming out of their ears.
Point being, don't fall too easily for the nostrum that the economy
progresses because some people who are a part of it are making money.
--
Vickram
--
http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
