I have now cooled down, so am replying to some points in this mail On Saturday 21 March 2009 18:09:50 Debayan Banerjee wrote: > > I do not give a rf for foss philosophy. State A uses public money and > > spends 5 > > crores developing an application to computerise land records. It runs on > > linux > > and uses free software tools. State A keeps the software proprietary. > > State B, > > instead of downloading state A's stuff and spending 50 lakh to customise > > it, > > spends another 5 crores. Given that there are around 30 states, > > calculate. > > 2 ways of looking at it. 1) These 5 crores go to software developers like > me and my friends, and then we pay tax out of that same money.
here we go - I am on record in saying that one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the adoption of FOSS in this country is that the FOSS movement here is largely controlled by IT professionals. Most of these guys are terrified of losing their jobs if all software was made free. Most of them make a living out of developing proprietary software and selling it as a commodity. Software is NOT a commodity. A government that spends 5 crores of public money has no right to keep it closed just to benefit you and your friends. And you and your friends have no right to make another 30 state governments pay you for reinventing the wheel - at public expense. > 2) > Inter-state-govt collaboration sucks. where is the need for inter-state-govt collaboration? If state A puts code up for free download, state B has no need to even to be on speaking terms with state A to use/modify the said software. > I think the main reasons why govts do not release code are 1) They dont > even know what releasing code is 2) they are not 100% confident of the > securtiy implications anyways. both of those are true - I have experienced it. But more important is the fundamental tendency for government to consider the public as the enemy, and thus to do their utmost to prevent any - even the most harmless - information to 'leak' to the public. And this is usually because they need to cover up corruption, goof-ups etc > There is a disconnect between the tech-guy who does understand all this and > is with the govt (Someone like you Kenneth) and the people who make these > decisions (like a minster). ministers do not make these decisions - it is the babu's who do. And they are expert at sabotaging any decision made by a minister. But, as I said, the real enemy is the IT professional who is scared of losing his income if software was freed. My brother is a passionate advocate of linux/foss, but his software companies only produce proprietary software. His rationale is: 'it's ok for you, you do not need to feed your family or meet monthly salary bills, so you can afford to release everything you write.' Our openstreetmap stall at OSI tech days in Chennai was a huge draw. But 90% of the people had the same question: 'If the data is free, how do you guys make money?' -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
