On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Kenneth Gonsalves <[email protected]> wrote: > 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.
Very well said, Kenneth! Using the FOSS model for their internal software development can save the Indian government thousands of crores of rupees, reduce risk of software failure, enable sharing of best practices etc. In the US, The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has established a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the Open Source Software Institute in an effort to bolster collaboration between the federal government and other entities. When will we learn? DISA makes software collaboration agreement http://fcw.com/articles/2009/03/20/disa-collaborate.aspx Venky -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
