We are still discussing only one side of the story, i.e. in academia. All students, and their tutors in a system like ours, will be interested in training that can open access to the mainstream opportunities, which happen to be Microsoft technologies.
This is because Microsoft (and other proprietary) technologies are what sell the most in the most important market - the corporate world, whether due to ignorance, support, marketing strength, or the much-flagged "ease of use". Coming to the point directly, I have been trying to interest many of my peers and senior colleagues, both in the IT dept. as well as other functional ones at my workplace, in Free software in general and Linux in particular. My efforts include both free CDs and sermons. Of the most informed opinions, the best that I get is "So how will this make life easier for me? Does it offer me a new new deal, or is it just more wastage of my time in doing the same thing differently? .Net is where the action is now, and that's where I am going. Who wants to employ a Linux professional anyway!"
From the functional colleagues, most of the responses are: "hmm, how cute!"
I once gave an Ubuntu (5.10) CD to a Director with whom I am on very good terms. He liked the fact that it could act as a good rescue CD for its laptop, and he also liked OpenOffice, so there's a clue. Yesterday, I gathered some guts and presented a Dapper Drake CD to another important Director, who is also in charge of IT. He has promised to give it a try, so I am waiting with bated breath for his return from vacation! And my sincere hope is that he doesn't try some of the more 'esoteric' stuff like multimedia or wi-fi. To cut the story short, as long as FOSS doesn't provide a radical advantage that can be achieved without much agony, corporates will not be interested in it. Price is not that important a factor for them to rethink their present approach, it is productivity. Till the time this critical hurdle is not crossed, there will not be a broad and deep interest from the corporate world in FOSS. The most they will use will be Apache and PHP. And till that time, Indian academics will not be in a frenzy to encourage their students to consider the Free software alternative as a good career move. Just my two paise. -- ______________________________________________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List: ([email protected]) List Information: http://plug.org.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plug-mail Send 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for mailing instructions.
