Hi Stereotactic and others on the thread, Has posted this with lost of inline and it bounced as it was too big for the list, so reposting with some inline , apologies for this long mail, reposted again
** Was away for a bit so am just catching up with this thread. And an interesting one too, with lots of wefts and weaves. Am trying to put my thoughts down and may have some catching up to do. so forgive some general top posts , some bit is lower down. @ CDAC - government or not one must remember that they have done stuff that pushed multi lingual computing quite far, before , i think, even open source really caught on. A case in point is the Leap and ileap cd's which enabled typing in many indian langauges.Am not sure of the history of the inscript keyboard (Gora may know) but i think CDAC developed the inscript layout . For those of us who use hindi this is a super boon - compared the typewriter keyboard layout, @ BOSS Linux - am not sure of the investments and the outputs but another good thing about CDAC and Boss linux is their presence at many IT events. The free CD's people may or may not use but what it does is give publicity not just to linux but to multi language computing. There was a time when they were ahead of the curve, unfortunately as with many Govt and non govt projects its all probably personality and motivation dirven and some other enthu folks must have been posted to their equivalent of kaalapani and thats the end of their before the curve production. @ NRC-FOSS - am wondering if there are any on this list - i knew one person from a lug list and this guy was a pain the the unmentionables and even after joining FOSS has this demeaning condescending attitude that is not good for anything leave alone FOSS. And if he is reflective of NRC_FOSS the i think its better to leave them out of anything. Am not sure what NRC-FOSS is upto but never hear of them much , maybe because they are south india based, so any south indian ubunturos have any idea what they are upto. > yes it becomes much more murkier , is there a way to tap into these > sources of funding and use it the way we want it . Yes there is no guarantee > that this org or initiative will not land up in the same state for worse or > good , it very easy pointing fingers and saying holier than though attitude. > Do you see a way out shall we just ignore these thought process. There are ways - most of them are under the table and in those cases you need not develop anything, Under the table also gaurantees that non delivery on time will increase your budget for yet more non delivery. I personally feel that its easier to push the govt agencies to deliver rather than look to generate funds . This is true for core sectors but for software am not sure under what model the govt operates best. A compairision between NASA / NSA (USA) and DRDO (India)and what they have delivered in terms of products software would clearly indicate the gap. What gora says in relevant - how much has CDAC every contributed back. Probably not much. In a discussion with CDAC and one other related government agency at a Delhi LUG annual do (forget the name now) there was this technology being promoted by the government to promoted distributed computing in villages. The problem was not the tech (which was fairly good) but the licenses. The Govt agency has some rule that if the govt spends money on something they cannot give it an open license, they cannot give the code away because "its their property? - Don't ask me why, but thats what our government is about. > > ok i get the answer here , but how? form one more org ? I kind of disagree, yes we need some more creative groups but we also need to pressurize the government in doing and delivering better, what it has taken a mandate to do. It has to be concurrent. The govt has immense resources and if we leave them they we all know an idle mind is a dangerous workshop - we will end up with resources and creativity being spent to spy on people (like under the UID) or on a couple of crore just for tea and snacks for uncommon wealth organizers. We need a pressure group to force policy change as well as for the govt to deliver concrete action. > As I mentioned above, that's the answer. There has to be some way to break > the log jam. How many among you are researchers/academicians? How > many > among you have actually "researched" and implemented anything "new"? Strange question - and allow me to say so , a bit rude, . Also i don't have too high an opinion about researchers and academicians who write, read and talk a lot but have very liitle to show in terms of new. Would rather look for the doers. And then the doers who also write and read. ** Loco has nothing to do with new ideas - it its about making something more applicable for a localised community and there is not point in re-inventing a wheel because a wheel can't really be invented again. I agree with the looking inwards and would look to have more ways to promote open source to get more people to use it, to have more support services (which will directly influence a huge section to change) etc etc. New software tools that address inefficiencys, make the tech more easily usable by an audience that is not computer savvy. (eg. Nokia are big not only because of their cheap phones but also because of their simple interface). regards ram -- ubuntu-in mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in
