Hi Ajith,
By the likes of it, it seems that you are quite senior to me when it comes to the industry. As far as linux goes, i think i am my self a sort of vetran. Now, I totally agree with you that criticism alone cannot improve things. But friend , the ideology is based on how well it can be accepted by the masses and anything inferior is not generally accepted ( though we may quote exceptions, but remember exceptions are always in minority ). Now "inferior" is a relative term. Something that may not be inferior at BARC (for scientists) may be inferior for the masses (because the needs are different).
I have never doubted our ability to write wonderful software. But we have ignored the "interfaces" for the masses for too long. I am sure Richard Stallman agrees.
Now, you have yourself mentioned that FSF is currently worrying about helping school children take on GNU/Linux. Now, lets just for a moment pause and ponder over the needs of these kids and put our software on test. Now lets forget the problems, lets try and find answers.
As far as the ideology goes, it is spreading and will spread even more the moment we start touching the masses. Projects like Gnome and KDE have taken giant strides in the direction. But there is scope of improvement.
Now, to put this point thru i need help of people like you to endorse the fact that we need to improve the interfaces, we need to consolidate the services on GNU/Linux, we need to simplify the structure etc and believe me, we are all set to push Microsoft software to a corner if not oblivion.
Look at the current scenario, - microsoft is in a transition phase - We are real good at Server side solutions - They are consolidating their servers - We are working on GUIs
Now, we know it is peanuts for people to write Desktop versions of Operating System who are good at Enterprise Servers. Desktops touch the masses and this world belongs to masses as masses are in MAJORITY.
Now friends, Let us all contribute. Let us do our bits and be sure we will reign supreme. A Dream of an ideology reigning supreme is not that bad after all.
Free software for the brave GNU World.
With regards, Tarun Gaur
From: Ajith Kumar ajith@nsc.ernet.in To: Tarun Gaur gaur_tarun@hotmail.com Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] Read Richard Stallman's mail Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 14:33:13 +0530
Tarun Gaur wrote:
Hi Mr. Ajith
I am shocked at the way you have interpreted my quest for ever
improvement.
According to your interpretation, all the CRITICS carry some kind of infiriority complex ? Brother, i am just asking all my friends to
improve. I
will quote Richard Stallman's mail posted on fsf-friends, where he says
that
common user has to be taken serious care of.
First of all i am not an FSF member. I have used GNU/Linux for applications like particle accelerator control and physics experiments. Nuclear Science Centre's control system runs on a network of 6 machines , 24 hours 365 days and I am yet to see a 'hanging' OS , running redhat 5.2 distro. I developed it 5 years ago. We have a Data Acquisition System that is fastest among the other labs like BARC etc., done in Linux. Almost the entire organization uses it for communication, office work etc.
I know that it is not perfect. I myself face a lot of problems when try to convince people to use it. I had a talk with RMS when he visited NSC in March. He asked me to give more stress on spreading the ideology than trying to get more people just using Free Software. I spend a lot of time and energy to help schools to use GNU/Linux. The point is we should not project weaknesses alone, the stregths also should be projected at the same time.
As far as I know FSF is mainly worrying about how to get the schools in Kerala to use Free Software.
with regards
Ajith
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I agree with Tarun Gaur's view. We need to care more about certain things which we developer may think very trivial. I have faced few such. For examples in GNOME, the default font for terminal [came with Redhat], is too small and really not very appealing. Few, of my collegues didn't like it,it took long time for me convince them that changing is easy. [remember first impression is lasting impression]. That first impression still lingers in their mind and they think MS-Win is the best for endusers. We can win over many of them by constant support and persuation. But it will be better if make our presentations also good and simple thus winning people in the first instance itself. As Tarun says we need to do lot of development and improvement in the interfaces. Though our philosophy is strong, that alone will not lead to acceptance.
Raman.P --- Tarun Gaur gaur_tarun@hotmail.com wrote: > Hi Ajith,
By the likes of it, it seems that you are quite senior to me when it comes to the industry. As far as linux goes, i think i am my self a sort of vetran. Now, I totally agree with you that criticism alone cannot improve things. But friend , the ideology is based on how well it can be accepted by the masses and anything inferior is not generally accepted ( though we may quote exceptions, but remember exceptions are always in minority ). Now "inferior" is a relative term. Something that may not be inferior at BARC (for scientists) may be inferior for the masses (because the needs are different).
I have never doubted our ability to write wonderful software. But we have ignored the "interfaces" for the masses for too long. I am sure Richard Stallman agrees.
Now, you have yourself mentioned that FSF is currently worrying about helping school children take on GNU/Linux. Now, lets just for a moment pause and ponder over the needs of these kids and put our software on test. Now lets forget the problems, lets try and find answers.
As far as the ideology goes, it is spreading and will spread even more the moment we start touching the masses. Projects like Gnome and KDE have taken giant strides in the direction. But there is scope of improvement.
Now, to put this point thru i need help of people like you to endorse the fact that we need to improve the interfaces, we need to consolidate the services on GNU/Linux, we need to simplify the structure etc and believe me, we are all set to push Microsoft software to a corner if not oblivion.
Look at the current scenario, - microsoft is in a transition phase - We are real good at Server side solutions - They are consolidating their servers - We are working on GUIs
Now, we know it is peanuts for people to write Desktop versions of Operating System who are good at Enterprise Servers. Desktops touch the masses and this world belongs to masses as masses are in MAJORITY.
Now friends, Let us all contribute. Let us do our bits and be sure we will reign supreme. A Dream of an ideology reigning supreme is not that bad after all.
Free software for the brave GNU World.
With regards, Tarun Gaur
From: Ajith Kumar ajith@nsc.ernet.in To: Tarun Gaur gaur_tarun@hotmail.com Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] Read Richard Stallman's
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 14:33:13 +0530
Tarun Gaur wrote:
Hi Mr. Ajith
I am shocked at the way you have interpreted my
quest for ever
improvement.
According to your interpretation, all the
CRITICS carry some kind of
infiriority complex ? Brother, i am just asking
all my friends to
improve. I
will quote Richard Stallman's mail posted on
fsf-friends, where he says
that
common user has to be taken serious care of.
First of all i am not an FSF member. I have used
GNU/Linux for
applications like particle accelerator control and physics
experiments. Nuclear Science
Centre's control system runs on a network of 6 machines , 24
hours 365 days and I am
yet to see a 'hanging' OS , running redhat 5.2 distro. I
developed it 5 years ago.
We have a Data Acquisition System that is fastest
among the other labs
like BARC etc., done in Linux. Almost the entire organization uses
it for communication,
office work etc.
I know that it is not perfect. I myself face a lot
of problems when try to
convince people to use it. I had a talk with RMS when he visited NSC
in March. He asked me to
give more stress on spreading the ideology than trying to get more
people just using Free
Software. I spend a lot of time and energy to help schools
to use GNU/Linux.
The point is we should not project weaknesses
alone, the stregths also
should be projected at the same time.
As far as I know FSF is mainly worrying about how
to get the schools in
Kerala to use Free Software.
with regards
Ajith
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I think there is some point in what Tarun says. He has presented it at a forum of FSF where he should be concerned about the problems involved in promoting Free Software than about praising it.
Why do we face problems when we try to convince others about using Free Software? I think we have to see that a lot of people are more concerned about the ease of use than about the philosophy. While spreading the philosophy is important, it becomes equally important to get more people to use Free Software. Otherwise proprietary software is going to dominate. And why should we try to convince people to use Free Software if we are not bothered about how many people use it? We could be content with talking about Freedom and leaving the decision on the kind of software to use to the people.
Having said that, I do not mean that Free Software is significantly more difficult to use. Having moved from Windows to Gnu/Linux only about a year back, I know that there are several points in favour of Gnu/Linux. But there still remain several things that could easily put off a new user. For instance, let us take the case of a word processor. OpenOffice is as good as any other. But it takes a lot of time to open. A person who has been using MS Office or Lotus WordPro or WordPerfect would find this rather irritating. It should be possible to fix this up. AbiWord is shaping up very well and could be a good replacement. For scientific purposes, I am sure that Gnu/Linux offers a much better features.
In spite of all this, there is sufficient reason to take the trouble of using only Free Software - when we consider the ideology. So, I feel, if we have to make an impact, we have to look at both aspects - philosophy and user-friendliness (or whatever one may want to call it). So, I think we should take what Tarun has to say as an introspection rather than as a criticism.
V. Sasi Kumar
On Fri, 2002-11-29 at 16:21, Tarun Gaur wrote:
Hi Ajith,
By the likes of it, it seems that you are quite senior to me when it comes to the industry. As far as linux goes, i think i am my self a sort of vetran. Now, I totally agree with you that criticism alone cannot improve things. But friend , the ideology is based on how well it can be accepted by the masses and anything inferior is not generally accepted ( though we may quote exceptions, but remember exceptions are always in minority ). Now "inferior" is a relative term. Something that may not be inferior at BARC (for scientists) may be inferior for the masses (because the needs are different).
I have never doubted our ability to write wonderful software. But we have ignored the "interfaces" for the masses for too long. I am sure Richard Stallman agrees.
Now, you have yourself mentioned that FSF is currently worrying about helping school children take on GNU/Linux. Now, lets just for a moment pause and ponder over the needs of these kids and put our software on test. Now lets forget the problems, lets try and find answers.
As far as the ideology goes, it is spreading and will spread even more the moment we start touching the masses. Projects like Gnome and KDE have taken giant strides in the direction. But there is scope of improvement.
Now, to put this point thru i need help of people like you to endorse the fact that we need to improve the interfaces, we need to consolidate the services on GNU/Linux, we need to simplify the structure etc and believe me, we are all set to push Microsoft software to a corner if not oblivion.
Look at the current scenario, - microsoft is in a transition phase - We are real good at Server side solutions - They are consolidating their servers - We are working on GUIs
Now, we know it is peanuts for people to write Desktop versions of Operating System who are good at Enterprise Servers. Desktops touch the masses and this world belongs to masses as masses are in MAJORITY.
Now friends, Let us all contribute. Let us do our bits and be sure we will reign supreme. A Dream of an ideology reigning supreme is not that bad after all.
Free software for the brave GNU World.
With regards, Tarun Gaur
From: Ajith Kumar ajith@nsc.ernet.in To: Tarun Gaur gaur_tarun@hotmail.com Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] Read Richard Stallman's mail Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 14:33:13 +0530
Tarun Gaur wrote:
Hi Mr. Ajith
I am shocked at the way you have interpreted my quest for ever
improvement.
According to your interpretation, all the CRITICS carry some kind of infiriority complex ? Brother, i am just asking all my friends to
improve. I
will quote Richard Stallman's mail posted on fsf-friends, where he says
that
common user has to be taken serious care of.
First of all i am not an FSF member. I have used GNU/Linux for applications like particle accelerator control and physics experiments. Nuclear Science Centre's control system runs on a network of 6 machines , 24 hours 365 days and I am yet to see a 'hanging' OS , running redhat 5.2 distro. I developed it 5 years ago. We have a Data Acquisition System that is fastest among the other labs like BARC etc., done in Linux. Almost the entire organization uses it for communication, office work etc.
I know that it is not perfect. I myself face a lot of problems when try to convince people to use it. I had a talk with RMS when he visited NSC in March. He asked me to give more stress on spreading the ideology than trying to get more people just using Free Software. I spend a lot of time and energy to help schools to use GNU/Linux. The point is we should not project weaknesses alone, the stregths also should be projected at the same time.
As far as I know FSF is mainly worrying about how to get the schools in Kerala to use Free Software.
with regards
Ajith
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Fsf-friends mailing list Fsf-friends@mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends
-
Raman.P -
Tarun Gaur -
V. Sasi Kumar