On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 08:24:06PM +0530, Sachin Nair wrote:
If you are gong to talk about large corporations then am sorry I was talking about the SSI unit. My fault, I should have specified. 90% of the SSI's operate on pirated software. Ideology in these parts, exists after money!
<snip>
There is a manufacturing unit specializing in certain mechanical components of machines. They make extensive use of Tally(accounting) & AutoCAD. They use pirated copies of software, lack the monetary horsepower to buy the real thing. Even if they did, they as of now don't see ay real value in converting when things work just fine. You tell me how do I convince them to convert? Or why should I ask them to convert?
You hit it right on target with these two paragraphs. Are we as a community capable of leaving idealism aside and answer this hard-headed pragmatist question? I believe listening to Open Source guys instead of Free Software in this matter can be a great eye-opener.
If we want our beloved GNU to spread in a place like India, then the SSI sector is the one to be targeted - its a huge market with a reach that can indirectly take us to every school, home and office in this country. A similar thread had started when I had posted an account of a conference on Linux some time ago, where people from the Ministry of IT, Red Hat, IBM, TCS etc had made presentations.
HOW & WHY?
More like HOW do we make an excellent case for the WHY!
Sameer.