2009/3/21 Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon@au-kbc.org
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. 2) Inter-state-govt collaboration sucks. I think the main reasons why govts do not release code are 1) They dont even know what releasing code is 2) they are not 100% confident of the securtiy implications anyways. There is a disconnect between the tech-guy who does understand all this and is with the govt (Someone like you Kenneth) and the people who make these decisions (like a minster).
I
dont give another rf about the tools. If a State developed an application in .net running on doze and released the code, I would be happy.
I have interacted with the said minister - he hasn't understood a thing about foss.
Maybe what you mean is that he does not understand it as well as you do. If you really mean what you say then may be he was in a bad mood or something.. i dunno.
Also, there are similarities between FOSS ideeology and communist
ideology
and thank god for that.
what similarities are there? I cannot see a single one
Well the communists seem to think that there are similarities and maybe they are wrong at that.
From my understanding (and I am no communist fan so i dont know for sure)
the 2 topics the minster spoke about freeing ourselves from 1) Monopoly of MS 2) Vendor Lock are good and liberating ideals. I guess communists dont like thses 2 things and i dont know if they are mentioned in the "Communist Manifesto" or not but real world communist supporters do seem to dislike these things. Basically a govt which does not look west ward for every damn purchase is good for FOSS in the long run IMO.
-- regards Kenneth Gonsalves Associate NRC-FOSS http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/ -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers