On Monday 03 January 2005 06:22 pm, Vinayak Hegde wrote:
In a country where drinking water and food are still major issues, contributing to free software is least of the troubles.
have you considered the faint possibility (ridiculous as it may sound) that conributing to free software could help in some small way to solve these major issues?
Not unless you can grow food on computers and write programs to make driniking water come out of floppy drives :). Feel free to supplement my stunted imagination. But seriously, FOSS can help the common man like getting land records (done in Karnataka) / getting price of crop in the market etc. But I doubt it can solve basic problems like food and water. But then I can be wrong.
education, mapping resources, crop planning, watershed management, eliminating middle men in marketing, bringing transparency to administration, knowledge base development, sharing experiences over rural areas, disaster management - just a few areas, this and many more can be done efficiently and at low cost by FOSS - no, maybe you cant grow food on computers and write programs to make drinking water come out of floppy drives - but you can grow more food, distribute it more efficiently, tap more water sources, conserve the existings ones with FOSS. Remember knowledge is power and FOSS has immense potential to disseminate knowledge among the rural people
regards kg
You need to get the facts right (reread my post above and ask the question again).
ive got my facts right
but the source wrong ?? I still maintain that the figures are wrong though I agree that FOSS can do with a lot more developers. But there are definitely more than 150-200 developers that you are quoting.
Contribute and spread the word and let people do the rest. Don't take the arguments personally. There are not directed at anyone. I am just trying to arrive at a consensus in the collaborative spirit.