Hi,
I was just wondering; do NGOs in India look at FOSS as an alternative for cost-cutting at all? Has anyone on-list succeeded in introducing FOSS in any NGO-aided school or vocational training centre?
Regards,
On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 22:05 +0530, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
Hi,
I was just wondering; do NGOs in India look at FOSS as an alternative for cost-cutting at all? Has anyone on-list succeeded in introducing FOSS in any NGO-aided school or vocational training centre?
Somewhere along the way an NGO would need to factor in the cost of having someone with enough clue to run the FOSS setup. Today, an NGO's (or any non-IT setup's) best bet is to go with whatever the hardware guy is willing to support. Those NGO's that have the budget/contacts to hire/sucker/involve a geek may consider going in for a FOSS setup. I remember Childline having their email and web gateway setup for them on linux by one of my friends only because his then girlfriend worked there.
So, feel free to offer your services to the NGO that supports a cause that is close to your heart (or relatively near.)
-gabin
On 1/17/07, Gabin Kattukaran boon@vsnl.com wrote:
Somewhere along the way an NGO would need to factor in the cost of having someone with enough clue to run the FOSS setup. Today, an NGO's (or any non-IT setup's) best bet is to go with whatever the hardware guy is willing to support. Those NGO's that have the budget/contacts to hire/sucker/involve a geek may consider going in for a FOSS setup. I remember Childline having their email and web gateway setup for them on linux by one of my friends only because his then girlfriend worked there.
I was actually thinking on the lines of FOSS software for vocational training schools for the poor. I know someone who works in an NGO that supports low-budget schools. These schools have basic computer training for their students. If this was done on FOSS platform then not only will the school cut costs of the software, but the curious ones can look under the hood if they want to.
I know my thought sounds Utopian at best, but I had seen something on these lines on a show in BBC (Open Sources was it?). The show talked about an African school that does this. The support of the computer systems was also voluntary, with some of the students themselves pitching in.
Regards,
On Thu, 2007-01-18 at 00:02 +0530, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
I was actually thinking on the lines of FOSS software for vocational training schools for the poor. I know someone who works in an NGO that supports low-budget schools. These schools have basic computer training for their students. If this was done on FOSS platform then not only will the school cut costs of the software, but the curious ones can look under the hood if they want to.
To quote Philip and Yoda - Do or Do not. There is no think. Commendable as the idea is, it is only valuable if _you_ do it.
-gabin
On 1/18/07, Gabin Kattukaran boon@vsnl.com wrote:
To quote Philip and Yoda - Do or Do not. There is no think. Commendable as the idea is, it is only valuable if _you_ do it.
True, but when your hand are full it is always useful to put your ideas in front of people who may want to contribute in some way but don't know how. In this case for example, I really do not have the time/resources to approach an NGO and convince them to use a FOSS solution. Someone like Dr. Nagarjun for example, has the necessary credentials (and perhaps contacts as well) to be able to persuade them. So all I am doing is putting forward an idea so that if someone's interested and has the time and resources, he/she may do it.
Also, I wanted to know if someone's already had experience on these lines.
There should always be a 'think' before, during and after the 'Do' or 'Do not', it always helps get good results :)
Regards,
On 18-Jan-07, at 1:16 AM, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
Also, I wanted to know if someone's already had experience on these lines.
most NGOs are totally oriented towards making the funding agencies happy - so they can get more funds. They dont give a fsck about the people they are supposed to be 'helping'. And I have yet to see a funding agency not on doze. The bigger ones all use legal doze, and this is factored into their costs in foreign itself.
On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 22:05 +0530, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
Hi,
I was just wondering; do NGOs in India look at FOSS as an alternative for cost-cutting at all? Has anyone on-list succeeded in introducing FOSS in any NGO-aided school or vocational training centre?
I dont know about NGOs but a CDAC training centre I know is trying to make the switch from Windoze servers to Linux servers. The problem is that the sys-admin there has zero knowledge about big professionally built servers. I dont claim to know either but using some "free proxy" on Win XP Pro speaks little of their tech know how. Internet "sharing" can be easily achieved using RRaS in M$ Win servers...
On 1/17/07, Siddhesh Poyarekar siddhesh.poyarekar@gmail.com wrote:
I was just wondering; do NGOs in India look at FOSS as an alternative
for cost-cutting at all? Has anyone on-list succeeded in introducing FOSS in any NGO-aided school or vocational training centre?
We have started a program called 'yuj' which aims at tapping academic resources of the nation to serve the needs of NGOs / small organizations / govt. and others.
Visit : http://www.yuj.in/ for the details.
One of our motives is to demonstrate and promote FOSS as cost-effective and healthy methodology for development of the nation.
We installed Ubuntu and some educational software in "Mrityunjoy Night School , Kandivili".
The people who have interests similar to us can join and help the team achieve the goals.
Regards, Sourabh Daptardar
On 17-Jan-07, at 10:05 PM, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
I was just wondering; do NGOs in India look at FOSS as an alternative for cost-cutting at all?
not on their own - generally a bias against FOSS
Has anyone on-list succeeded in introducing FOSS in any NGO-aided school or vocational training centre?
yes
On Wednesday 17 January 2007 22:05, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
Hi,
I was just wondering; do NGOs in India look at FOSS as an alternative for cost-cutting at all?
According to those who know (and honest enough to speak), ngos in Mumbai are one big mafia exploiting the ones they are supposed to protect. They are completely dishonest money leechers, sucking up phoren funding by organising paparazzi events which are quickly forgotten by new improved paparazzi events. Lots of money comes from he UN and are targeted at flavour of the day causes, some of which catch the public fancy like AIDS (never mind we have 10 times more TB and malnutrition deaths) or child labour or save the stray dogs. In the case of aids the money goes right back to the donors via purchasing patented drugs whose efaccy is unkown.
According to those who know (and honest enough to speak), ngos in Mumbai are one big mafia exploiting the ones they are supposed to protect. They are completely dishonest money leechers, sucking up phoren funding by organising paparazzi events which are quickly forgotten by new improved paparazzi events. Lots of money comes from he UN and are targeted at flavour of the day causes, some of which catch the public fancy like AIDS (never mind we have 10 times more TB and malnutrition deaths) or child labour or save the stray dogs. In the case of aids the money goes right back to the donors via purchasing patented drugs whose efaccy is unkown.
Very true. In fact lets not forget who's the biggest contributor for fighting AIDS in India. Would he really want the NGO's funded by him(and his wife) NOT using windoze? It wouldn't surprise me if most of that money went into buying M$ software licenses.
Regards,
- vihan
On Thursday 18 January 2007 12:28, Vihan Pandey wrote:
Lots of money comes from he UN and are targeted at flavour of the day causes,
Very true. In fact lets not forget who's the biggest contributor for fighting AIDS in India. Would he really want the NGO's funded by him(and his wife) NOT using windoze?
Also now Phoren Money has to be routed thru the GOI. So now u have exactly the type of setup u dont want to have. Govt babu controlled by poltician in bed with regular crooks acting as money gateway to busybodies influencing ignorant agravated people into signing on the new improved (un) development plan. The more things change the more they stay the same. NGOs in the education space may yet be clean and could be targeted, the rest is just a waste of time.
It wouldn't surprise me if most of that money
went into buying M$ software licenses.
I think much of the donation is directly by providing software worth millions of bucks!
"Billy announces another huge mega bucks donation by way of software and hardware"
Sachin G. Nambiar Indian Pneumatic & Hydraulic Co.
On 18-Jan-07, at 12:28 PM, Vihan Pandey wrote:
fighting AIDS in India. Would he really want the NGO's funded by him (and his wife) NOT using windoze? It wouldn't surprise me if most of that money went into buying M$ software licenses.
there is a total separation between gates foundation and microsoft - and that is one of the few ngos that is doing good work
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Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
I was just wondering; do NGOs in India look at FOSS as an alternative for cost-cutting at all? Has anyone on-list succeeded in introducing FOSS in any NGO-aided school or vocational training centre?
http://indradg.randomink.org/blog/ -> Indranil Das Gupta does last I checked
:Sankarshan
- --
You see things; and you say 'Why?'; But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw
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Dinesh Joshi -
Gabin Kattukaran -
jtd -
Kenneth Gonsalves -
Sachin G Nambiar -
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay -
saurabh daptardar -
Siddhesh Poyarekar -
Vihan Pandey