On Wednesday 17 Aug 2005 9:33 pm, sherlock@vsnl.com wrote:

And why does the government require M$ when the the likes of TCS, Infosys, Wipro and others here are grabbing major contracts and sub contracts for egovernance from all and sundry. Or are they just microeserfs of the great frod HM BG.

just curious - has any major (or minor for that matter) company in india ever released anything significant under FOSS? We hear a lot of gas about how all the major companies in India are 'into' FOSS - but all i see is closed source applications developed on open source platforms with open source tools and no contribution to the open source code base in India. What i'm talking about is something like the US military financing the development of GRASS and then releasing it as open source. When the government is faced with a choice of closed source on closed source platforms and tools and closed source on open source platforms and tools what big diff is there as to which they choose.

And this is the big weakness of the open source movement in India. We have a large number of big dadas in the movement advocating FOSS from every hilltop and dunghill, but where is the contribution of code. If you check the websites of mr X,Y and Z you will find they have returned from triumphal tour of country ZED having computerised their operations using FOSS - but where is the code? Usually a tightly guarded secret.

The growth of open source movement in India, in the last analysis, is *solely* dependant on the amount of open source code produced here - simple, no code, no movement