India leader advocates open source (News.com) [LWN.net]

India leader advocates open source (News.com)

Posted May 30, 2003 4:47 UTC (Fri) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

This is nice, but it's important to know that under a parliamentary system such as India's, the president has a limited, mostly ceremonial role; the prime minister has the real power. So, while the president's opinion may be influential, he has no power to make the government replace Windows with Linux.

India leader advocates open source (News.com)

Posted May 30, 2003 6:13 UTC (Fri) by JvdS43 (guest, #8837) [Link]

for sure the president has a limit, but we can see also that linux now will give the whole
world the opportunity to develop a good alternative for a desktop. No rules anymore from
the top as microsoft has always done. This is a way how the world will react on leaders
with no sense of compasion and thinking in dollars. everything needs a oposite so linux
is and will be for microsoft.

Johan

psychotherapist

President of India advocates open source (or is it free software?)

Posted May 30, 2003 7:07 UTC (Fri) by rkpagadala (guest, #6588) [Link]

Kalam is Confused. He talks of Indian Software Industry (mostly proprietary software) wants it to be robust.
On the other hand he does not want India to depend on "proprietory solutions".
In the context of his speech he seems to be advocating "free software" and not "open source".
Can somebody clear him up? he seems a little too confused.
Krishna

President of India advocates open source (or is it free software?)

Posted May 30, 2003 9:22 UTC (Fri) by jneves (guest, #2859) [Link]

I thought most of India's software industry was outsourced (as in, software develloped on behalf of others). In those cases, legal copyright goes to the client and so, if not redistributed, it is Free Software (as in the user may exercise the 4 freedoms). Only if redistributed with a proprietary license it will loose the Free Software status.

President of India advocates open source (or is it free software?)

Posted May 30, 2003 20:31 UTC (Fri) by rkpagadala (guest, #6588) [Link]

Kalam compares Indian IT with IT giants, and wants Indian industry to have the same charecteristics ($/employee), which is clearly impossible with the free software model.

President of India advocates open source (or is it free software?)

Posted Jun 1, 2003 15:26 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I think Stallman agrees also believes that software wages in a Free Software world would be lower, but I dissagree.

If all software was GPL, it would become more useful since software choices would be made by the end user in a fair competition. I think this increased usefulness would generate increased interest in software development.

An excellent programmer who does the work of 10 average programmers would be highly sought after and would be offered a high wage. Increased interest in software means increased interest in highering software developers.

I do think that less money would move around the software industry as a whole, but I think the drop would be due to the decreased importance of big legal teams, half-truth marketing campaigns, and tactical managers. All of which would be useless when the code can be viewed and modified.

Hardware manufacturers need people to write drivers. Businesses need custom software, or someone to adapt existing software.

System administrators that can program would also see increased wages since they could truly fix problems that they encounter rather than just working around them.

Ciaran O'Riordan