Tamil Nadu (India) Shutting the Door On Microsoft

aprasadh writes "The government of Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, has begun initiatives to convert all of their IT systems fully to OSS-based software. (The link is a copy of a news item that appeared recently in the Deccan Chronicle, an English-language daily.) The managing director of the IT procurement, consulting, and training agency for the Tamil Nadu government describes the reasons why he has chosen OSS, and also how he dealt with Microsoft executives." From the article: "Initially, 99 per cent of government systems have been running on Microsoft systems but then 2007 will be a watershed year for the state IT sector... We have already dispatched 6,500 Linux systems to village panchayats and another 6,100 Acer desktop systems with Suse Linux operating systems are on their way. We are procuring 20,000 desktop systems for schools, which will run only on Suse Linux... I require at least 500 trainers to train 30,000 state officials across Tamil Nadu in the next six months."

Pity it's only Linux - what about the alternative?

[AEton]

I think it's pretty clear that the Tamils should run Tiger.

Out Sourcing

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone forgot who butters thiri bread. MS may pull their call centers out of India now. Oh, wait, maybe that's a GOOD thing.

It's a scam!

[aussie_a]

I require at least 500 trainers to train 30,000 state officials across Tamil Nadu in the next six months.

If anyone is interested then please deposit a small sum of money $1,000 into my bank account to cover the cost of getting your visa and other associated paperwork. Because I am so desperate for trainers I will be paying $100,000 so it is really only a very small sum of money.

hey..

[krunchyfrog]

Am I hearing chairs flying around?

Re:30,000 government officials?

[Timesprout]

30,001. And I bet he still has to queue.

Good Riddens ?

[Joebert]

If their "SEO" & "Website builder" strategies are any indication of how their government operates, I bet Microsofts' real reaction to this would be more along the lines of "Don't let the door hit you on the way out, ya cheap bastards !".

Austin Powers

[kahei]

"I hate two things: bigotry, and the dutch."

And now I find them combined in one handy /. post, for the low low price of just 1 lahk rupees (306.9 EUR, 400 billion USD, 2 GBP)!

Re:What a laugh!

[mcvos]

Here's a country that's just learned to count, and it thinks it can go up against the most powerful country in the world, with a long history of mathematical excellence.

"Just learned to count"? I know the US educational system has a bad reputation, but isn't this a bit of an exaggeration?

Re:Pity it's only Linux - what about the alternati

[Slithe]

The Tamil Tigers are not terrorists. They have an Air Force.

that' nice, because...

[born4fun]

... every time an IT system is converted from Windows to OSS, a chair in Redmond gets its wings!

Get your facts right.

[The Cydonian]

In India we fly carpets, not chairs.

Re:Suse?

[that this is not und]

Just like you can't run Windows on a PowerPC, and wouldn't even try

Actually, I did try. On a PReP IBM RS/6000 box. The PowerPC binaries are right on the NT 4.0 install disk with all the other binaries (for Alpha and Intel).

There isn't a blazed thing at all you can do once you've got Windows installed, however. I couldn't find once single thing at all. And the preinstalled Internet Explorer 2.0 works just as well (translation: just as horribly) on NT/PPC as it does on NT/i386. You can't even go to www.microsoft.com with the 'default' IE installed with NT 4.0.

But, I wanted to clear up your misconception that you can't run Windows on a PowerPC.