Tamil Nadu (India) Shutting the Door On Microsoft 269
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."
Re:Pity it's only Linux - what about the alternati (Score:1, Informative)
Tamil Tigers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_tigers [wikipedia.org]
Tamil Nadu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_nadu [wikipedia.org]
Re:Pity it's only Linux - what about the alternati (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What a laugh! (Score:1, Informative)
Microsoft's price (Score:3, Informative)
E-Governance efforts of Umashankar (Score:2, Informative)
Hmm .. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Pity it's only Linux - what about the alternati (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not the first (and not the last, I hope) (Score:3, Informative)
I'm officially speaking out of my glorious backside on this, but I suppose language could be a key issue here. Tamil, famously, was the first Indian language with a full Linux UI. I have no idea (too lazy) to see if there's a Tamil version for Windows, but if there isn't, here's a very good reason. (And our Tamilian brethren, bless their hearts, are rather proud of their linguistic heritage, so there).
Re:30,000 government officials? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:30,000 government officials? (Score:2, Informative)
Passed 62 million six years ago, so more than California and Texas put together. Mind you, the Indian civil service has always had a bit of a reputation for mass employment.
Re:Not the first (and not the last, I hope) (Score:4, Informative)
But, Tamilnad has smart people too, so this is good news, especially if you find all that business of helping the working poor help themselves a radioactive concept and are keen to keep your distance from it.
Re:Pity it's only Linux - what about the alternati (Score:5, Informative)
I am a Tamil, From Sri Lanka.. lets just say I know a bit more than the average person.
Tamils in Sri Lanka have been severely disenfranchised over the years by a few Nationalists.
I was going to write a bit about it, but read up on Black July.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_July [wikipedia.org] is a good starting point.
Tamils have suffered terribly in the years since independence, and organised killing, and rape by groups suspected to be associated or controlled by the Government of Sri Lanka is common.
Although I was born in Sri Lanka, I have lived in the UK since the age of three, having emigrated here since 1979. However, sometimes when I go to Sri Lanka, The fact my passport has my Place of Birth as "Jaffna" I am noticeably treated with suspicion by some people.
The LTTE are seen by many Tamils in Sri Lanka as the only hope for them. In many cases, the LTTE has provided a lot of change in Sri Lanka. However, their overall egalitarian view could cause more issues than solve at this stage. Also the use of killing to achieve the goals is another thing I am a bit objectionable about. This is why they are view by many as terrorists, even though their mandate, and their intentions are Freedom Fighters. Although most of what they do are for self defence, some actions do indeed go far beyond self defence. Certainly the LTTE are NOT on the same scale as Al-Queda, etc.
Yes you are totally correct about the Buddhist Clergy, and certain ultra nationalist factions. A lot of lies and propaganda exist there, were the general populace is hood winkled to believing that Tamils are the cause of every problem.
However, I have many Sinhalese Friends, who are frankly amazing, so maybe now is the time to capitalise on friendships, rather than war. I just feel there is too much bloodshed already, and people have to put behind old prejudices, and actually look forward. I know its not easy, I have been through the heartache of hopes being dashed. Therefore I criticize both the government and the LTTE for not really working hard to capitalising the short lived ceasefire, and showing true leadership rather than rhetoric.
The Problems in Sri Lanka are immense, and rather than tell you everything, I simply invite those who wish to know, to find information, readily available on the Internet from both sides.
One thing for sure, the war back home brings tears to my eyes. Sri Lanka was and in some ways still is a beautiful country, with some very smart educated and intellectual people. Had there not been a war, Sri Lanka would be on a par with Korea and other far east "tigers".
Re:MS overquote? (Score:3, Informative)
Remembering Dell's claim that they only pay about $10 per PC for Windows, you are looking at a range of $182 (Windows pre-installed plus volume license) to $457 (retail Windows plus volume license) just for the OS licenses per PC, to purchase via volume licensing.
Jet airways runs inflight video on demand on Linux (Score:3, Informative)
If it can happen anywhere... (Score:3, Informative)
I know a lot of us have experienced the despair of offshore IT "help desks" and many of those are in India. But they're just cowboys jumping on the outsourcing bandwaggon. Their days are numbered, for the most part.
This part of the business gives a false impression of what the state of IT expertise in India is *really* like. It's pretty darn good. There are plenty of highly competent IT people there and, yes they generally have a huge advantage in terms of cost-of-living vs. expected-income. However, despite the rhetoric about the Internet making geographical location irrelevant, I don't see it happening just yet. For most of my work I still have to fly to the client's site.
But, in their own back yard, Indian IT workers are in a position to do what the hell they like. They have the expertise, culture and work ethic to make it work and there is no way that anyone can force a second-choice solution on them. And if they see MS as second choice...
Apt (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft indulges in heavy influence peddling by donating to schools, states' education programs etc. by one or other means. Their motto is to catch 'em young.
The media is mostly bought off with huge spends on Microsoft ads, and journalists hardly know the difference between Free Software, Open Source and their own hindsides. (If it weren't for the FSF India chapter, which is based in a state dominated by Communist parties, software patents would have crept in unnoticed when the Indian polity prostrated to the US' WTO hegemony in IPRs.)
Corporates will be corporates, and choose that which gives them the quickest advantage. Profits always beat ideology, or if I rephrase it, profits are the best ideology. If Microsoft gives the most integrated solutions with widespread support, they will naturally not want to squander their resources on experiments.
Still, it is a good sign that sane voices within various State and Central govt. bodies are being heard. Southern states are more open to FOSS, Gujarat also seems to be heading that way, but Maharashtra, which is the new IT destination seems to be leaning towards Microsoft due to the aforesaid lobbying.
Perhaps Vista and its strict DRM/License enforcement will turn more people away from free software to Free software, within a year or two. More eye-candy introduced to Linux with Compiz and Beryl will certainly help, I believe. Now we need more games and driver support for 3D in Linux. Oh, and a unified package installation system.
Wishful thinking, I know.
Re:Suse? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah - they don't provide certain packages, such as the MP3 stuff, to avoid potential legal problems. There is a simple way to fix it though - add a Packman [links2linux.org] repository to your list of sources in YaST, and update/install whatever you need. Here's one location:
http://packman.iu-bremen.de/suse/10.2/ [iu-bremen.de]
After you've added it, start the software manager and add/update "lame" and "xine-lib". It will automatically add any other libraries you need, except for libdvdcss [links2linux.de] (required for watching DVDs) - the RPM package that Packman has does not contain the source, but the site does give you some tips about how to get it and build the package; it's not difficult.
Another tip: set the filter to "Installation Summary", check all the boxes except "Do not install", then click the menu item Packages->All in This List->Update if newer version available. That will mark the newer Packman versions for installation over the original SuSE versions. Uncheck "Keep" and "Protected" to see a list of which packages it wants to change before clicking "Accept". There will probably be quite a few, so you may not want to do them all at once.
-- Steve