[ubuntu-in] Time to look inwards.

[gora at sarai.net]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2011 11:39:50 +0530 Narendra Sisodiya
<narendra at narendrasisodiya.com> wrote

> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 10:50 AM, stereotactic  wrote:
> Hi All.
> 
> C-DAC is promoting its BOSS Linux through newspaper advertisements. While it
> is a good thing, but mere promotion is not good enough. I find their
> advertisements insipid (released through the Government of India machinery)
> and fails to communicate the importance of Open Source.
[...]
> Most of the people also fail to grasp the import of existing technologies or
> how the could be mashed up and deliver something of value. Hence, we Indians
> are always "laggards", be it anything- IT, Open Source, Gnome, KDE or any
> other flavor- nothing is distinctly Indian.
> 
> Hence more than the localization efforts and spending energies in hammering
> the "riff raff" on the mailing lists, it would be more instructive to hammer
> out ideas, find out what needs to be corrected in the system and overcome
> those issues.
> 
> Ok, you List out, what to do and what not to do. You cannot imagine
> importance of these projects. CDAC regulary organize workshops on BOSS and
> teach Govt officials about FOSS.
[...]

On the face of it, BOSS Linux is a good project, and
if they achieve even part of what they claim to be
doing that will be a significant achievement. Having
said that, I have very strong reservations about how
CDAC, and to a somewhat lesser extent, other governmental
organisations in India, such as NRC-FOSS, relate to
the FOSS community. IMHO, they are still in the cathedral
model, with themselves as the centre, and have little
appreciation of how FOSS works. E.g., BOSS Linux pulls
happily from Debian, but contributes nothing back, at
least when I last looked. You could say that is how
government in India works, but to my mind that mode of
functioning is exactly the problem.

As stereotactic mentions, the goal should be to find and
fix issues with Indian participation in FOSS projects,
rather than to try to find problems with existing work.
Personally, I no longer see much potential in the
community trying to engage with the government: We need
to make things work on our own. I also disagree about
localisation, though: IMHO, while Indian-language support
is not being worked on in a systematic manner, it is very
important that such work be done.

Regards,
Gora