[ubuntu-in] Time to look inwards.

[stereotactic]

On Thursday 24 February 2011 09:23 PM, gora at sarai.net wrote:
> 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.
Exactly. Hit the nail right on the head.

But we should not just "gloat about the localization".
> 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.
Agreed. And bring something new and better than existing projects.
>   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
>
>
>