Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
November 17th, 2002 by Doc Searls in
Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal
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Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 28th, 2002 beyboo (not verified) says:
Let me add here that a lot of India's computing has strong roots in UNIX. a generation of computing has happened in Unix and a lot of critical databases also run on it. This has endured the windows strom till date.
I am in Mumbai - the commercial capital of India. Yes for enterprise computing windows is the preferred platform as companies are waiting and watching for Linux to graduate in to a mature dataase server - possibly with oracle running as strong as it runs on unix or solaris.
But I know for sure that when it comes to using a networking component a lot of corporates pitch in linux - be it for a web server, an email server - a firewall or a network monitoring tool.
Thanks to initiatives by PC Quest a premier magazine in India which spearheaded the campaign to make it popilar in india - most major magazines very regularly carry CD sets of the popular distros in their issues.
Red hat and Suse are by far the most popular - Thanks to Redhat and their RPM technology - linux is gradually coming in to the corporates in india in a small way thru the froont gates - but surely in a big way from backdoors !!
To give examples the power supply corporation of Mumbai BSES which is also the monopoly public transport provider and power supplier and also an ISP is all for Linux in a serious way.
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 18th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Actually, very few home users in India are using legal copies of windows. I bought Windows 2000 Advanced Server for Rs. 100 or $2. All it needs is a few seconds of bargaining.
I am going to buy a new P4 with an 80 GB drive and the dealer has promised to put in WinXP, Win 98 (for dear old DOS games), Office XP, the full DevStudio, Age of Empires, Flight Stimulator, QIII & TA, Norton SysWorks, and much more for no extra cost.
The Indian authorities are too lazy to go after all those anonymous users for a foreign company. So Bill's best hope is to consolidate in the government & educational sectors first. For that, he needs positive publicity. His philanthropic gestures are receiving front page attention and the court cases have been pushed on the backburner.
I can't think how they can use windows to replace linux in educational institutions - the annual fees per student are much lower than the price of a single copy of WinNT.
However, we desperately needs money to fight AIDS and the government's best bet is to play along.
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 19th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Sounds like the Mother Theresea play...
Here little hungry child... have a sandwitch, but only if you convert to Catholicism and shun your parent's belief system...
Here India, we will give you much needed $$$ for your AIDS epidemic, but first sign this ELUA
gak
-jph
nice slam on mother teresa -
On January 24th, 2005 Anonymous (not verified) says:
nice slam on mother teresa - i'm not even a catholic but I know enough not to be ignorant to make that comparison. Teresa would pull dying people off the street so they could die with some dignity. She didn't require they convert or shun their parents belief system to get help.
Bill Gates on the other hand... I'm not so sure.
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On February 8th, 2004 Anonymous says:
Your mom has aids :)
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 18th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Hmmm, this never occurred to me before, but perhaps
we can pressure Bill G. in supporting Developing Countries
out of his pocket money of $40 Billion.
It sure beats the U.N. program !
Toon Moene (GNU Fortran maintainer).
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 18th, 2002 Anonymous says:
I think this shows that Linux is finally generating some compatition for MicroSoft in the OS business, causing them
to behave more compatitevily = better to the customers.
Maybe MicroSoft will now start learning that they must be
nice and not agreessive with the customers, or they will
go away.
Ideally, both Linux and Windows shall flourish in India - competition is good!
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 17th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Indian firms are looking for capitalist opportunities (www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2002-11/sunflash.20021106.1.html) if open source can support this.
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 17th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Isn't this the same way that MS has operated in various other places in the world? They never attempt to combat piracy until Windows has become the predominant operating system, once the population is hooked they'll move their lawyers in.
Actually it's a smart play on their part....use the piracy to establish dominance....it's been very successfull for them in the past.
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 18th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Yes. That is what happened in my country (Malaysia) too. The piracy is so bad here that 99 % windows & office are pirated. But these 3 years Microsoft launch anti piracy campaign and one set of MS office they sell for RM 2,500 (US $600) and many company suffer. But luckily I change my client one all to Openoffice and they are very happy with it.
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 17th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Actually very few personal PCs in India have legtimate copy of Windows. These are usually pirated versions that cost as low as Rs 200 ($4).
If there is push to root out piracy in India, it will be Linux which will certainly benefit.
Heck, even companies use pirated editions and hope to get away with it.
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 23rd, 2002 Anonymous says:
>If there is push to root out piracy in India, it will be Linux which will certainly benefit.
Yes, this is the reason I am excited about Palladium; it seems like it will initiate a push against pirated software world wide. With fs being the ultimate victor. And if Palladium doesn't work out then we will get to keep our computing privacy for a few more years, either way we win!
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 19th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Because cost of getting a cd and copying it comes around $4 and not because it has windows ;-)
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On June 25th, 2003 Anonymous says:
i am bux what do you want from this .
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 17th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Just like in Russia.
I'm surprised Russia hasn't considered Linux as a way of stopping the illegal use of software. I'm also surprised Bill hasn't tried to stop it for them. Even the Russian government uses pirated copies of Windows.
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 17th, 2002 Anonymous says:
We used to use pirated software in romania at firms
but bsa armada killed the move
Now in my office we don't have any pirated software .
if we had dreamweaver 4 linux ,flash ,fireworks photoshop
then all stations would be linux .this should do united linux
port those apps on linux ...
I type this on a rh 80 .It shocked me how good it is ..AA ...
I used mdk 8.x before and installed mdk90 but they put all that kde
on my drive (even if i selected NO KDE ) and it was slow ...ugly
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 17th, 2002 Anonymous says:
As far as I know there's no copyright law in India.
(Someone who knows for a certainty please correct me)
That's one of the reasons Indian movie DVDs are so cheap (comparatively - I can buy used Bollywood DVDs $CDN 1/disc, whereas Blockbuster sells used Hollywood DVDs for minimum $8)
Re: Tux Fights Bux for the Soul of India
On November 19th, 2002 Anonymous says:
Hi,
There *is* a copyright law in India, and its just as stringent in India as in US. Only the enforcement is lacking a bit.
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