Posted on 08/27/2005 2:23:40 PM PDT by Golden Eagle
Kerala, a tiny coastal state in south India, is a site of significant popularity of free software and GNU/Linux. What lessons can Kerala teach other areas about using free and open source software?
Kerala, as a state, is strongly grounded in principles of socialism. Most of the educated middle class is leftist, at least in principle. The state is credited with a near 100% literacy rate and better social statistics than most of the rest of the country. And all this is reflected in a spirit among the people to question any decision imposed on them. They resent lack of choices, and by extension, oppose monopolies. What better fuel for an open source/free software movement to thrive on than a society like this?
(Excerpt) Read more at software.newsforge.com ...
Sure, here's one right here:
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2002-08-30-011-26-NW-LL-PB
Venezuela's Government Shifts to Open Source Software
According to government sources in Venezuela, the South American nation has announced an official policy that exclusively calls for the use of open source software in that government.
I am from Kerala. Kerala was introduced to Christianity in 52 AD by Jesus' disciple Thomas. As a result of the Christian influence, the church invested in literacy (schools and universities), healthcare (hospitals), and other projects designed to improve the standard of care of all of the people: hindu, muslim, and Christian.
Historically, the land had been divided into kingdoms, that gave way to a population of land and home owners and a set of poor people. Because of the great success of the education initiatives, even the poor were literate. When Karl Marks' works became available, the "labor class" or "workers" were able to read it. Many charlatans took advantage of this to try and exploited these people. The began a class war that took the lives of a great many hardworking and descent people and stole their lands.
Through intimidation and a mob-like rule, they still control politics from the local to the state-wide level.
Some might claim that the good has come from the commies, but that is simply not the case. As is true with all communist regimes, the first victim is truth. History is rewritten and propaganda flows freely.
To be fair, could you supply a list of companies that are refusing to do business with China because of it's politics?
To blame ONLY Microsoft is pretty ridiculous. The life expectancy of a CEO of a major corporation, who refuses to do business in a country with as many potential buyers as China, would be pretty short.
Wrong, China has policies in place that could have all MS products banned in the government NLT 2010.
http://asia.cnet.com/news/software/printfriendly.htm?AT=39146335-39001094t-39000001c
China Blocks Foreign Software Use in Government
A new policy by China's governing body will rule that all ministries buy only locally-produced software at the next upgrade cycle.
The move by the State Council is aimed at breaking the dominance of U.S.-based Microsoft on desktop computers, will eliminate Microsoft's Windows operating system and Office productivity suite from hundreds of thousands of Chinese government computers in a few years' time.
A turkish friend told me that you can buy Windoze XP for $1 on the streets of Istanbul. So, in some parts of the world, the competition is between two forms of "free" software.
From the article: The announcement, made on Wednesday, stated that from now on, all software developed for the government must be licenced under the GPL.
You are right, whatever organizations are monitoring the Free Trade should be raising a stink over this. It's pretty much giving one OSS the potential to create a monopoly.
How do you feel about Microsoft opening the source to a large portion of .Net and C#?
That's obvioulsy stolen software, which doesn't really count as competition so much as it is a crime.
Funny how you refuse to admit that FACT, sport.
Actually...it's more than funny. It stinks on ice. And it's very telling how far you'll go to cover for Microsoft.
So tell me...how much do they pay you to whore their malware in public forums, hm?
pssst ... Golden Eagle, if this is true, can you tell me how I can get in on it? Mo' Money, Mo' Money!
Ouch ... now that's gonna leave a mark.
That's really beside the point. I don't go whoring products for one company while badmouthing free products that are in use in communist countries...unlike Herr Buzzard.
And Microsoft doesn't just sell its stuff to the Chinese. It willfully altered it to accommodate Communist totalitarianism. Big difference there.
Very interesting, thanks for your reply.
When Karl Marks' works became available, the "labor class" or "workers" were able to read it. Many charlatans took advantage of this to try and exploited these people. The began a class war that took the lives of a great many hardworking and descent people and stole their lands. Through intimidation and a mob-like rule, they still control politics from the local to the state-wide level.
What you describe is exactly what we've seen in every instance of communism, it's simply a false promise by which an elite class seizes control of the populace.
Some might claim that the good has come from the commies, but that is simply not the case. As is true with all communist regimes, the first victim is truth. History is rewritten and propaganda flows freely.
Some obviously would claim that, there are proponents for communism everywhere, and they are very forceful with their opinions. They generally break into two categories, those who have a position in society whereby they might become part of the ruling party, and the "useful idiots" as Marx referred to them that help provide the ruling class their power out of ignorance.
Thanks again for your comments, please feel free to contribute further to this thread or any others I frequent.
True. But in all fairness, I am pretty sure other companies alter their products to fit other gov'ts needs, don't they?
If it isn't, it might as well be. Sun has so screwed the pooch with that OS. I used to be an exclusive Solaris user and admin...but after the way they treated their Solaris x86 people, I lost all respect and interest in Sun and their products.
I've already pointed this out to you before, yet you continually refuse to accept facts. Too busy calling me names and bolding your fonts, apparently.
You have to wonder what is going on with the brains of people running some companies. Why do stupid things like alienating their customer base?
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