[This is a long mail. But please bear me out.] On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 15:57 +0530, Kapil Sethi wrote: > Even Reserve Bank of India has problems showing content in hindi without > using proprietory info
[...] > I guess none of the Banks and the companies who have developed these > websites know that there are operating system / browsers apart from > MS-Windows and IE/Netscape > Actually EOT doesnt even work in Netscape 4.x. At the time these websites were developed the alternative dynamic font tech for Netscape was PFR. However, PFR fonts required you to buy an SDK from Bitstream (the company behind PFR). On the other hand, Microsoft gave away their proprietary dynamic font SDK (called weft) for free. So the end result was that virtually everybody used to use weft to develop dynamic fonts only for IE. It is these kind of scenarios which caused Netscape to be totally neglected, and IE to be a virtual monopoly. > We are going to fill up pages after pages into the Hall of shame, unless > something concrete is done to actually inform the banks / development > companies about non-proprietory alternatives. > And I doubt that Management of Public Sector banks is going to lend an > ear for all this when the Website of President of India has not done > anything in removing the IE tag in all these days. You are right. Personally, it seems to me that mere listing of these cases is not going to be fruitful. We have to do more than this. Listing of these kind is similar to merely complaining. We have to actually go way beyond that and *act* on these incidents. As I have written before, if we are interested in making a difference in the lives of our countrymen( and ofcourse, women), we have to have not one, but THREE different movements. 1. Advocacy ============= Educate people why they should be using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). We have to be very careful of using the right language while doing this. Preaching about the cost factor only is going to boomerang on us. In the near future, it is theoretically possible that companies like Microsoft can use tactics like selling Windows "starter" packs at heavy discounts (like what dialup ISPs have been doing of late) and then making windows updates available at a subscription price (similar to Red Hat's current revenue strategy). They can then surrogately force people to subscribe by making the latest versions of software like IM, etc. work only on updated copies of Windows. This is a *very* real possibility. If we pitch FOSS on price, we will lose the battle because it is very difficult to explain to people the actual cost of software in such scenarios. And the day when reasons of cost no longer hold (like in the case I mentioned above), we are back to square one. 2. Compatibility ================= This is a second movement which has been totally neglected till now. The Hall of Shame was probably the first initiative to address this, but it is clearly not adequate. Instead of mere griping about how some websites, or hardware or ISPs dont work with Linux, we have to proactively go after these people. Take no prisoners. Dont give new Linux users any excuse to say "Linux mein kuch nahi chalta (nothing works on Linux)". I call this movement "Stand against Discrimination of Free Software Users". After all we are getting discriminated, isnt it? Dont leave things to market forces - start your own force. May the force be with you. ;) To begin with, go after all Indian entities. Start with banks, railways and airways reservation websites. Shout at them asking them to become more standards compliant. Petition the government. Ask them to implement a *mandatory* FOSS friendly policy on all their websites. Remember, unlike private concerns who can afford to determine their niche market, the government has NO RIGHT to discriminate against its citizens on any ground! Give people the analogy - "How would you like if Doordarshan could only be received using TVs from Sony?" Similarly, government websites should be accessible by anybody! Hit out against ISPs and branded computer manufacturers through out the country. Ask ISPs to always provide a Linux friendly Internet access option. Ask branded computer vendors to ensure that all their bundled hardware works with Linux out of the box. 3. Support -------------- Making people take up Linux is halfway there. Ensure that they get adequate support! So what if you convinced your neighbor that Linux is the right choice for them? What if he is otherwise a technophobe, and is terribly scared of tinkering with his computer for anything other than browsing, word processing and chat? We cant expect the masses to be all geeks - reading howtos, and compiling their own drivers! It is more likely that your neighbor would pay a neighborhood Linux vendor for an AMC on his computer. It is as likely that small offices too would like to give AMC to a cheap and reliable Linux vendor. Much as many of us loath to do, we have to help and encourage the small time software support outfits throughout the country to get "Linux- ready". Tell them about LUGs. Provide them a platform to discuss their problems. Soon real end users will start hearing of Linux from their neighborhood vendor, and of Linux's "legendary" resistance against viruses, being legal, running without problems and without major upgrades for years. OS like Windows and Mac have their own companies to sell their ware. FOSS alternatives don't. Petition the government that given the fact that FOSS is essential for bringing universally affordable computing power to a poor country like ours, the least that the government can do is to setup a FOSS service exchange (similar to job centres that the government run). The government should help set up a website where FOSS service seekers and services providers can meet. I call this the "Dont worry - Help is always at hand" movement. ;) The idea is to assure present and future Linux end users, that they are never alone. Help is always at hand - they have free (with the condition that they are open to self-help) as well as cheap paid support (in which they can just pick up the phone and cry "HELP!") So far, all LUGs around the country have been focussing on the first movement - advocacy. But that is only less than half of what we should be doing! No wonder we are progressing so slowly! - Sandip -- Sandip Bhattacharya * Puroga Technologies * [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: http://www.puroga.com * Home: http://www.sandipb.net PGP/GPG Signature: 51A4 6C57 4BC6 8C82 6A65 AE78 B1A1 2280 A129 0FF3 I bet Einstein turned himself all sorts of colors before he invented the lightbulb. -- Homer Simpson Bart the Genius _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org/
