On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Karanbir Singh<mail-li...@karan.org> wrote: > Hi, > > Firstly, I dont think you understand Open Source as a whole, and Linux in > specific. > > On 08/25/2009 11:55 AM, Nalin Savara wrote: >> >> I had been exposed to more specific overtures of Microsoft to policy >> makers >> etc-- and that scares me and pushes me to contribute and/or actually >> encourage people who are contributing to FOSS in india. > > Open Source has nothing to do with Microsoft. eg. There are many many open > source projects that only aim to target usability on the MS platforms. Apple > / Sun / IBM / Cisco etc are all in the same boat. Open source does not, as > an idea, target any commercial product vendor. The main aim is about choice > and the existence of that choice, even when working with closed vendor > solutions. > > To give you a more specific example, since you seem very new to the whole > world of open source, is the whole noise around Microsoft Word. Noone has > any problems with MS-Word and what its capable of and what it looks like or > what it does. None is asking for it to be 'open sourced'. However, the file > formats used by Word tend to be focused around locking a user into the Word > 'platform' and also create 'peer pressure' on everyone to also buy into > this. The open source movement wants that to be taken away - the > filefdormats, data exchange formats, should be an open specification so as > to let the user decide on whats a better solution for their roles. And if > MSWord is what they need, nothing stops them from going out and buying it. > Lets not forget, its still a free world and most people are generally > allowed to make choices that work for them. > > Another example that might help clear this up for you is the cifs/smb suite. > Think about it. > > I have no agenda, and I know most people here on the list as well as people > involved with open source, dont target a company for what it is, as long as > there is no abuse of their position to impact the choice users might have. > And in many cases, you will find fullstack vendors like Sun, actually > shipping Linux and BSD containers in Solaris ( anyone remember Solaris > Brandz ? ) > >> ---- >> (1) My mail was based on my own career and product development >> experience-- > > but your comments were neither about your career nor your products nor about > people you know anything about. Which is why most of your email was just > wasted noise. > >> that products always take longer than expected to develop--- and if one >> starts looking at weaknesses/non-compliances/faults too early--- the >> development may never reach critical speed OR critical mass-- and may drag >> on forever. > > you might want to look up how this process works in the open source world. > Also, version control is fairly competent these days and working on branches > isnt as hard or as alien as it used to be in the dark ages. > >> It is a well studied phenomena among product develop professionals in >> various fields called-- that if you dont have any prototype OR feature >> complete product early (no matter how buggy)--- then chances are it is >> going >> to take a order of magnitude more time to converge upon a stable and >> usable >> final shippable product. > > Do you even know what BOSS is and what they are doing ? you seem to be > working it a an upstream of debian. What they do is essentially a few people > doing very few package development, and building a distro ( which is usually > just running a script, a script they didnt write )
I am not familiar with the Boss Linux team but over the past 2-3 years I've had run-ins with other Govt. agencies building Linux distributions (yes there are others and their functioning is obscure by design.). But you would not see my chest swell up with pride, for these may technically be open source projects but the spirit is proprietary and the hidden agenda behind any such govt. effort is pretty clear - Do not let yourself become redundant. If competent people are willing to put in time and effort for free, why should the govt. should continue to pay someone else for doing an inferior job? Do you see how dangerous that question is? It is the reason why these people prefer to develop behind closed doors, and that is a model that is doomed from the word go. -- Anupam _______________________________________________ ilugd mailinglist -- ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org 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/
