openindia: Linux India-Think in a different way

Free Software, India and Masses

“The Best Things In Life Are Free...”

a famous quote that applies perfectly to the Indian Mindset.

India even in its present stage is a village dominant country. This is evident from the fact that approximately more than 70% of 1200 million Indians reside in villages and remote areas, which means that to bring any form of progress in India one has to tap into this powerful force of remote audience. This also means that if a technology appeals to them, Success of that technology is inevitable.

Consider mobile phones, which when launched in India were available for the rich and urban. Their price being be the major hitch in its mass usage, until Reliance came into this market. Their approach was different; they appealed the remote and village residence by their prices, exciting offers and wide network coverage. It was an instant hit and made a huge profit for them and rest is history.

Now let’s talk about Computers and it’s technology. Microsoft Windows, pioneer amongst Operating Systems in India. Every kid knows about it. Almost every computer user in India has used it at least once. Why ?

Two reasons:

Back in the early Indian Computing days, it was the only horse running in the race.
Free (Pirated) versions have always been readily available.

These made a strong appeal to the Indian Computer users and since then Operating System has been replaced by the word WINDOWS. This scenario still prevails.

Now-days there are other horses (Linux distributions) in the race with free legal products available. Still PIRACY, WINDOWS, IGNORANCE and POPULARITY go hand in hand.

The only hope to eliminate the ignorance is by lighting the candle of awareness about open source and free software amongst villagers and masses.

Awareness is just like common sense, its not that common, Consider Indian schools, I can bet my last Rs. 100/- on the fact that more than 70% do not bother about using original licensed software because They are not aware about the fact that they are giving a lesson of theft to the innocent minds by using pirated software.

In short parents are paying schools to give the education of IT theft to their kids. How can we expect our future generation to respect legal, non-pirated software if we are ourselves not following the path?

I agree we Indians are accustomed of using free (pirated) software, but as my favorite student Vivu says “If you want an unforgettable experience, always choose the road less traveled”.Linux is that less traveled road in the Indian Computing Picture.

Linux (GNU) gives us the freedom to experience and distribute professional softwares, available to every computer with an Internet Connection, without breaking piracy rules.

Thus also helping our children look up to the good ideals of Legal Software Usage.

We talk about awareness and yet ironically we don't have sufficient promoters of Open Source Software in India specially in rural regions.

Buying a software is a foreign concept for a layman and If the country has to progress in the anti-piracy ideals, it must promote the awareness of free and open source products like LINUX.

Linux is easy and a professional Operating System which can do almost everything that any paid operating system can do,

IT JUST NEEDS PUBLICITY,

and Government can help, by spreading aided TV advertisements (Jan hit mein jaari, Issued in public interest) and educational seminars in schools and colleges.

At this point I have to appreciate the fact that the Kerala government has taken the initiative for Educating their children good ideals by implementing legal and free open source softwares in their schools.

Other states should follow the same motive and can take valuable clues from The discussions in past LFY issues (Year 2003 to 2005), covering Linux @ Government, Linux @ Education, Linux @ Hospital, etc.

Some tips that I can think of in the same prospective which can be applied by all educational institutes are:

Every school has at least one programming language in its syllabus. This programming language can be taught on LINUX platform. For example: C, C++ can be taught very efficiently with editors (VI, Emacs, etc), compiler (gcc), IDE (kdevelop, eclipse).

For primary school the computer syllabus includes office suite, painting, surfing INTERNET, general entertainment like games, etc. This all can be done easily on LINUX.

Open office as an office suite
TUX paint as a very good painting tool
Firefox and easy to use network tools provide seamless connectivity
Not to mention the amazing Linux games

(Example: BSNL3G comes with an Ubuntu version (another free LINUX Distributions) for its Internet dialer. SAKIS 3G is also an open source script for various universal gsm, cdma, other connections)

For senior secondary school, the syllabus should include Graphic oriented programming(QT, GTK), Database (mysql, PostGreSQL) and so on. Teachers can be easily trained in the above tools without the need of a dedicated trainer. Reading the manuals provided in the tools/web are enough.

For engineering colleges, students should be motivated to work at the ground fundamental concepts instead of giving them assignments and projects which are generally copied from Internet and are never practically used in any hotels or libraries etc(common projects being hotel management projects, library management , ticket reservation projects,etc) Its simply wastage of Valuable Time and Energy of students.

Following these simple to implement suggestions would result in a better breed of Indians who respect rules, discourage piracy, and would have a better newer technical knowledge than the obsolete ancient technologies being taught at educational institutes, which would evidently pay India great returns.

Now lets face it,Talking is easy, taking stand is arduous. We have discussed about the whole free software and Indian psychology scenario, but it would be an incomplete picture without an insight on how we are trying to take a stand.

We have successfully convinced more than 15 schools and counting to use legal software by helping them to switch to open source software.

You can catch us giving free seminars and tutorials every other weekend to help in the implementation and spreading of Linux at homes and offices. Our favorite part in it is showing off the amazing 3-D effect of compiz to the audience and watch them drooling.

To prove how efficiently programming can be done on Linux, we have developed a complete GUI software solution for schools named “SAKSHAM”. This software was developed from scratch on Ubuntu using front-end (C++ & Graphics QT) and back-end database (mysql).

We are doing our bit to spread the open source revolution and After going through it all, you would also be motivated to do your righteous deed, which is, USE FREE SOFTWARE – JUST DON'T USE FREE PIRATED SOFTWARE.