[ubuntu-in] Time to look inwards.

[Manish Sinha]

On 03/02/2011 03:13 PM, Ramnarayan.K wrote:
> @ BOSS Linux - am not sure of the investments and the outputs but
> another good thing about CDAC and Boss linux is their presence at many
> IT events. The free CD's people may or may not use but what it does is
> give publicity not just to linux but to multi language computing.
> There was a time when they were ahead of the curve, unfortunately as
> with many Govt and non govt projects its all probably personality and
> motivation dirven and some other enthu folks must have been posted to
> their equivalent of kaalapani and thats the end of their before the
> curve production.

I went to bossslinux.in website and found now way how I can contribute
or how they sync with Debian or which packages are available or release
plan or anything like that.

As Gora told, it looks like they too need to learn the Bazaar model of
development.

> @ NRC-FOSS - am wondering if there are any on this list - i knew one
> person from a lug list and this guy was a pain the the unmentionables
> and even after joining FOSS has this demeaning condescending attitude
> that is not good for anything leave alone FOSS. And if he is
> reflective of NRC_FOSS the i think its better to leave them out of
> anything. Am not sure what NRC-FOSS is upto but never hear of them
> much , maybe because they are south india based, so any south indian
> ubunturos have any idea what they are upto.

Let me be harsh on this person. I don't want to, but have to.
He is probably the biggest non-anonymous troll I have ever seen in India.
He doesn't seem to realize the ground realities and take a practical 
approach towards spreading FOSS or it's values. His constant flames 
mailing lists and abuses people to the extent that he has been banned 
from ##linux-india channel by Raj Mathur.

It is because of this person, NRC-FOSS has a very very bad image in 
India. You don't spread FOSS by attacking people, but screaming at them, 
but by helping others transition to the new world.


> What gora says in relevant - how much has CDAC every contributed back.

My issue if not with contributing back to Debian. My issue is the 
cathedral model of development. Probably their workforce is small, then 
probably they might find it difficult to contribute.

First step for contributing back to Debian is to allow people to 
contribute to BOSS itself. This might take off some load from BOSS 
developers so that they can send the changes back to Debian.

> Probably not much. In a discussion with CDAC and one other related
> government agency at a Delhi LUG annual do (forget the name now) there
> was this technology being promoted by the government to promoted
> distributed computing in villages. The problem was not the tech (which
> was fairly good) but the licenses. The Govt agency has some rule that
> if the govt spends money on something they cannot give it an open
> license, they cannot give the code away because "its their property? -

Their property? Ask them to check the license. It is stealing!

--
Manish