Re: Chinese know how to cut costs vs. OpenSource

["Ruchir Tewari" <ruchir_tewari@hotmail.com>]

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I tend to agree that the market will grow beyond our
current conception. Also agree with Pandey and Robert
that cheap programmers are the last thing that will
ensure our place in that growing market. Java/VC++/VB
gave us a foot in the door to making business applications,
but it has not taken us much closer to innovating in
the software arena.

That's where I see the open source revolution finding
a place. Having access to the operating system source,
the compiler source, the networking source or a database
source, leads to getting closer to the guts of the computer
than anything else I've known. This software, also known as
Systems Software is what is key to moving up the value chain.

Any major advances in software will require a solid
understanding of the concepts behind Systems Software, which
is the software that actually runs the computer, vs. the
software that is run as an application for end-users.
This knowledge has largely been focussed on and confined in
big companies like HP, IBM, Sun, Microsoft and big name universities
like Berkeley, Stanford (from which Sun and HP were born), MIT and
CMU.

Linux and Open Source has made this knowledge freely available to
everyone.
What luck ! Why not make the best of it and feed it
to young minds ? Linux must become a core part of India's IT policy.
You can even have a version of linux for each language in india.
(There already exist Russian, Chinese, Brazilian,Spanish,Japanese,
French,Mexican and about 50 other versions). Linux is in use by
scientists in making high end and low cost Beowulf supercomputers.
Half of the web servers in the world are run on linux. Go to
www.rpmfind.net and you'll find the source from everything to Basic
interpreters to X11 source. So this is serious stuff.

Note that in Systems Software, Universities, in India will have
a hugely bigger role to play than they have in the current software
industry in India. Because this is serious stuff that lends itself
to academic study and is more difficult to pick up than just picking
up a book on Java/C++ and practicing it. Also the benefits
are less immediately obvious. So the goverment
and academia have to make sure they work in sync to make this
investment.

At the same time, it is very important to let kids have access
to linux at a young age. They'll figure it out with or without
a university. Just give it to them. The country owes it to them
to at least give them what's freely available and to allow them
to network with each other.

Robert may have a valid concern about sloppiness regarding
programming vs. APIs. This is a software engineering issue and
the solution to that would be spreading the knowledge of software
engineering. I myself am also primarily looking at Linux as
a very powerful educational tool, rather than a platform to be
making money on (although that may also change).

I hope we can all rally enough to enough powers-that-be in India,
to make this a reality ASAP.

- Ruchir






>From: "Ratnendra Pandey" <pandey@hotmail.com>
>To: india-gii@cpsr.org
>
>>From: Vickram Crishna <vvcrishna@india.com>
>>To: India GII <india-gii@cpsr.org>
>>Subject: Re: Chinese know how to cut costs
>>Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2001 18:25:00 +0530>
>>
>>I don't think the future status of software is as depressing as Pandey

>>makes
>>out: rather than a host of companies fighting for  a diminishing
>>market-place, it is more than likely the market will grow beyond our
>>present
>>conception, with millions, maybe billions, of consumers,
buying...perhaps
>>thru lease models, perhaps directly, perhaps both... lots and lots of
>>applications and services that we haven't seen yet and that will only
>>become
>>obvious once pervasive and permanent bandwidth is with us, and for the

>>many,
>>not the few.
>>When you sell a lot, it doesn't really matter that the margins are
lower
>>than today's upwards of 50%, often 100%...after all this is
>>knowledgeware...many companies net over 20% year-on-year.
>>Vickram



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