DELHiTECHiES » Operating systems

The Intra-Governmental FOSS Conflict

Gagan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:08:36 +0000

Today Economic Times reported about the benefits of FOSS as analyzed by a study according to the Professor Rahul De of IIM Bangaloare. That’s good, superb we already knew about the benefits of FOSS, but yes now we have a study backed up by one of the geniuses of the country. However isn’t it that it has already been there? The LIC using it, or the Govt. of Kerala leveraging the benefits FOSS Technologies. Same goes with corporates, they have always preferred Sendmail over Microsoft Exchange, and Linux over Windows and more and more FOSS when it comes to Server technologies. Organizations have been using OpenOffice.ORG from past so many years to save upon their costs.

But this study is sure to create an impact in the minds of more and more people, and ultimately drive Microsoft to their worst nightmare of Open Source taking over the corporate word (at least). But let’s talk about Government Initiative in the Open Source… Now there’s a catch!

WARNING: In the following section, I might sound Frankenstein running after NIC’s to rip it’s neck of it’s body.

IBPS Site may damage your PC

Does government actually support FOSS Initiatives ? I don’t know if you are looking at th small line at the bottom of most of the Government websites, where it says – “Please use Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or “Best viewed on Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or something analogous. Does it

SBI site is on ASP (Microsoft Active Server Pages) meaning NOT FOSS, they are using Microsoft Technologies and are actually not leveraging the benefits of FOSS where they can be best achieved – WEB and SERVER Technologies. If you anytime in your life have applied for any of the Country’s bank exams be it PO, Managerial or Clerk, you have to visit the site of Institute of Banking Peronnel Selection (IBPS). You would notice that it won’t open on Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or Google Chrome – it’s is simply loyal to Microsoft Technology – Internet Explorer.

Let’s visualize a simple example, where a person who loves linux or cannot afford Microsoft Window Operating System and want’s to make every move chaste, without the pains of proprietary software involved – Is demoralize, demotivated, his faith shattered to dust with a website popping up saying I need INTERNET EXPLORER! That wasn’t the idea of Tim Berner’s lee when he proposed Internet.

Does Government really support FOSS?

If the government really want’s to take initiatives, it should have made all the websites on NON-Microsoft Technologies, it would have saved them Millions actually Billions. Today NIC has 90% of their websites being maintained on proprietary – age old technologies, that are in no way match for today’s glossy looking, superbly interactive, and Intelligent websites. Are they ? They don’t even look like Corporate/Identity websites for Company information. Even if NOW!, after going through the Prof. Rahul De reports they think of moving from proprietary to FOSS Tech’s – who the hell be accountable for the earlier un-informed baseless decisions ?

The only one of the few website I’ve seen is the NIC’s Indigov. Its’ one of the best website, and based around php. Now what new I see is a Quality certificate being attached to the website by SQTC. Does that make a difference? What is then W3C for? CDAC, NOIDA has been one of the biggest contributor and promoter of W3C in Indian Government sector. However, now NIC & SQTC comes out with their Certificate attached to the website, ignoring all the work done so far in the field by W3C and unnecessarily putting their precious efforts into standards that have been pre-established. No doubt the website is accessible, but that accounts to just 0.1% of the websites NIC is hosting/developing/maintaining (I would rather say lingering on with). Most of the disabled people are ignored in the country (I know low floor buses just landed in Delhi, but that’s just Delhi -not India right!) and Information Technology is the last seen area where you could consider disabled people to be preferred – in INDIA.

The author is not Anti-Microsoft, he just want the web to be independent, free from the boundaries just like a free bird. As Internet / Web was essentially created to be platform-independent so that we could; and today as we are able to browse websites over Mobile Phone, Browser’s across operating systems like – Windows, Mac and Linux. And they look same everywhere.

Infrastructure Management Services – India’s Next Mega Trend!

Gagan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:58:03 +0000

Well, after BPO and Offshore Web Development, Offshore Software Development the next big wave of IT Industry would be economics of Infrastructure Management Services. The most profitable being the Remote Infrastructure Management which enables Organizations in US (or elsewhere in the world) to outsource their infrastructure management which may usually includes supporting Data centers activities comprising -

Storage Support – Tivoli, EMC, etc.
Operating System support – Linux/Unix, Windows
Application Servers Support – IIS, Apache, Tomcat, WebSphere, Glassfish, JBoss
Database Support – Oracle, MySQL, MS-SQL Server,etc.
ERP Support – SAP Basis Support
e-Mail Server Support – send mail, MS-Exchange, etc.
End-User Support – Identity Management, Active Directory, LDAP, etc.

According to top Research firms, RIMS has a lot to contribute to the countries economy. It is estimated that RIM Services can help organizations save 60% of the costs that they are incurring NOW!

NASSCOM – Out of India RIMS Business is $ 200-300 Million.
RIMS Business potential estimated by TOP Research firms -
- NASSCOM: $ 150 Billion
- Forrestor: $ 111 Billion
- Gartner: $ 80 Billion

There’s a very good small presentational PDF Document published by HCL on NASSCOM Website is available for reading. You can download it from NASSCOM’s Website (or Download Directly from DT: Remote Infrastructure Management Overview – HCL).

Maples ESM, a Global IT Infrastructure Co. has already come up with a course offering in RIM, Networking, UNiX Support, SOA/Middleware Training and Mainframe Training. One of the reason of Co. doing so is McKinsey India report which says that RIMS alone would create 3.25 to 3.75 Lakh job opportunities by the year 2013 capturing $ 13-15 billion worth of share. Adding to this the best of all the features is RIMS is being considered recession proof as what VM Kumar COO, Maples ESM. He say’s …

In times of slowdown in the US, it does make sense for companies to outsource the management of existing IT infrastructure rather than pay a local engineer $16,000 as salary to do it, That way, this sector is recession proof for India as companies can postpone application development to save costs but will have to manage their IT infrastructure, which can be done less expensively by outsourcing

Black Screen of Death (BSOD)

Rohit — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:45:24 +0000

Microsoft comes with a new strategy to tackle piracy .In china it came up with “Black screen of Death” which would turn any system screen black which fails the Microsoft validation test for genuine Software like Operating systems. China has strongly condemned it and has sued Microsoft for such behavior .

A Chinese lawyer has filed a legal complaint against Microsoft for installing Windows Genuine Advantage on his computer. He has asked the Ministry of Public Security to file criminal charges against Microsoft.

Dong Zhengwei accused the company of hacking into people’s computers. He said: “I respect the right of Microsoft to protect its intellectual property but it is taking on the wrong target with wrong measures.

“They should target producers and sellers of fake software, not users. The authorities should take action to protect citizens’ property and privacy rights,” he continued