[OLPC India] Disappointed in the progress being made in India

[Sameer Verma]

Frederick Noronha [फ़रेदरिक नोरोनया] wrote:
> Hi all, I feel that this OLPC debate should be taken to wider fora too
> across South Asia. 

South Asia as a geographic region makes sense, but I am not so sure that 
other variables can be treated the same for all of South Asia. To begin 
with, we have significant variation of network infrastructure across 
different countries of South Asia, let alone the issues of language, 
culture, etc. On the other hand, I am not sure that a separate list for 
each country is the way to go. I suspect it is set up that way because 
the OLPC project wanted to deal with countries for economies of scale.

> It is sad that, without much debate, a handful of
> bureaucrats can decide that the children of India do not deserve to
> get access to affordable computing (by using arguments like the
> traditional "we don't have blackboards and schools" for reasons best
> known to them).
>
>   
It looks like other things are happening in non-governmental circles, so 
time will tell. I am optimistic though of the approach of using lists 
and wikis to create critical mass for addressing and solving issues. 
Arjun's bovine power project is an example. I hope we can get it 
operationalized!
> In this context, may I invite all interested to discuss this issue via
> the BytesForAll network too (around 1500 subscribers) on
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers
>
> Best wishes, FN
> Co-founder, BytesForAll
>   
Not to shoot holes in the BytesForAll list, but I prefer keeping the 
OLPC discussion on an OLPC list primarily because that's the focus of 
the project. I am sure we have a good bit of overlap with other groups, 
but that's the way with most other stuff in FOSS. I am on several lists 
and there is duplicated traffic, but hopefully the signal to noise ratio 
will get better over time.

cheers,
Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/