[OLPC India] Report on event held on 5th August 2008 at DAKC

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

I do understand that there are instances where you are forced to use
proprietary software, but my personal opinion is that you should use
Free/Open Source Software wherever possible. To be very honest, I have
been a bit disappointed by some things, like the use of a proprietary
Operating system (Windows Server 2003) with a (semi proprietary??)
(IBM Websphere) web server for olpc.co.in.
There were also plans about having the MediaWiki installation running
on Oracle, though I think now the plan is to run it on MySQL (which is
a good move, and we need more things like this).
Also, olpc.co.in ??? Why not olpc.org.in ?
These things may be minor, but in the end, they do alter the public
perception of the project somewhat. Almost every day, I get reports
about people who think OLPC has abandoned FOSS. These kind of things
add fuel to the fire. We cannot afford to have any more of this - at
least that is my individual opinion.

In case someone is still confused,:
OLPC has not abandoned FOSS. In fact, right now OLPC is hiring more
developers for technologies and software frameworks[1], which are
licensed under Free Software licenses. If you are looking for Windows
on the XO-1, go to Microsoft. As far as I know, the only development
effort that went from OLPC into this entire "Windows on the XO" thing
was the adding of dual boot capabilities to the firmware.

Apologies for the rant,

To be clear, these are all my personal opinions and does not represent
the opinion of my cat or my employer (which is OLPC) or any
organisation.

Thanks and have a nice day,
Sayamindu


[1] http://laptop.org/en/jobs.shtml


On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 6:33 PM, Marc Valentin
<mvalentin at oeuvredespains.org> wrote:
> I hope OLPC India has NOT this 'sane' position.
> If MSWindows and Windows products are promoted through OLPC India we
> will stop the collaboration.
> -marc-
> http://www.OeuvreDesPains.org
>
> On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Joshua N Pritikin <jpritikin at pobox.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 02:50:40PM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>>> On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:24 PM, Arjun Sarwal <arjun at laptop.org> wrote:
>>> >> >He also showed us an application very similar to turtleart
>>> >> The application was in Windows ?! I don't understand why David Cavallo
>>> >> showed you an application you cannot use on the XO.
>>> >
>>> > Cudve been 'Etoys' perhaps ?
>>>
>>> or Scratch ??
>>
>> No, it was a version of Logo that runs on Windows (Microworlds?). There
>> is no mystery here. Cavallo is an education guy who is pragmatic enough
>> to run Windows on his personal laptop.
>>
>> I don't want to reopen the Windows vs. GNU/Linux debate, but I
>> personally think that OLPC has a sane position.
>> _______________________________________________
>> India mailing list
>> India at lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
>>
> _______________________________________________
> India mailing list
> India at lists.laptop.org
> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/india
>



-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]