Indian President Advises Open Source Approach 257
geo_2677 writes "The Indian President Dr. A Kalam has advised defense scientists to go for open-source software for software security, rather than be stuck with insecure proprietary software. Being a scientist himself, he surely knows what's good for his country." Speaking at the Indian Navy's Weapons and Electronic System Engineering Establishment, Kalam argued: "Open source codes can easily introduce the users to build security algorithms in the system without the dependence of proprietary platforms", though continues: "We should take maximum care to ensure that our solution is unique to protect our own defence security solutions implemented on open platforms." We previously reported on Richard Stallman's meeting with Dr. Kalam earlier this year.
Mmmmmppphhhhh (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a scientist myself, I had to control my laughter and climb back into my chair before posting this.
Perhaps geo_2677 could explain to the researchers with whom I used to share an equipment room why a) you need to close the lid of a refrigerated centrifuge and b) why, if you're too freaking lazy to do a) at least don't run the goddamn thing with a foot of condensed water in it.
Yeah, if you want good, pragmatic common sense, ask a scientist.
Wow. (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost.
Re:Could someone explain... (Score:3, Insightful)
As the title says he can advise though :)
Re:Wow. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at our (U.S.) president. "Being a former oil tycoon and son of a former president, surely he knows what's good for his country."
I'd much rather trust a scientist, almost regardless of what type of scientist.
but seriously, to get back on topic, what would you rather use to chain your bike up. a chain that you can inspect only the links that lock together, or all of the links to make sure the chain is strong enough?
Re:Obligatory Simpson's Reference (Score:2, Insightful)
Think they'd go so far as to start paying governments to use their software?
this is situational, not necessarily general.... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Using nonproprietary solutions allows countries to develop indigenous software industries; for now, and for awhile, this will probably foster OS in lots of ways. In the pharmaceutical industry, India has started out making lots of generics, but are now looking at developing and selling their own blockbuster drugs. If a similar path is followed by India in software, at some point they will have their own MS; at that point, the continued use and nurturing of OS is not assured - as the relative cost of labor increases, commercial solutions might become more attractive.
While it might be best for India to follow an open source pathway, this is not because it is always right to do so, but because it best fits their current circumstances.
Re:Could someone explain... (Score:3, Insightful)
Scientists are the best leaders? (Score:3, Insightful)
Being a scientist himself, he surely knows what's good for his country.
If this is the case, I guess non-scientists can all remove themselves from politics. But would the world really be better off if William Shockley were president? If Edward Teller were in charge of arms control?
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Being a scientist and working with scientists for the past 15 years, I can tell you there are many, many scientists that I would not want to run the country. Scientists very often live in the world of theory, not reality. And when you live in a theortical world, concepts which, in theory, are very sound, will never work in reality. Not to troll here, but a lot of scientists I know are Kucinich supporters. He has a lot of ideas that make a lot of sense, but in reality they just wouldn't work. I heard something once that I think is pretty true. It went something like, "I'd rather have 2000 average joes run the country rather than the smartest person alive."
Re:Huh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why we should outsource the government to India (Score:4, Insightful)
They invested in education and social programs and created a workforce capable of doing our high-paying jobs. They then set up an economic environment where those jobs would come over, including investments in infrastructure and utilities.
Next the middle class over there starts to take off, and they make a national effort to help make sure that the benefit of the boom is extended to the less fortunate, so they can make more of the country self-sufficient.
They've managed to stay out of international conflicts and have sent peace ovetures to Pakistan. Now they're jumping all over Open Source as a way to improve their own efficiency and self-sufficiency.
All this, and I doubt India's federal gov costs anywhere near what these asshats over here who seem to actively work against us cost.
Between Colin Powell telling the Indians that there will be no attempt to curb outsourcing by American companies on the part of the Bush Administration and the following account of Tom Donohue's (CEO of US Chamber of Commerce, really good friend of Bush Administration, kind of like Ken Lay) speech in San Francisco:
Donohue acknowledged the pain for people who have lost jobs to offshoring - an estimated 250,000 a year, according to government estimates. But pockets of unemployment shouldn't lead to "anecdotal politics and policies," he said, and people affected by offshoring should "stop whining." - AP Newswire [forbes.com]
Personally, I say we go build a freaking guillotine, cause as far as I'm concerned, he might as well have said, "let them eat cake".
Anyway good luck to India and how much to run our Federal government?
Scientists automatically know what's good? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, like CalTech physics Ph.D. John Poindexter, who obviously knows what's best for America, e.g. Iran-Contra, Total Information Awareness...
Re:I think.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that just because someone is not arrogant when confronted by facts and figures, that does not make them a wise leader. They can be just as arrogant and blinded with facts and statistics as their justification.
Seek balance and understanding (empathy) in politicians, those qualities will let them listen to technocrats. Of course, I do want to point out the irony here on
Just my
Re:How is this going to help? (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely wrong - encryption code is like good wine - it gets better over time. The only way any encryption code is approved for use is to have the best and the brightest in the world beat on it for years. Good encryption code generates unbreakable encrypted data - having the source code does not help. When it is this good, then you can trust it. Anything developed by a small group and not shared WILL fail - security through obscurity is no security at all
Re:Huh? (here's an unexhaustive list...) (Score:3, Insightful)
I can think of several I wouldn't trust....
pseudo-scientist
Christian Scientist
Computer Scientist
Marine Biologist
Botanist
Archaeologist
Food Scientist
Paranormal Scientist
In fact, can you name a type of scientist that you would trust with knowing what is best for a country?
Nice logical fallacy in the article blurb. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (here's an unexhaustive list...) (Score:4, Insightful)
It could just be me though.
Re:Could someone explain... (Score:2, Insightful)
Stallman being a lobbyist in India... (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't necessarily say that the Indian President is a brilliant leader; one possibility is that he was swayed by someone's argument, the same way that many other leaders are swayed by Microsoft's argument.
I'm not saying that I'm disappointed, but it's one thing to have a leader be swayed by someone that gave him a convinving argument, and it's entirely another to have that leader come to the conclusion on his own.
Now, the thing is the Indian President is clearly a really smart guy, and he's an accomplished scientist, etc. I don't mean to imply that he ACTUALLY just bought Stallman's line without thinking about it. What I mean to say is that there are plenty of people who would point at the Stallman visit and try to use that to suggest that the Indian President only made his recommendation because he's parroting someone else's words. This is a means for them to dismiss his recommendation.
It's much more satisfying when someone figures out that Free Software is a good idea without activism being involved, so no one can imply that he didn't understand what he was saying.
Argh. I'm having a really hard time expressing what I mean. Oh well.
Re:I think.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask them, which is objectivly better out of these choices:
windows or linux
emacs or vi or notepad
IE or Mozilla
Gimp or Photoshop
closed or open source
We may be generally rational, but we can easily become raving zealots if the right questions were asked.
Re:How is this going to help? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your enemy should be able to know your system, and still not be able to break your code. Look at PGP (yeah, I know, someone found a flaw in the implementation, but correctly implemented, it's as strong as ever).
Re:Stallman being a lobbyist in India... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because Stallman paid a visit to the President of India and spoke to him about OS doesn't mean that he was the first person to make him aware of OS. If I remember correctly, the article of Slashdot regarding that visit mentioned clearly that the President of India was already interested in OS and was advocating its use.
Kalam was a scientist at the premier defense labs in India, which almost exclusively use Unix and variants. I'm sure he has a pretty rich experience with these Op. Systems, which would in all probability lead to his appreciation and advocating the use of Linux and Open Source models.
Stallman as Marco Polo ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think that Kalam has never thought about open source? After all he is not the president of the US - he actually has proven that he can think independently as a scientist. If you knew academic scientists you would know that they understand the value of open-source better than anyone.
A much more likely scenario is that Dr. Kalam wanted to meet with someone to discuss some technical details and get some feedback and maybe some publicity for his ideas of implementing open source. As there were noodles before Marco Polo went to Cathay and there was open source before Stallman went India...
Re:Why we should outsource the government to India (Score:5, Insightful)
There definitely has been a lot of progress in the past few years, but it isn't really that rosy. That said if we stop fighting pakistan, manage to conquer religious and social strife and promote education, things could look really good in 20 years.
I am not arguing quicker... (Score:4, Insightful)
You use what you have - if you have lots of people, then you use them. Where money is tight, you only buy what you can't get another way. Since with software India has a choice (commercial or OS solutions), they can throw programmers at problems and save their money for situations where they don't have another way. They can afford to be inefficient with people, but not with money, so even if the solutions aren't efficient, if they save money they make more sense than efficient solutions that cost lots of money (that they don't have).
Re:His scientific affiliations (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we can at the very least grant scientists across the world that much of credit.
And oh, ISRO is the Indian Space Research Organization [isro.org], with quite a lot of successful space launches under it's belt. I do not think such an organization would lightly make anyone a distinguished professor, no matter what the other credentials.
I guess you would make a sad scientist, because when someone is credited with good accomplishments, all you can think of is how they might have gotten it through the wrong kind way.
Please do not be so prejudiced, especially when what you know is so completely wrong. It helps to be broad minded.
Re:I think.. (Score:3, Insightful)
If better means cheaper, the answer is Linux/Emacs or vi/Mozilla/Gimp/irrelevant
If better means more secure, the answer is Linux/irrelevant/Mozilla/irrelevant/having the source code (regardless of whether or not you obtained it under a "true" open source license)
But usually "better" doesn't mean any one clearly identifiable thing. It may mean "more usable" (that can get esoteric in a hurry), is more fit for a very particular purpose, is available under more generous licensing terms, etc. The reason "religious debates" exist in technical areas is almost entirely due to one or both sides not believing that "better" is in itself a subjective term. That's usually the sign of someone who's not a terribly deep thinker, and may be more of a scientific dilletante than an actual scientist. Or a scientist in one field totally out of his or her depth in an unrelated field.
Impact of this decision (Score:5, Insightful)
1. A majority of Indian techies, might start using some variant of linux in the upcoming years.Rigt now,Most of them are still using Windows only.{ I observed that India ranks very poor in the number of registered Linux users.}
http://counter.li.org/reports/place.php
3.Once Linux Fever is caught up in India , we could expect a good increase in the number of open source projects , growth in popularity and confidence of open source projects.This will impact other developing nations , if they would realise the vast savings of the decision.
4.MS share in India will dwindle big time.. This would affect its revenue as India is such a huge market.
5. Indian colleges then would advance to use and advocate open source platforms and resources.This would help the indian progammers extend their scope and may improve their knowledge standard.Right now , most colleges in semi urban areas use proprietary operating systems.
May be im over optimistic..
Downside:
1. MS is silently attracting the techies and indian public by offering donations to the poor,AIDS victims etc..These will go down eventually.
2.This mite stir up some greedy and filthy politicians who get good bribes from corporate leaders and may work for delay in progress.
It's still a challenge for India to come up in technological arena with the onus of poor political stress on it.
Lets see where this takes !!!
Re:Could someone explain... (Score:1, Insightful)
It isn't really very odd at all. Most of the educated classes in British India were educated either in the UK itself, or in the British tradition in India. Gandhi and Jinnah, for example, both studied and practiced law in the UK before becoming involved in nationalist politics back in India.
Although Indian nationalists were opposed to British rule, this had more to do with the fact that British democracy applied only to the UK population, and not to the populations of colonies like India, than with objections to the British model of democracy itself.
An arrangement in which the UK population elected a parliament which governed both the UK and the British colonies was quite obviously unfair to the latter, and the principal aim of Indian nationalism was to correct this disparity by giving the population of India the same thing the population of the UK had.
The American war of independence had similar roots, insofar as the taxes at the heart of the matter were enacted by the elected House of Commons (which, even in those days, had exclusive power to levy taxes). Framing that war as a struggle between democrats and an absolutist monarch was much better for propaganda, of course, even if it was mostly a fiction.
Re:Score one for the Good Guys! (Score:2, Insightful)
"On the other hand, OpenBSD doesn't looks as much like swiss cheese, so being open doesn't necessarily mean being full of holes either."
Or maybe being open source means the holes that do exist are found far more readily than in closed source. After all (using your example), Solaris source (closed) may have as many holes as RHL (open), but how would you ever find out, short of blindling stumbling across the Solaris hole?