[Debian-in-workers] Red Hat signs MoU with Kerala govt

[Anivar Aravind]

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Mahesh T. Pai wrote:

> IT at SCHOOL does NOT  use debian; they are suing  a custom distribution,
> and   the  government   of  Kerala   paid   a  hefty   sum  for   that
> customisation. Debian based is NOT debian, same way that Ubuntu is not
> debian. FWIW, the IT at SCHOOL cd is Ubuntu based, not debian based.

Dont make authoritative comments on Things you dont know. It was not
Ubuntu Based.

The distro 'IT at School GNU/Linux' used last year is a customised sarge
with educational tools in one CD. It has a Open Office 2 and some new
packages from testing.

http://www.edugrid.ac.in/webfolder/download/schoolGnu/README.html


See This too From Debian Publicity List
http://lists.debian.org/debian-publicity/2006/09/msg00042.html


>  > Is it means IT at school platform will be changed to Redhat?
> 
> Please read  what you quoted above  again. The MoU is  much wider than
> just  schools. There  is nobody  - absolutely  nobody to  support Free
> software  deployment  in  the   government.   As  a  director  of  the
> spacekerala.org  (or was  it somebody  from  river valley?   I do  not
> remember - will post a link to the archive link today evening) pointed
> out on the FSF-friends list,  he is single handed supporting above 100
> servers  within the  government free  of  cost.  Such  support is  not
> sustainable in the  long term, and will earn the  community a bad name
> when the  person decides to discontinue  or is unable  to provide that
> kind of  support. From  the news release,  RH is simply  stepping into
> that vacuum by  providing means to develop human  resources within the
> government. Please do not FUD that initiative.

Usage in Government is Different from the usage in Society.
Managing Servers are different from Installing a school Computer.
We Discussed a lot in FSF-Friends & FSF-kerala about Support of KSTA &
Teachers Community in spreading Free Software in kerala.  The Efforts of
SPACE in Conducting hardware vendors Trainings all over Kerala created
also created a big impact


> 
>  > What about the Teachers & students familiar & comfortable with
>  > Debian?
> 
> How many are there in terms of percentage (and not absolute numbers)?
> 
> Here is a challenge:-
> 
> There are approximately aided and unaided 3000 schools in Kerala (that
> is under the State government syllabus).
> 
> Can you (or anybody opposing or wanting to oppose this MoU) show me
> 300 schools (that is a mere 10%) EXCLUSIVELY on GNU/Linux? You will be
> lucky if you can find 500 schools with dual boot installs; and say, 50
> schools with exclusive GNU/Linux installs.


See a statistics in May 2006
http://gnowledge.org/pipermail/fsf-kerala/2006-May/000105.html

Statistics from IT at School shows that 48.35% of schools conducted
exams in GNU/Linux. Which is a pretty good number considering minimal
training and support given. Note that number of GNU/Linux installation
will be more than 48% as many schools used Windows just for
exams(software used to conduct exam failed in some school). In terms
of numbers GNU/Linux reached 1335 schools out of 2761. Ernakulam is
leading with 98.36% migration followed by Trivandrum (83.33%
migration). Worst situation is in Kollam (9%)

One Year is passed after That. The status of Syllabus is changed from
the coexistence of Free & Proprietary to Only Free Software.
The Change is happened because 85% of The teachers Opted IT at School
GNU/Linux for Schools.


> All the machines  I use run Debian GNU/Linux. Every CD  is give out is
> either Debian or debian-based. While I am no fan of RH, and it is more
> than 6 years since I used Red Hat or its derivatives, I see absolutely
> no reason to FUD Red Hat.

I am Not FUDing Redhat. My question is on Government.
I Feel Free Software is a change from user to producer.
What is the role of them in this decisions. I feel users are treated
only as consumers here.  The same teachers are earlier opted for
IT at school GNU/Linux. Where is the role of democracy


> So,  please stay  away from  fudding this  MoU. They  are  providing a
> service which no other commercial organisation is capable of providing
> right now.  And if any  business is capable  of providing the  kind of
> service required by the government, they are remaining silent. 

I agree with using Rehat services in govt. But Why schools?. Because a
well established system is running there?  Or they want to start
everything from scrach? It seems as a Bonus of this deal

A lot of Volunteers are now working in Debian Malayalam as a part of
swathanthra malayalam computing,
Just see this bug report and how their feelings are addressed by a Govt
that have an ICT policy pointing towards "Knowledge Societies"

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=404727

"We know that the pango code for etch has been frozen but since the
fixes are only specific to malayalam and it is a major fix we request
you to include it, as it is critical for correct rendering support for
Malayalam in graphical installer and other pango based applications.
This will be a crucial for malayalam support for IT at School project,
the largest debian installtion (total 2666 schools and more than 25000
computers) in the world"



Anivar Aravind
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