Hi, For all the people who didn't read Viraj's (excellent tho' long) post, I'd like to emphasize the essence by hightlighting what he said at the end:
> SO, WHAT SHOULD WE DO? Organizations like Mandrake, RedHat, > Turbolinux, SuSe etc. do sell their 'Products', which are > well-packaged, at a small price. I implore you all to consider buying > their offerrings, instead of paying the ISPs & telephone companies a > fortune to download & using them for free. This cuts in two > directions. It adds to the sales volumes of OSS promoting > companies(so, officially competing propri. software) & at the same > time makes these companies stronger to go ahead & develop high-quality > software. How true !! Even people who are OSS aware in India, prefer to download software and use it (and end up paying the telcos.) instead of showing their support by ordering stuff. OTOH, services like broadband will certainly help accelerate the growth of OSS in India, by promoting move active involvement as contributors as opposed to consumers of OSS. In this thread, I saw a lot of mention of how average users are not motivated enough or would prefer to stick to their windows boxen. Well, while that might be true, I don't see why that would stop OSS from growing. I myself have converted almost all my friends who use windows to using firefox and thunderbird *only* by suggesting it as an alternative. Even the most insecure user who would resist changing his basic tools, can easily see the obvious benifits of tabbed browsing and ability to block popus. My point here being, OSS does not equate linux. There are tons of OSS software for windows which far out perform proprietory software. The introduction of broadband will ensure that, this software is more redily available. Of course nothing can beat loyalty for out-of-the-box products, but broadband would bring awareness and availabiliity. Actually, I *do* imagine an OSS boom is possisble. It's only up to the OSS PR department to make that a reality. ....ehe, that means you, btw. Just my thoughts Regards Steve -- Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science. Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is available to anyone. -- Tom Weller, "Science Made Stupid" -- ______________________________________________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List: ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) List Information: http://plug.org.in/mailing-list/listinfo/plug-mail Send 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for mailing instructions.