Re: Free Software Company

[Radhakrishnan C V <cvr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2000, Arun Sharma wrote:

: > , but I am talking from India, though not within any narrow constraints
: > of fanatic nationalism.  I am yet to see a person in the street here
: > in Trivandrum who wants the Microsoft to fare well.
: 
: To me, it's not that inconceivable. Infosys makes a deal with Microsoft.
: Therefore people who own Infosys stock want MS to do well, so that
: their personal fortunes are enhanced. And what about all the visual

What will be the percentage of 100 crore Indian population that has
invested in the IT industry stock?

: basic shops in major cities, which pray for MS be more successful, so

Quite simple, they will turn on to free software tools as demonstrated
by the big and small training institutions in India (including
NIIT) that has once shunned away Linux, now offer training in Linux for
cozy sums.

: that their target markets are bigger.

When target markets become bigger (as shown by the interests of NIIT in
Linux), your anxieties on the fate of visual basic shops will fade away.

: That's an unsubstantiated claim. Free software hasn't demonstrated any
: wealth generation capability or hasn't saved any significant amount 
: of money that was flowing out of the country.

You might be tempted to term the following as isolated cases not fit for
generalization, but they demonstrate a lot:

1. River Valley Technologies with a team of 45, is entirely on
   non-proprietary software and is in the sixth year of existence.
   Whereas our competitors in our area of activities in this country 
   have shelved out hundreds of thousands of dollars for their
   software requirements, we are yet to spend anything for it.

   At least, two agencies (Indian Express and another our own client
   from UK) visited us to make themselves convinced of our claims on
   usage of non-proprietary software.

   And we have a decent turnover every year.

2. Internet Applications Group (a company in the STP, Trivandrum)
   use 50% proprietary and 50% non-proprietary.

3. The Indian Express newspaper have adopted Linux as their operating
   system and developed their own typesetting system for their 
   daily.

4. BooksAlive, an inventory control system for the book publishing/
   distributing/reselling enterprise  written in Java, PostgreSQL
   as the database engine, preferred operating system Linux, reports
   with TeX replacing Crystal reports is running in many shops in Kerala
   for the last one and half years and saves plenty of money for the
   user on proprietary software/OS. BooksAlive is GPL. The performance
   rate of BooksAlive is impressive.

The above have demonstrated beyond doubt that non-proprietary software
can generate money and can save substantive foreign exchange outflow.

Lastly, you sadly overlook large number of ISP's that use a variety of
non-proprietary software at the server side.


: > The downside of your proposition: Can you imagine US voters will still
: > consider the economy as a key issue, if (as a hypothesis) the freedom
: > of press is curtailed?
: 
: The freedom of press and economy can both coexist. Free software (in
: the BSD - entrepreneurial sense) can coexist with wealth generation
: by software sales. Free software in the (FSF/RMS sense) can NOT by
: definition, coexist with  wealth generation by software sales.

My question was in an US election, can economy be a key issue if free
press is curtailed?

: PS: In the most recent communications of the ACM, there is an interesting
: article on why the current software pricing in the developing countries
: is unfair. The authors (one of them Indian) argue that like the "Eastern
: economy editions" in books, software should be priced by what people can
: pay. The study found that:
: 
: 1. Per capita income of $6000 per year was the knee of the curve where
:    the rate of illegal software fell significantly.
: 2. Statistically, India was pirating less software than it's per capita
:    income indicated, so India should be encouraged by decreasing prices
                                       ----------------------------------
:    of software.

Item number 2 above sadly contradicts with what you have posted on 
13 Sep 2000 

<arun>
  As far as India as a developing nation is concerned, given the current
  import/export situation, India has more to lose by software getting
  commoditized and worthless by means of tools like GPL. It'd be good
  for India if software continues to be expensive. 
               ----------------------------------  
</arun>


-- 
Radhakrishnan