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A comment on Indian Government adopts an open source policy. Parent comment

Re:Indian Government adopts an open source policy by jezclaremurugan on Monday November 02, 2015 @01:57PM (#10494124)
I understand why you are cynical, but I've been part of the BOSS linux team couple of years ago and I would say it was money well spent.

To cite just one example - BOSS Linux was installed along side Windows (dual boot) in the free laptops given to students by the Tamil Nadu govt. This alone helped introduce thousands of students to linux.

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Re:Indian Government adopts an open source policy by alagappanr on Monday November 02, 2015 @09:42PM (#10497060)
The one that I bought through Elcot -- in association with the TN Govt (in 2008) had OpenSUSE installed by default.
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Re:Indian Government adopts an open source policy by sliverstorm on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:00PM (#10494719)
... helped introduce thousands of students to linux.

Why is that so good, and so worth lots of government money?

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Re:Indian Government adopts an open source policy by hrjet on Monday November 02, 2015 @03:28PM (#10494954)
> Why is that so good..

It encourages tinkering which is especially important for students.

Also, many other general benefits that open-source brings. For example, open source code is more trustable than closed source.

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Re:Indian Government adopts an open source policy by hchenji on Monday November 02, 2015 @04:39PM (#10495473)
Yeah but if GNULinux is free in the first place, why spend so much govt. money on it?
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Re:Indian Government adopts an open source policy by afarrell on Monday November 02, 2015 @06:51PM (#10496310)
GNU/Linux is Free as in Speech, not Free as in Beer. Much like printing presses and political campaigns still cost money, so does hardware and especially so does the time to mentor someone on how to use GNU/Linux.

For many organizations, Windows is actually monetarily cheaper than Linux, particularly organizations that need to deploy non-web GUI applications for users who are never going to be comfortable on a terminal.

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