1. After a long time I saw a Hindi movie in a theater. I guess the last one was 'Rang De Basanti'. This time I saw 'A Wednesday'. Quite a refreshing change it was. I'm usually skeptical when I go to see a hindi movie, always expecting the usual dose of rubbish. This one though, had none. Brilliant performances by Anupam Kher and Nasserudin Shah. Brilliant locations as well. And by brilliant, I don't mean flower beds in Austria or anything. Even under construction buildings can be brilliant locations if the director and cinematographer are good enough. Its really nice to see such movies being produces in India. I hope that is where mainstream Hindi cinema is heading. We could do with a nice change from the typical Shah rukh khan, abhishek bacchan overacting shit.
2. Then I decided to upgrade my computer to the Ubuntu 8.10 OS, mainly because the 2.6.24 kernel has free native drivers for my wireless chipset, which works out the box. In fact, everything in Ubuntu 8.10 just ... works. That used to be something that was lacking in 'Linux' for a while. Now, I really see no reason why folks can't just use Ubuntu on their machines. It's really really well done. Takes about 30 minutes at most to install. And once you are through, well, you're really through. If you have a decent internet connection, package installation and general system maintenance is a cake walk, even if you are not a computer expert.
3. In the last couple of weeks, I have been thinking a bit about free software 'contributions'. There seems to be a generally accepted opinion that it is important to contribute to major upstream projects to be considered a free software contributor. Also, Indians seem to be getting a bit of stick (from other Indians as well) for not contributing enough. I see no reason whatsoever why its a moral responsibility to contribute upstream. Indians currently are busy using and writing free software to solve their own problems. These are problems that noone else is going to solve for them. Yes, a lot of Indians do _write_ free software. And no, we don't want to make a big deal about it and we don't have the resources to show it off to the world either. If you want it, come where we are and take it.
And if it sounds selfish that Indians are not contributing 'back', then so be it. If it hurts the developers (which I don't think happens in the first place; all this is just a whim of a select few) they should make their demands in the license that they put the software under. If you put your software under a free software license, you have no right to crib about how much other people use it and don't contribute back. Anyways, I really don't think anyone minds that at the moment Indians are 'leechers', except for the few who wish to present themselves as proud Indians in front of foreigners. At the end of the day, its not about the society. Its about a personal value system, which we are trying to fight for and defend. Believe me, at the end of the day, its a selfish personal motive.
2. Then I decided to upgrade my computer to the Ubuntu 8.10 OS, mainly because the 2.6.24 kernel has free native drivers for my wireless chipset, which works out the box. In fact, everything in Ubuntu 8.10 just ... works. That used to be something that was lacking in 'Linux' for a while. Now, I really see no reason why folks can't just use Ubuntu on their machines. It's really really well done. Takes about 30 minutes at most to install. And once you are through, well, you're really through. If you have a decent internet connection, package installation and general system maintenance is a cake walk, even if you are not a computer expert.
3. In the last couple of weeks, I have been thinking a bit about free software 'contributions'. There seems to be a generally accepted opinion that it is important to contribute to major upstream projects to be considered a free software contributor. Also, Indians seem to be getting a bit of stick (from other Indians as well) for not contributing enough. I see no reason whatsoever why its a moral responsibility to contribute upstream. Indians currently are busy using and writing free software to solve their own problems. These are problems that noone else is going to solve for them. Yes, a lot of Indians do _write_ free software. And no, we don't want to make a big deal about it and we don't have the resources to show it off to the world either. If you want it, come where we are and take it.
And if it sounds selfish that Indians are not contributing 'back', then so be it. If it hurts the developers (which I don't think happens in the first place; all this is just a whim of a select few) they should make their demands in the license that they put the software under. If you put your software under a free software license, you have no right to crib about how much other people use it and don't contribute back. Anyways, I really don't think anyone minds that at the moment Indians are 'leechers', except for the few who wish to present themselves as proud Indians in front of foreigners. At the end of the day, its not about the society. Its about a personal value system, which we are trying to fight for and defend. Believe me, at the end of the day, its a selfish personal motive.
1 comments:
1. You are usually skeptical about it, but I have long ceased watching Bolly-sh!t, let alone in theatre :). But when my Mommy and bro insisted that this movie is different and Nasserudin Shah has acted well, I gave in. And this movie has climbed from nowhere to 0'th position in my movie list of top 10 movies! At one point we think movie is over, but when Nasserudin starts the main dialogue, we realize that BEST is yet to come. Kudos to everyone to made this movie happen!
2. I believed that Ubuntu is on the bleeding edge when it comes to new releases of all the software, including kernel. My Debian Lenny is on 2.6.26 for quite some time now.
3. This is a very interesting observation, actually. I don't know about Free Software per se, but we Indians lack in boasting (for the lack of a more appropriate word). And that is mainly because we are just too busy solving our problems and earning our daily breads. We are tad too humble, compared to most demographies of the world. And I have experienced this FIRST hand being in US for a year and a half. On other hand, Americans have a knack of showing that they have done something which is nothing short of the-next-best-thing after the invention of wheels!
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