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Indian State Has Solution to End of Win XP Support

posted by janrinok on Monday March 24 2014, @02:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the linux-is-the-boss dept.

prospectacle writes about another possible shift from Win XP to Linux:

"With Microsoft ceasing to support Windows XP, the Tamil Nadu state government has advised its departments to switch to Bharat Operating System Solutions, also known as BOSS Linux.

BOSS Linux is developed by India's "National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software", which is financed by their Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. BOSS supports national languages including Bengali, Telugu, and Tamil.

Why would you develop your own entire operating system when you can just buy the newest version from Microsoft?"

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by prospectacle on Monday March 24 2014, @06:16PM

    by prospectacle (3422) on Monday March 24 2014, @06:16PM (#20606) Journal

    I agree with the reasons people have given for rolling your own OS.

    One important factor which I don't think has been mentioned yet is the building of local skills and expertise.

    Imagine for the sake of argument that the total costs worked out to be the same either way.

    In one case you end up with a product that's off the shelf that you can use.

    In the other case, you end up with a product that's customised to your needs, and a whole lot of people who know how to develop and maintain operating systems. These skills are transferrable, too, both to other flavours of linux, and to any number of other software-development tasks.

    It's like importing food vs growing it. Whether it's cheaper or the same price or more expensive in the medium term is not really the point. Long term wealth is the ability to produce and acquire things you want or need, and you get that through knowledge, skills and habits. Money is just an intermediary.

    If this habit of governments developing their own free software becomes standard around the world. Who can possibly lose?

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