Red Hat Scholarships is a coding contest for Indian college students whose aim is to “speed up the adoption of open source software in India and make India a proud contributor to the global open source community.” Contest organizers have posted eight challenges, such as “Development of open source Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) frameworks,” and individuals or teams will recive support during their creation of the new software, and the best contribution will win a cash prize. All sumbissions must be licensed under an Open Source license.
I see contests like this as providing opportunity for students, on the one hand, but also providing Red Hat with cheap labor in India. The GPL forces these students to give back everything they build – the source of Deepak Phatak’s concerns related to licensing in India.
Why hasn’t India contributed more to OSS? They certainly have the coders. No indian distro’s to my knowledge. If Indians can be sold on the ideological side, OSS would benifit largly.
Actually on second thought i’ll not complain about India making a distro there are too many patriotic/social/political distro’s as it is. It would be nice if they jumped on fedora.
I’ve focused on India taking jobs at a phenominal rate. If they too a similar interest in Open Source it would produce produce phenominal results.
I never would have thought of that.
this is starting to make me so sick. these people should wake up and realize that:
1- they are being exploited
2- stealing our jobs isn’t the way to be competitive
they must understand that they are valuable people and that they should be united with us, non-indian programmers, in this never ending fight against corporations wanting cheap labor developers.
at the moment, they are ruining everything we have done in the past 30 years. i believe that developers are among the most educated people on this planet and that they should be paid for it.
i think it’s time to wake up guys before it’s too late. after all, everyone will suffer at the end, including you. anyway, i think it’s the decline already. being a progammer 15 years ago was the best thing that could happen to you. being a programmer today, it’s like being in jail…
Barkjin,
I tried googling for Deepak Phatak since I did not know who you were referring to and came up with this InformationWeek article: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=47…
Unless I misunderstand you it suggests that Deepak Phatak actually thinks the opposite of what you wrote. For example,
“Americans may not realize this, but the [general public license] is one of their greatest contributions to the world,” he [Deepak Phatak] says, explaining that the GPL allows open-source software to coexist with proprietary software.”
And then:
“Phatak isn’t concerned that his country’s achievements could be obscured if they’re contributed to the open-source community rather than marketed independently: “Recognition comes if what you do is useful to people.”
Redhat wants Indians to develop Enterprise Applications and big ticket software – do you even know how much it costs to develop such stuff in the US or Europe?
Suffice to say $20K (Rs 10 Lakhs) doesn’t even get you past you first meeting with IBM global services.
IBM has enlisted 14000 > Indians.
hmm, who ever said your programmer job was guaranteed, we all know life is full of changes, this is just one of them. There are people in India that would welcome this money, even if it is not much in terms of US dollars. Once India and China becoming thriving economies the cost of doing business there will increase and more programming jobs will come back to the usa… these cycles take 10 years to play out. Yes that is a long time, but that’s life. If you aren’t patient, go become a doctor, lawyer, or plumber. Those services will always be in demand. Global economy means global competition.
Why hasn’t India contributed more to OSS? They certainly have the coders. No indian distro’s to my knowledge. If Indians can be sold on the ideological side, OSS would benifit largly.
I guess they are more concerned with making a living than styling their spare-time.
Actually here’s a better link (had to google it):
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1152029.cms
You hit it absolutely. But perhaps not in the way you believe. As you said, The benefit of shifting economies to developing countries is that it leads to their improved standard of living. Eventually, in “market” theory, things should even out. However, from a socialized market philosophy (which is the US philosophy), that constitutes an unsustainable market force. In other words: *unrestrained* cheap offshore labor the US labor market, impacting people for what is supposed to be a temporary “adjustment” of the market. The people affected can’t opt out of the cost of living that we have in the US. They can’t compete fairly. They simply take a loss for what we’re told will eventually equalize (as the offshore labor market realizes greater standards of living).
In any other US market (financial and commercial) there is tremendous regulation to flatten such spikes due to unsustainable forces. Corporations are forced to comply with reporting practices (rather than letting the market sort things out through volatility). Banks are highly regulated (rather than letting their customers apply “caveat emptor”). But, when it comes to the labor market, all we hear is how this is just a natural market condition and we must put up with it — lest we’re socialists.
I think there’s plenty of room for *moderation* of offshoring so that offshore labor markets can reach desired (and competitive) standards of living while at the same time reducing the damage from completely unrestrained *raw* market practices.
My 2 cents.
Actually, off the top of my head, ELX is one distro that’s put out by India. I dunno if there are any others.
this is starting to make me so sick. these people should wake up and realize that:
1- they are being exploited
2- stealing our jobs isn’t the way to be competitive
Well I agree with you in a lot of senses, I don’t think it quite applies here. Red Hat’s American programmers have contributed tons of code to GNU and Linux, as well as Gnome and numerous other projects. ELX, an Indian Linux vendor, uses that code in their products. So you could say the same thing, Red Hat is being exploited, as well as the North American volunteers.
I think your arguement would apply more to a company like AMD outsourcing their chip manufacturing to India. These people gain no benefits, other than employment, in these circumstances. Red Hat says that all contributions must be open sourced. Essentially, any Indian start-up, or ELX, can then reuse this code for revenue.
Now if Microsoft did this, it would be a different story.
For some of these Indian programmers, they have no way of getting into University, so this is a god send.
Of course I’m extremely tired and probably made no sense there. I do agree with you in a sense though.
Why not they already have our jobs!
When will you grow up and learns the rules of globalization..it is as much about taking as it is about receiving! Globalisation is as much about Levi’s, Coke, McDonalds as much as it is about BPOs… [got the point??]
Sorry for the offtopic post…
I don’t think you quite understand India, the education system in India forces us to not have new ideas (just like in the song Another Brick in The Wall). New ideas are mocked by fellow teachers. Innovation is looked down upon in India, aren’t you guys expecting too much out of a country that has to deal with problems like poverty, lack of potable water, electricity. There hasn’t been any original software company in India and there would never be. Necessity is the mother of invention and people who follow the principle of Simple living high thinking can never invent.
Before you critize us Indians try staying here in India. We Indians are the most dispensable resources of India, this how we are treated by our so called motherland. If I am working the same amount as an american worker why should i not be paid the same amount.
start a revolution dude. you and your co-workers must fight for a salary raise.
that’s what we have done and that’s what we still do here. don’t tell me you can’t because you have kids and big bills: we have kids and big bills.
you must not allow people to exploit you, never. and hmm, you should fight for freedom as well. new ideas are very important. new ideas are often the starting points of success.
fight.
“the education system in India forces us to not have new ideas”
Wow, I find that really hard to believe. When I think of great Mathematicians, all that comes to mind are Indians. Yeah, and like all things Indian over here, they get no props and respect. As for simple living and high thinking, that is not true. The upper class sure has no concept of “simple living”, and the technocrats that are being hire by American companies really don’t exhibit simple living with the crass consumerism that they have come to practice. One could say that Indians are well known for bling, bling.
>Wow, I find that really hard to believe. When I think of >great Mathematicians, all that comes to mind are Indians.
Like who?
Ramanujan doesn’t count.
>Ramanujan doesn’t count.
why?
>Ramanujan doesn’t count.
why?
Because he didn’t know how or where he got his results. I agree he had amazing abilities and generated a lot of results but none of these had any proofs, even today it is not know if some of his results are true or not. He was therefore not a mathematician in the usual sense of the word, he abilities were more like an Autistic Savant but a specatular one at that.
“This style of working may have been for several reasons. Since paper was very expensive, Ramanujan would do most of his work and perhaps his proofs on slate, and then transfer just the results to paper. Using a slate was common for mathematics students in India at the time. He was also quite likely to have been influenced by the style of one of the books he had learned much of his advanced mathematics from G. S. Carr’s Synopsis of Pure and Applied Mathematics, used by Carr in his tutoring. It summarised several thousand results, stating them without proofs. Finally, it is possible that Ramanujan considered his workings to be for his personal interest alone; and therefore only recorded the results. (Berndt, 1998)”
> Like who?
Brahmagupta, Madhava, Patodi, and Bose come to mind, but my knowledge of Indian mathematicians is rather limited. I’m also not certain what the benchmark for ‘great’ is under discussion. I certainly don’t think of India when I think of great mathematicians, though.
I am an Indian, i live in US. I personally feel that Americans have no right to complain. America was the one who was big propenent of global economy to sell their uber cool stuff. With forcing that, companies like Coca cola and Pepsi virtually eliminated most indian soft-drink companies. Same happened in many other areas.
Now its boom-ranging on you so what? America which acts as if it is the best country, screws all others. It is the biggest supplier of arms to other countries. It has nuclear power, but put sanctions on us when we do nuclear tests.
Now its time to feel the heat baby, either be the best or get killed….It is the market of survival…thats what this world is all about…we survived the heat and its your turn now.
How are Indians stealing jobs? The corporations are ploughing jobs there. India didnt want its economy to be an open one, the world actually forced India to open up in the early 90s because they thought it would be great market for their products.
So on the one hand people want to sell their products in India but keep their jobs at the same time… well you cant have your cake and eat it. Same thing happened with China. They were asked to open up for globalisation and eventually their exports far exceeded their imports. Remember Clinton being all excited about the new chinese markets? Well america is a corporate imperialism. You should be blaming your corporations instead of blaming the Indians. They are just a workforce willing to work for a wage they deem fit for survival by their standards.
You are placing blame on the wrong people.
As for OSS contribution, it will happen. After all the contribution of “0” to the world by India gave rise to the development of matchematics and physics. Without the concept of zero mathematics as we know it today would never have advanced.
To Some Indian:
Then take my free advice – don’t pursue Red Hat’s coding challenge. All they’re going to do is exploit your contribution, and pay you nothing to include it in their products. India has an incredible wealth of talent and entrepreneurism – use it to start the next Microsoft. Not to let Red Hat do that on your backs.
Looks like you cant read. how about RTFA?
First award:
Rs 2 lakh
Second award:
Rs 1.5 lakh
Third award:
Rs 1 lakh
Five consolation awards of Rs 50,000 each
“I guess they are more concerned with making a living than styling their spare-time.”
I agree with netpython. First thing to worry about is hunger. Once tummy is full then think about extra pass time.
I do not think most of the Indian programers (90%) are coders by choice. Market forced them to be programmers.
Indians love education (They worship it! They have Godess of knowledge Saraswathi).
In India 90% of the decisions are made by parents what their children are going to be. This is purely driven by economics. 20-30 years ago demand used to be only for medical and engineering seats in the college. For the last 10 years or so it was for computer courses. Now the demand is for Bio-chemistry and pharmacology.
Money saves the day. Money makes the world. Money is the world. When the tummy hurts with the hunger then you see the actual value of it.
Consider Western world as the prairie and each grass stem as a dollar note. Flock of grass hoppers would not damage that much. There would still be plenty of it left in the prarie.
Consider rest of the world as sahara desert. Any grass you find is so valuable and life saving. (Any grass you plant is valuable). Too many grass hoppers and too little grass.
For a grass hopper or a human life is life. Survival is survival. They do not need direction. Just follow the trend. You find the food (is opportunity).
Professional education has only one purpose that is to provide us with money. There is no higher purpose of professional education, you cannot attain moksha (nirvana) through professional education. Indians love education and in their sub-concious mindset hate money (look down upon money) mainly because most of us are brainwashed since childhood that knowledge is of more value than money. This is one reaons that pay scales in India are so low, even the student- teacher realtionship is somewhat based on the old hindu gurkul system. Most of the school/ college teachers here in India are offended if the students ask them questions, the education system being followed in India is archaic. Getting into a good engineering school is very difficult here in India, its not like the US or other countries of Wetern Europe.
India lacks infrastructure in almost every department, we know that so does the whole world. We are the most dipensible resources of India are treated that way too.
When I think of great Mathematicians, all that comes to mind are Indians.
“all” that comes to mind? I guess Euclid doesn’t come to mind, nor Newton, nor Gauss, nor Abel, nor Hilbert, nor Lobachevsky, nor al-Khowarizmi? nor (recently) Wiles? nor any of an immense number? What kind of history did you learn?
Maybe, just maybe, you didn’t mean “all”, but something else?
Raj,
You can feed my family, and pay for my gas, rent, medical, food, car, entertainment, phone, etc. for the next 10 years then bonehead!