[OSGeo-Discuss] Board Geographic Diversity

[Venkatesh Raghavan]

Hi Frank

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
....
> 
> I've yet to return to some of the interesting email since I went away
> on the challenges in the developing world (though many of them - at a
> glance - seems similar to the challenges we face in the developed
> world).

Think are reffering to the e-mail from our colleagues
in India. I would not consider India to be a
part of the "developing world" as far as ICT is concerned.
Large part of the proprietary software is "developed"
in India.

Lot happening in the FOSS too, largest Suse Linux
Enterprise  Desktop(SLED)Impementation in the world is
in India at ELCOT(Government of Tamil Nadu). ELCOT has
deployed SLED at 40,000 desktops across the state.

The success story is now posted in a video prepared by ELCOT on
youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_g72GcaIdc

The video is about 10 minutes in length. Quite impressive!!

I think the major problems in promoting OSGeo tools is many
countries is to do with education, lack of textbooks (I mean
hard copy. e-books cannot work for everyone everywhere), and
lack of data for the students to play with.

The quality of soultions and cost-savings that could be acheived
through adoption of OSGeo need to be more agressively promoted.
Success stories of OSGeo based applications also need to be
highlighted in a manner similar to ELCOT.

Regards

Venka