India & oss
Recently I have seen a lot of hub-dub about India going "make in India", especially towards governmental suits. Now, I really would love to have that done for India. Given if India goes OSS, while propagating so much about OSS, would really be the right step. Instead what has happened is going to zoho. Now zoho may claim to be secure and stuff, but we all know one thing for sure, unless I know what the software is made of, to the last line of code, how can I really be going OSS, or for that sake safe?
Even though I do not know how to read the whole code, but if the code is open and available, it gives me a security and risk free of knowing the community is aware and will surely raise or has already raised what is there, and what not, inflight risks included.
What actually is happening, or rather what has already gone BAU: Zoho lands GOI contract for 7 years
Email accounts of 12 lakh Central government employees now run on Zoho’s platform
Community at large is aware of what Zoho did recently. The so called "ulaa browser" is simply a closed sourced duplicate of Chromium + whatever they are hiding behind the wall. They landed lakhs of rupees in this doing, which was the start of blinding the already foolish bureaucrats.
Politics is all about money, power and the 4 legs of a chair. This contract is nothing but one and all of those pointers. There is nothing unique abut Zoho. There is nothing right about their so called whatsapp replacement, arratai.
Zoho reminds me of how bollywood is the best in copy-pasting. How Netflix readily copies from some original French or German movie/series and whips up a Spanish series. I will not deny, copy-pasting and trying to hide it is a big art, and artists like this are abundant, but eyes open one day, for everyone. Trouble is, it is already too late by then.
Wake up India. Rather while you are already awake, please stop wasting tax payers money, and do not use closed source software and compromising public data with closed sourced conglomerates as well.
We did not allow it. We did not bring you to power for doing what is not right. Remember, public has the biggest power. Pen really is mightier than 4 legs of your chair.
Meanwhile, GOI nonsense which raked my brain was:
Union Ministry of Education said that the Zoho Office Suite was already incorporated in the NIC mail system and “by embracing Zoho’s indigenous office productivity tools, we take a bold step in the Swadeshi movement, empowering India to lead with home-grown innovation, strengthen digital sovereignty, and secure our data for a self-reliant future.”
& furthermore, what is this supposed to mean?
A senior official said Zoho’s suite has also been activated to ensure that government employees do not use open source applications to create word files, spreadsheets and presentations.
Though the suite was available earlier, not many government employees were using it. “It was found that many government employees were using open source tools, which could compromise security of files, and it was decided to make them aware and display its features prominently on the internal mail platform,” said the official.
Are you even aware what you are saying? Simply put, "Seriously!!!"
So you mean millions of developers and trillions of users of OSS/FOSS/FLOSS are brainless? Everyone is getting compromised by using OSS/FOSS/FLOSS stuff?
This is one cake; MoE, are you even aware what you just did?
On October 3, the Union Ministry of Education issued an order nudging officials to use the Zoho suite “in alignment with the Government of India’s broader vision of transforming the nation from a service economy into a product nation, and in pursuit of building a self-reliant ecosystem in technology, hardware, and software solutions”.
This reminds me of how everyone thinks foogle is the "guru of search" (ref: The Vault Of Vishnu - Ashwin Sanghi, page 85, line 5 from top). Makes me laugh out loud.
I have reached out to The Hindu & The Zoho & will also reach out to MoE specifically to recant those words, and publicly apologies. They are already so deep into ego, they need to learn: they are the one in need of a real education and not the other way round here.
