The State of FOSS in India | Hacker News Reader

The State of FOSS in India

state-of-foss.in

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Hasura [0], Postman [1], and ERPNext [2] are leading the FOSS charge from India. In ERPNext's case, they remained bootstrapped for 10 years (seed investment from rainmatter.in in Nov 2020) despite having to compete with SAP.

[0] https://github.com/hasura/graphql-engine

[1] https://github.com/postmanlabs/newman

[2] https://github.com/frappe/erpnext

A huge vote for Postman. Used it a few years back. Was an awesome tool. Hope it still is.

Also Julia I think?

IIRC Julia team is based in one of the California universities, unlike Postman, whose headquarters are in India.

Thanks for letting me know about EPRnext (I suppose they are well known, but hey my bandwidth is pretty limited). I really like the idea (although I dont like the DB choice or the framework), I will still poke around

I didn't have a good experience with ERPNext. It is neutered and using it is painful to use unless you pay for professional help. They bundle everything in a virtual machine file (!!) and not standard Docker containers. The whole thing is horribly put together. I spent half a day trying to get it up and running and it was a nightmare.

ERPs and MRPs are in a weird uncanny valley. 99% of the audience that need to use it are not programmers. Open sourcing is nice but largely only helpful to people that are going to forkit and improve it, not end users. Also, ERP is the brains of your business. If it goes down and has problems, your business comes to a halt. It needs to be rock solid and most businesses don't want to deal with this type of thing - happy to pay $300/month for small business ERP from Oracle, SAP, Microsoft or other platforms. I am complaining but its better than nothing, the fact that theyve put their code out for free is commendable.

* They bundle everything in a virtual machine file (!!) and not standard Docker containers*

Glad someone is mentioning this. Did not have a good experience with ERPNext. Why is it written on an obscure framework: Frappé, named after the programmer. If I'm using Python web framework, flask or Django.

Author here. This is wrong information. Not sure where you are getting this from.

Also as I mentioned above, docker installs are actively supported.

https://github.com/frappe/frappe_docker

There are standard docker images available [0]. Not sure why you would you virtual images when there is an easy install script and a docker.

While I agree it’s a complex beast (it’s an ERP system), there is a large community [1] and active forum.

Also if you are happy paying $300/month for a proprietary product, why would you expect the same for $0 from an open source product?

[0] https://github.com/frappe/frappe_docker

[1] https://discuss.erpnext.com

Their VM is for testing and they have docker for production.

I believe they've VM for testing before docker was known.

ERPNext is just using FOSS as a reason for being mediocre. They tick all the feature list that proper ERP may required, none are tested, lots of bugs, most are solved to introduce more bugs. Usability achieved once you know the bugs and start to live with it.

Open source does not come with any warranty. You are welcome to spend your time and fix what you feel is broken, or pay someone for it.

ERPNext has a large and active community with thousands of active installs, and bugs are constantly being fixed and enhancements being pushed.

Unfortunately an ERP system needs time and effort to configure correctly, and what you consider bugs, might just be things that you need your accountant to tell you about.

I can live with the known bugs. I can not live with the new bugs in previously functioning features, just because something somewhere else is changed. Since I believe in FOSS, I’m paying customer since 3 year and going to stick with it. But many many a times our team needs to resort to spreadsheets.

ERP is hard and heroic efforts on you and your team’s part to make it reality. Keep pumping.

The sad state is that even the most employees of Tech companies from India - >SWITCH (all different companies acronyms) just are not aware of OSS. Even now from UK, when I spoke to my sister (an amazing java programmer in TCS - graduated out of a top uni in Bangalore) about Signal(app) she was surprised, remarking what is the problem with WhatsApp? who cares about OSS? Like the gaming T-shirts in DO hacktoberfest

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24658052

they are constantly looking to see if I can make a buck. Contributing free is something that will need generosity - only after they get rid of some amount of poverty and improve their economic levels.

There was some hope when XDA and Android ROM tended to explode in India, but it is a bit lost. Most ROM-groups locked up asking for PayTM money (equiv. of paypal) for even seeing your github repo. (Think it was a bad thing github gave free private repos - after MS acquisition).

(PS: I am from India)

I am from India.

can agree that there is large amount of people who are there just to game the system, and not in it for passion. This is because our country is 3rd world and there is lot of importance for social mobility, lot of interestless ppl enter the field.

But do not lose hope yet. In every college that teaches CS you will find one or two people who are actually passionate and talented. The thing is you dont find these people in bloated-management shitty consultancies, but either in foreign companies or sometimes in startup-like Indian companies.

Pleased to see the report reference my late acquaintance, Atul Chitnis, and his work in fostering Free Software in India. I connected with Atul during a business trip to Bangalore in the mid-90s. He ended up arranging a dinner at a nearby pub with a contingent of the a Linux User Group. We ended up shutting the place down, talking late into the night. Periodically I reached out to catch up with him and share his enthusiasm.

I started my career with Geodesic, handheld division, which @atul was overlooking as VP , IIRC .

Was really a great experience interacting with him and other stalwarts of FOSS at thats time. I owe my first job to him and Pradeepto :)

> ''Think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer''

< ''Muft nehi, Mukt''

Firangi nahi samje ge. Shudh agrezi ka upiyog karein

That’s why there’s an English version that provides the spirit of the quote?

and there comes the downvotes. don't people understand implicit /s

It was offensive, so..

Translation?

not free, freedom

मुफ़्त (muft) means free of cost, मुक्त (mukt) is free as in freedom.

मुफ़्त नहीं। मुक्त (muft nehi, mukt) reads like "not free (of charge), but free as in freedom."

muft = gratis, ''free as in beer'', mukt = open, ''free as in freedom''

Translation: Not free (has a cost), free (as in not bound/free speech)

Hehe.. that’s a good way to put it.

Not sure why people are unhappy with ERPNext, the folks have been working hard. It is great to see how they have been contributing to the community with list of softwares and plugins.

Being in a business for a decade and competing with the likes of Oracle, SAP and Microsoft is not easy. Show some love and be part of their community, contribute and make it better for everyone.

Cribbing is not the solution but contributing is. :)

The design of the website makes it very confusing to read and understand.

I appreciate that Android is widely adopted in India, a free and open source operating system but the amount of data being collected is simply too much thanks to oems installing their own software on top of it. That and the fact that due to data being very cheap most users will install all kinds of software that again collects data. Privacy laws in India are non-existent. FOSS doesn't solve that unless FOSS from private companies is also audited and the data being collected is clearly explained to the consumers and they are made aware of it.

> Privacy laws in India are non-existent. FOSS doesn't solve that unless FOSS from private companies is also audited and the data being collected is clearly explained to the consumers and they are made aware of it.

Participate / Contribute: https://internetfreedom.in/

> I appreciate that Android is widely adopted in India, a free and open source operating system but the amount of data being collected is simply too much thanks to oems installing their own software on top of it.

This is because most people in India are buying androids because they are inexpensive, not because they are open source.

Most of the people in India I have talked too, actually aspire for an Apple iPhone but can’t get one because it is too expensive.

Because it is cheaper, and Xiaomi, Oppo, and a few other manufacturers dominate the market there. Xiaomi in particular has a massive market, to a point that they release some India-specofoc models too.

I also read that in India, iPhones have a bigger markup to a point that it is cheaper to fly to Dubai, buy an iPhone, and fly back. I don't think Xiaomi market had any noticeable impact even with India and China at their throats.

We're building a KubeArmor - a container-aware runtime security enforcement system n using LSMs - between India, Korea and the US

https://github.com/accuknox/kubearmor

>> Inception of FOSS [1886-1978]

What happened in 1886?

Click on the link.

You can in fact click on those boxes. When I did, it pointed to the 1886 Berne Convention as the first FOSS movement (?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

What does this help to Foss in India?

The Berne Convention is about as opposed to a FOSS movement as you could get. The Berne Convention is what necessitated one in the first place.

Isn't the Berne Convention about copyright? FOSS isn't necessarily at odds with it?

The 1886 Berne Convention did introduce the concept of public domain and fair use, however; and that, in spirit, counts towards inspiring FOSS, I guess?

> The 1886 Berne Convention did introduce the concept of public domain and fair use

It did not. I have no clue what gave you this idea.

It's like saying that slavery introduced the concept of free men.

The Berne Convention did not consider concepts such as 'fair use' at all, in fact some argue 'fair use' violates the Berne Convention.

Further, public domain is a term for works whose protections under the Berne Convention expired.

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