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Know yoUr Luggie series - Edition 3, interview with Raman Pandarinathan dated 03-July-2010, Interviewed by Balachandar Muruganantham and Thyagarajan Shanmugham





Interviewer: Hello Raman, welcome.

Raman: Hello.

Question 1) Raman, tell us about your educational background, something about your school, college, your hobbies?

Raman: I did BSc Maths at GuruNanak College, Chennai. I joined railways in 1986. I am working in IT from 1989. I did my MCA in 1997 from Madras University (for the sake of certificate). I studied in RKM (North) in T. Nagar and Govt. HSS School Kodambakkam. My hobbies vary. Right now vegetable gardening in "mottai madi" (roof top) and Indian History.

Question 2) Raman, tell us about your IT entry more in detail, who introduced you to foss, did you had the opportunity of using foss for first time in your career or you a converted foss user? It is believed and said that to implement anything in government organisation is tough, tell us about the support what you got from your organisation.

Raman: In Government IT dept is staffed by existing employees who are willing to learn. When my hospital went far a large IT plan in 1988-89 I voluntered. It was HCL supermini running on Unix. Linux is the natural migration path for old time Unix people. So I shifted my system to Linux and mostly FOSS (except for DBMS - we still use Sybase - being converted to PostgreSQL). It is difficult to bring any change in Govt organsation. However, doing such things  gives great sense of achievement and satisfaction. My hospital - i.e., Railway Hospital, Perambur - is 505 bedded tertiary care hospital. It is a professionally well known one. In fact Chennai's first Open Heart Surgery was done here. Many of leading Cardiac Surgeons are from our hospital. So the atmosphere is encourging for innovation and change unlike most government offices. Here we enjoy lot of professional freedom.

Question 3) Raman, wat you feel , it needs to be done to promote FOSS in young minds? Do you see the current syllabus of Anna University is capable of driving FOSS to young minds? Should FOSS be taught as a syllabus?

Raman: We need to do more "physical" work, i.e., talk to youngsters about FOSS. Demonstrate, give them helping hand in learning. University syllabus (atleast in present day implementation) do not give us anything - hardly 2-3% useful in real life, irrespective of FOSS or proprietary. I don't think FOSS should be the exclusive syllabus - after all in real life students have to face lot of proprietary software also. But what ever concepts e.g SQL, networking programming, etc, that can be taught with exclusive FOSS tools should be done using them.

Question 3a) We at ILUGC revolve around engineering college predominantly, I am sure you will agree that, innovative and inspirational minds stays in engg polytechnics, arts and science college too, how do we fill this digital divide?

Raman: Right now our problem is volunteer strength - I mean physical volunteers. We have hardly 10 people who go to various places. Also our contact with arts and science college is very poor. We need to establish better contacts so that we can penetrate there also.

Question 4) We know you are the administrator for the hospital which you work with. Please explain your implementation of FOSS in hospital.

Raman: We have Hospital Information Mangement System (HIMS) for storing information about patients and other hospital functions. Our systems take care of inventory worth 30 crores annually - like purchase, distribution, reporting etc. They are written in Perl, running on normal PC. Backend is a Sybase database -which is under conversion to PostgreSQL. The implementation is in LTSP - old PCs, thin clients, some fat clients. In fact a Pentium 100 is still being used in a place. We are pushing OpenOffice in every place not only in our hospital but in other railway offices also.

Question 4a) have you every tried to make it generic so that it can be deployed to other Govt. hospitals?

Raman: There are constraints. When I say IT in my hospital - for 15 years it mean only me, and for the past 5 years - two of us. We look after every aspect of IT - design, development, coding, training , day to day trouble shooting, network etc. Also our hospital is very peculiar - it is for a closed set of population - workflow is totally different from other hospitals. As a result, it is a highly customised one. Though I always wanted to it better - I haven't done anything generic. All that I could do so far is to upload a module in CPAN and fix a bug/feature in LTSP. The problem in government is not lack of software or hardware - they can be readied easily - but implementation. My software had a bharat darshan - but nowhere implemented successfully. It is not well packaged - so that it can be single click installation.

Question 5) To make it spicy, probably to kindle some flame in the list, if I assert "perl" is better than Python and PHP, tell me one statement to support this assertion?

Raman: Basic attitude of Perl - there is more than one way to do it - which is very close to FOSS. However, I feel when comparing there is some meaning in comparing Perl and Python - bringing PHP in the picture is not right, it is web centric. Between Perl and Python I don't see something as best. No language is perfect - no language is ultimate. However, if you are familiar with C, Perl should be easy to learn.

Question 5a) Since your'e HIMS is written in Perl and now that you should be expert in Perl. If you are asked to rewrite the whole thing in a language from scratch, which language you would choose and why? Will it be Perl again?

Raman: I am certainly not an expert in Perl - conversant with it that is all. I have written HIMS from scratch 3 times in the last 20 years. This the problem with IT, nothing lasts longer - you do the same work repeatedly. I don't mind giving Python or Ruby a try for simply learning. For serious work I prefer Perl - as I don't want to waste time in learning one more language - when Perl is sufficient. I don't see any advantage in shifting languages.

Interviewer: So we learn that one should aspire to be a solution builder and not a tool worshipper. That's an open minded approach, we welcome your thoughts.

Raman: Yes, software is for solving real life problem, not a religion. So better be pragmatic than dogmatic.

Interviewer: Raman, I agree with you on wasting time on learning one more language, but if a language gives the power of perl + additional capabilities + less code,  why not try then?

Raman: Sure I don't mind but what about learning time, re-implmenting lakhs of lines of code, testing etc. I prefer changing when present one is not capable of delivering - eg. from old CLI to GUI interface.

Question 6) What will be the future of LTSP, since the hardware prices keep sliding, do LTSP still hold the advantage? Kindly add your contribution to LTSP?

Raman: Cost is not the only factor. Others like easy maintenance, centralised software installation, etc., are also important factors. Presently the LTSP is in a very good shape - you can have video or audio like YouTube, etc., on the client. You can also use USB pen drives. With forthcoming 10Gb LAN LTSP will be an attractive option. I am not a contributor to LTSP - except for 3 lines of patch. But I wish to plunge into this project fulltime.

Question 7) How you manage work/life/FOSS evangelism, who is your source of inspiration (ofcourse apart from Tux)?

Raman: For FOSS, RMS is my inspiration. Government service has some advantages also - main thing being getting leave whenever you want. My idea is atleast one day in a month for FOSS.

Question  8) How many colleges/schools you went so far? Any numbers?  Guess, even if you do not have accurate.

Raman: For first one or two years I maintained the list. But I no longer do so. It should be atleast 100 lectures so far - about 30 colleges/schools/offices (some times to the same college year after year).

Interviewer: It is really great to hear that.

Raman: Thank you.

Question  9) How do you see linux accepted by kids, there is a myth that some elder people still believe that linux is tough, I know your daughter plays with linux, does she teach her friends?

Raman: I don't encourage computers for my kids. Very little - about an hour in a week. I wish they play in real world than in virtual world. Programs like GCompris are a hit among kids. I feel we should target primary schools with educational software available in FOSS world.

Raman: As regards myth - whatever you learn first is easy. It is like learning a new language at 30 years of age. For me command line is the easiest, vi is the best editor.

Interviewer: You don't encourage computers for your kids if they are playing with it? If they are using it for some useful purpose?

Raman: Sure, very little time they spend on computers. I want them to play. In my opinion childhood is a time to learn by experiencing not by simply reading.

Question 10) Tell us about your blog, Ramanin Kirukalkal. Share some best read which you read on foss/interesting article.

Raman: Nothing great about it. I want to write whatever I feel someone else may be interested in. Best read so far is about millets. I think millets and natural Indian farming is something that we have to go back for healthier living.

Question 11) Your FOSS contribution w.r.t programming if any?

Raman: I haven't done anything to FOSS except doing some propaganda work. I wish foss + Net should have been there during late eighties or early nineties so that I could have done something useful.

Interviewer: It is indeed pleasure in talking with you Raaman, we thank your presence and appreciate your answers. Thanks for your time.

Raman: Thank you.

As part of the"Know your luggie" series we interviewed Bharathi Subramanium, our ex- co-ordinator,edition #2 ,interviewed by Balachandar Muruganatham and Thyagarajan Shanmugham

Interviewer: Hello Bharathi, welcome.

Bharathi: Hi.

Question 1) Can you tell us about your educational background, your college,school, your favorite subject?

Bharathi: DEEE and BE (CSE). Discontinued the IITM MS. I did my under grad in Bharathidasan Univ, Trichy. All my schooling is in and around native village Tiruvanduthurai. My favourite subject is Practical Science.

Question 2) Tell us about your IT entry, how did you know about FOSS, who introduced you to ilugc? Who is you idol/favourite person in this FOSS world?

Bharathi: I was trying to get into EEE Dept. But at that time, no seat is available. So I took the CSE. That how I entered in to IT field :)

Bharathi: No introduced me to ILUGC. In 2001, I started working on the 1st Research project at IITM, which is in the field of i18n. I was going through the Internet sites, to find more info about i18n.

Bharathi: During that time, I came through some of Linux Users Groups in US and other country. So I started a search to the LUG in India and found ILUGC. I am soo excited to see a LUG in Chennai and that too in IITM. I immediately joined :)

Interviewer: Great.

Bharathi: When i joined, I knew only Bharathi.

Bharathi: My idol is Dr. Sriram and Dr. Prabhu.

Question 3) Can you share us your experience with ILUGC as the co-ordinator aka, office boy? What do you feel as the achievement of ILUGC?

Bharathi: It is very nice. I feel very happy. Nothing is MY achievement. Every achievement is OUR achievement.

Bharathi: As a part of ILUGC, we conducted many Linux Demo Days, Install Fests, Tech Talks. It is collaborative work. As my achievement, I can say, in last 7years and 7months, I managed to arrange meetings in every month, expect 3 or 4 months.

Interviewer: Ok, nice.

Question 4) Now that apple inc has beaten microsoft, do we still think MS is against FOSS? MS gives dev tools for free recently, whats your opinion and what about Apple, is it FOSS friendly? Your comments about MS Open Source licenses.

Bharathi: I feel, nearly 5yrs back itself, Apple and M$ are started looking at FOSS as competitor and draft their business plans accordingly. I am happy to the word open in M$ licences. And lets hope for the best.

Bharathi: From iPhone point of view, I feel, NO. I am not sure about Mac OS. Because I didn't get a chance to use the latest Mac OS.

Interviewer: Ok.

Question 5) Kindly explain DRM in layman terms. DRM free music is sustainable to consumers, vendors? How do you see GPL versus DRM?

Bharathi: DRM in layman term: you are buying a vegetable from a shop and if shop owner is forcing you to cook this vegetable only in gold vessel, then we can say, the vegetable is under DRM. To understand correctly, just replace vegetable with song, cook with play, and gold vessel with iPad.

Interviewer: Good example Bharathi.

Bharathi: :)

Bharathi: GPL and DRM are coming from different background. We cannot directly compare. But GNU project support DRM-free contents.

Question 6) Your take on open formats versus propreitory formats? Which one will you choose?.

Interviewer: I see difference in supporting open formats versus discouraging proprietary formats, since Internet is a commune of technology, is the OSS world ready to discourage proprietary formats like Flash which is more like a platform while there is virtually no equivalents in the OSS arena.

Bharathi: Open formats are very important to assure your ownership of the content. HTML5 will remove the dependency on Flash.

Question 7) Related to mergers, MySQL -> SUN -> Oracle did it. OSS getting merged into proprietary is the future for OSS survival? FOSS too follows the survival of the fittest?

Bharathi: Survival of fittess is common for all. :)

Bharathi: From Human to FOSS Project

Question 8) In promoting FOSS, you had conducted various faculty development programs for the teaching community. What do you see the plus and minuses in these ventures? Your note to the teaching community with respect to FLOSS.

Bharathi: +ve Few college, started using FLOSS in lab. Few students got a chance to work with FLOSS Projects.

Bharathi: -ve Lot of disappointments. Because many of the staffs, who came to FDP, has no intention to learn anything new.

Question 9) Can you share your experience with FOSS and firmware development which you involved?

Bharathi: As part of my career, I involved in many boot loader and kernel level modifications, it was very nice experience. Particularly, I will get amazed by the simple techniques, that are used to solve complex issues at low level layers.

Interviewer: What part does FLOSS had in your firmware development?

Bharathi: We cannot call it as firmware. We can say low level programming. GNU tool chains, UBoot, kernel driver, protocol stacks etc.

Question 10) Many people think knowing Linux will lead to sys admin job. Is it true? Does our people learn great programming using Linux?

Bharathi: Yes. Our people are not reading wonderful FOSS codes.

Question 11) What should be done in order to flourish FOSS innovation? At present, majority of FOSS are coming from European countries, what about India?

Bharathi: Education system should start encouraging the attitude of asking more questions. At the CSE curriculum, students should be encouraged to do projects in FOSS. And finally, the teacher should give all support to the students.

Interviewer: Thanks Bharathi for your time,We appreciate your presence.

Bharathi: Thank you.

Interviewed by Balachandar Muruganatham and Thyagarajan Shanmugham