Boggled Mind

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.

Self-Hosting!!!

Self Hosting is a form of running your own website or application by setting up a server and network yourself. Self-hosting is also the activity of having and administrating your own server, typically at home, to host your personal data and services yourself instead of relying exclusively on third-parties. For instance, you can self-host your blog, such that it 'lives' on a machine that you have control of, instead of having it on somebody else's computer (a.k.a. The Cloud) in exchange for money, seo-advertisement or selling of your private data.

Self-hosting ideally implies owning a server. A server is a computer which is typically accessible on the network 24/7, and usually does not have any screen or keyboard (it is instead controlled remotely). Contrarily to a popular belief, a server is not necessarily a huge and extra-powerful machine: nowadays, a small, ~$30 ARM board is adequate for self-hosting. However, this does not mean you cannot host anything on your own laptop/desktop.. Of course you can anytime.

Self-hosting is not about making "your Internet" more secure and does not provide anonymity by itself. Instead, it is about being autonomous, and in control of your services and data - which also means being responsible for them.

Why should you host yourself ?

You believe in a free, open and decentralized internet. In a centralized internet, private companies and government can spy, analyze and influence people by dictating how they connect with each other, and by filtering content. There are many hosting applications/servers developed by a community who believe in an open and decentralized internet, and we hope that you do, too! So, find them in the world of computers...

You want to have control of your data and services. Your pictures, chat messages, browsing history, and that text you are writing for school, have nothing to do on somebody else's server (a.k.a. The Cloud). They are part of your private life, but also part of your family's life, your friend's life, and so on. These data should be managed by you, not a random company in the US who wants your data to analyze them and sell the results.

You want to learn about how computers and the Internet work. Operating your own server is a pretty good context to understand the basic mechanisms at the heart of operating systems and the Internet. You might have to deal with command line interface, network architecture, DNS configuration, SSH, and so on.

You want to explore new possibilities and customize things. Ever dreamed of running a Game server for your friends, or a persistent IRC or XMPP client? With your very own server, you can manually install and run virtually any program you want, and customize every bit.

Why should you not host yourself ?

Self-hosting requires some work and patience. Hosting yourself is a bit like growing your own garden or vegetables: it requires work and patience. While those few open source images for home servers aim to do all the hard work for you, self-hosting still requires that you take time to learn and configure a few things to setup your server properly. You will also need to perform maintenance tasks (such as upgrades) from time to time, or to ask for support if some things break.

With great servers comes great responsibilities. Operating a server means that you are responsible for the data you are hosting. Nobody will be able to recover them for you if they get lost. Very few servers (images and open source images) provide backup features, and if they do, you should use the feature regularly to backup the configurations and data you care about. You should also keep an eye on security news and recommendations so that your server or critical data don't get compromised.

Quality and performance probably won't be as good as premium services. You should try and use those open source host images (and most of the applications packaged for it) which are free and have imbibed open-source software, developed by communities of people in their free time and on the basis of best effort. There of course is no absolute guarantee that those softwares will work in every possible circumstance. The performance of your self-hosted server is also related to its CPU and RAM, and to the available internet connectivity.

Edit/Update: 25.04.2023 - Read about my experience of self-hosting setup at home in the thread here.