Simon Sharwood over at El Reg reports on policy guidelines from the Indian government's technology department:
India's Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY)--has laid out a new policy (PDF) commanding the nation's government to use only open source software.
The policy statement is rather blunt:
Government of India shall endeavour to adopt Open Source Software in all e-Governance systems implemented by various Government organizations, as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software (CSS). The Open Source Software shall have the following characteristics:
- The source code shall be available for the community/adopter/end-user to study and modify the software and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified software.
- Source code shall be free from any royalty.
Compliance with the policy is "mandatory" and applies to all central government agencies for state agencies when they replace or upgrade "e-governance" software. There's an out if an agency needs software that isn't readily available as open source, but the policy insists on calling for only open source products in all future RFPs.
[...]There's also lots of wriggle room in the definition of "e-governance", which DEITY says is "A procedural approach in which the Government and the citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders are able to transact all or part of activities using Information and Communication Technology tools."
Between that loose definition and the get-out clause for apps that aren't easily found as FOSS, it looks like India's not blocking proprietary software entirely, but is making it plain it prefers open source whenever possible.
It's worth noting that the state of Tamil Nadu and the state of Kerala have been leaders in the move to Free and Open Source Software in India, pursuing that path for many years in government, especially in education.
Related Stories
The state of Kerala, India, has opened Swatantra, the largest government FOSS center in the world. Swatantra falls under the auspices of Kerala's International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS). In 2001, Kerala adopted a formal, pro-FOSS technology policy.
'Swatantra', an initiative of International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), will house the FOSS incubation centre and training space. It is aimed at enhancing the government's agenda of promoting democratic access to information with the objective of sustainable economic development.
Earlier on SN:
Government of Indian State Fully Adopts FOSS in Schools; Saves $45M (2017)
Government of India Adopts FOSS Preferred Policy (2015)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:39AM
will they stop using google.com, etc.?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @08:18AM
But How? GOogle is the Intenret.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:52AM
As soon as he emigrates, he can renounce his American citizenship, for great justice.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @08:27AM
As it appeared in the queue, [soylentnews.org] the 1st part of the summary (and the headline) mentioned that the policy is a mandate.
The 2nd part was purposely separated by me and mentioned that other folks reporting the story didn't mention the loosie-goosie verbiage of the directive.
Apparently, when NotSanguine edits, he doesn't pussyfoot around.
Title changed; dept. changed; the 2 parts of the story (strictness vs laxity) mushed together.
Maybe next time I should include only a link and let the editor take it from there.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @08:40AM
http://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=6750#submit [soylentnews.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 07 2015, @08:48AM
Interestingly, the original link worked just well (however it might stop to work for any new code version if the parsing code gets more strict)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @08:54AM
So you object to the more accurate headline and the removal of your inflammatory comment. Cry us a river.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Marand on Tuesday April 07 2015, @08:46PM
Apparently, when NotSanguine edits, he doesn't pussyfoot around.
Title changed; dept. changed; the 2 parts of the story (strictness vs laxity) mushed together.
Maybe next time I should include only a link and let the editor take it from there.
Oh, grow up. By the way you're acting about it, it sounded like he completely mangled the submission, but all he did was modify and move one line to merge quotes. I had a submission get modified much more than that and didn't complain, because that's what they're getting paid (poorly ;) to do.
Also, bitching about the title and byline changing is ridiculous; choosing a good title and byline is what the editor should be doing. In this case, the headline adjustment made it more accurate, and the byline is funny (at least to me, I heard it to the tune of that Offspring song when I read it). Complaining about the byline is especially funny, considering there isn't even an input box for submitting your own byline; you just started providing your own inside the summary area on the assumption that the editor will use it, and now you're upset that it wasn't used.
Submitting summaries is great, and I generally like the links you submit, but you need to understand that once you hit that submit button it's out of your hands and the editors can do what they want. Just because they've been relaxed about it doesn't mean they aren't allowed to touch the submissions. This isn't your personal blog, and editors are part of the deal; if you can't handle that then this isn't the right place to submit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @09:57PM
“Your Honor, with all due respect, if you're going to try my case for me, I wish you wouldn't lose it.” [google.com]
If someone is going to edit my submission, how about not gutting the point I was trying to make by submitting it?
-- gewg_
(Score: 5, Funny) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:05PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Tuesday April 07 2015, @02:44PM
I hereby mandate you to prefer clippy.js [smore.com](javascript required)
[noscript version: animated clippy and friends in js]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @10:54PM
Linux Genuine Advantage(tm) [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [linuxgenuineadvantage.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday April 07 2015, @06:45PM
How does one have a *mandatory* *preference*?
Easy, just call up the Purchasing department and ask them.
(Score: 2, Informative) by bookreader on Tuesday April 07 2015, @01:10PM
The site of the department [deity.gov.in] clearly uses DeitY and not DEITY. While The Register made successfully their tongue-in-cheek in the title of the article, it probably would be better to be a bit more serious when creating and editing summaries here on SN.
And (on topic), good for India. They have more than enough IT people to apply the new policy.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:24PM
The true reason that they switch to FOSS is that they could no longer stand those Indian hotlines you get when calling the support number of proprietary software providers. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.