Hi
There has been considerable talk after the ET article on BOSS Linux. To quote Mark Twain, “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated”. As a developer of BOSS, I’ll try to place the situation in some perspective.
BOSS GNU/Linux is a key deliverable of NRCFOSS, an initiative by the Govt of India to support Free/Open Source Software development in the country. The project was initiated in 2007 and till now 5 major releases of BOSS have been rolled out. BOSS GNU/Linux is derived and the we have attempted to follow Debian LTS releases. The latest releases of BOSS and its variants can be downloaded fromhttp://bosslinux.in/downloads.
All the source packages of BOSS releases are maintained in the public repository http://packages.bosslinux.in/boss .
The patches with respect to Debian are maintained under Debian derivatives census page https://dex.alioth.debian.org/census/BOSSlinux/patches/ for all the versions
We also customize BOSS specific to strategic sectors based on their requirements. These are not disclosed due to Non-disclosure agreements which we have with these strategic clients and hence not posted in public.
Along the journey, there have been some hits and misses. Some of the areas where we would be concentrating on in the future are greater customization of strategic OS versions, including the developer and student communities in the BOSS movement, and greater reach in the educational/enterprise markets. The article in ET has several arguable statements, but we prefer to see it as a welcome sign of kickstarting a greater conversation about the BOSS project and where it should be headed.
We are in the process of a major internal review on these very issues, and so all feedback is welcome.