India announces open source policy- Big win for FOSS

[Siji Sunny <sijisunny@gmail.com>]

The government has announced open source policy which is applicable to all Government organizations under the Central Governments and those State Governments.

Key highlights of government’s open source policy include:

– All future Requests for Proposals (RFPs) of eGovernance projects shall include a mandatory clause for considering Open Source Software (OSS) as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software (CSS). Suppliers shall provide justification for exclusion of OSS in their response.

- Government Organizations shall ensure compliance with this requirement and decide by comparing both OSS and CSS options with respect to capability, strategic control, scalability,security, life time costs and support requirements.

–  GoI shall establish suitable support mechanism for the available OSS that includes Institutional Mechanism, Partnership with Industry, Academia and OSS Community.

You can download it from -

http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf

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Siji Sunny