Re: India announces open source policy- Big win for FOSS

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.

Dear All,

I afraid, the clause-7 (Exception) may can easily mis-used by organizations influenced by $MS like preparatory software companies.

Clause 7 :Exception -

"However, in certain specialised domains where OSS solutions meeting

essential functional requirements may not be available or in case of

urgent / strategic need to deploy CSS based solutions or lack of

expertise (skill set) in identified technologies, the concerned Government

Organization may consider exceptions, with sufficient justification."

And I doubt, are we really lacking expertise and skillset, to identify the right Open-Source alternatives and implement it ?

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

Siji Sunny