Open source: Developing markets and anti-Americanism
Published: 14 Nov 2005 12:00 GMT
India: Speaking your language
Spotlight project
The Indian government is funding an initiative to distribute millions
of free CDs containing open source software. Around 3.5 million CDs
Tamil-language versions of open source applications and 3.5 million
Hindi-language CDs containing have already been distributed. And there are further plans to distribute software translated into all 22 official languages of India.
Summary
Open source software has been deployed by both the national and state
governments in India, although many of the large scale deployments have
happened in states. However, researcher Rao says there is still a "lot
of Microsoft" in use by the Indian government.
The government of Maharashtra, India's third largest state, has deployed OpenOffice.org on "thousands of desktops" and is using Linux in its treasury management and land record management departments, according to a recent article in The Times of India.
The state of Kerala is using open source software for "many" of its e-Government initiatives, Ajay Kumar, the secretary to the Keralan government said in a conference speech. A number of schools across the state are using open source software on PCs, including over 40 schools in the Kannur district.
Mandriva's chief executive, Bancilhon says it is in talks with an Indian government agency at the moment and expects to deploy Linux on between 10,000 to 100,000 machines.
The Indian national government and the majority of state authorities have a neutral policy around open source. Kerala is thought to be one of the few states to have a policy that formally promotes open source. "The Government wishes to encourage the judicious use of open source/free software that compliments/supplements proprietary software, to reduce the total cost of ownership of IT applications/solutions without compromising on the immediate and medium term value provided by the application," the Kerala government states in its IT policy document.
The Indian government has funded a number of initiatives to promote and research the use of open source, including the foundation of the Open Source Software Resource Center, which aims to...
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6 comments
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Funny, I always thought Brazil was located in the... Anonymous -
anti-Americanism ???
Most of the major Linux dist... cyber_rigger
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DO NOT click the Times of India link! It threw a... Anonymous
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The link to the Times of India has been remov... Alex -
You can ask every serious IT security expert to le... Matthias Lutzer
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F/OSS is pro-American. Where do you get this anti... Olav Petri
