

Indian OS - billswift
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/10/indian_os.html

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prakashk
I wish everyone realizes what a joke this publicity-seeking exercise of a
politician/bureacrat is (just as the so-called $10 laptop was). Discussing the
technical merits or demerits of this whole absurdity would only give it more
legitimacy.

Instead, I would humbly point you to <http://greatbong.net/2010/10/14/the-
grand-secret-os/>, which recognizes this for what it actually is. At least you
can have some fun talking about it.

~~~
kranner
Lovely, but I doubt a non-Indian will get all those in-jokes.

~~~
aniket_ray
Helping people out with the jokes.

G@ND = expletive for ass(the body part).

Block Development Officer - Officer in charge of administering a block (a
block in turn is a small administrative area typically a few villages).

SC - Scheduled Castes

ST - Scheduled Tribes

OBC - Other Backward Classes

SC, ST, OBC are different categorization of the castes.

Indian institutions (govt. jobs, colleges etc) have to offer atleast 49.5%
seats to people belonging to these sections. This is kind of an affirmative
action. This affirmative action is based on the archaic caste system and not
on the something tangible like income. So quite often the rich people of these
castes end up reaping the benefits. Because of this reason most of the
intellectuals of India oppose such an affirmative action. Politicians still do
it, because its a easy way to get votes.

Class IV employees - Employees under a particular government pay grade. The
lowest grade in government pay scale. People in this grade form unions and
assert their labour rights through frequent strikes.

Babus - may refer to either bureaucrats or the clerical staff in their office.
Both are known to be admirers of red tape and corruption.

Paan - piper betel leaf based mouth freshener. Hard to explain so refer
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paan>

~~~
known
There are 17,000 cults aka castes in India. <http://goo.gl/CNyp>

With less than 1% marriages inter-caste, they literally hate each other.

Since _Economic mobility != Social mobility_ it is better for India to give
autonomy to FC/BC/SC/ST/Minority regions with a single passport and currency
across these regions.

------
sagarun
I am an Indian myself. Sadly the media here publishes news without analysing
or questioning it. The same media made ankit fadia as a "hacker", who didn't
even write a single exploit
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankit_Fadia#Controversy> . For all your
information , Indian government has "created" an operating system out of
debian, it is named as BOSS - <http://bosslinux.in/> .

------
prat
"scientific adviser to the Defence Minister said that the OS was needed to
protect India's economic framework."

That's very typical of India. If you want to do it, do it - no need to hold
press conferences for things like this.

------
gaius
I sometimes wonder what the world would look like now if the UK govt had said
right, computing is strategic, we need to maintain that capability, and had
gone all-out to equip the public sector with the BBC Master or the Archimedes.
Business would have followed suit. Or if the German govt had done the same
with the Amiga.

Of course what would actually happen is they'd have bought Amstrad word
processors and e-mailers from that snake-oil salesman Alan Sugar. Oh well.

~~~
iuytguyhj
They would have given the contract to BAe who have delivered them 10years late
for 100x the cost and they wouldn't have any keys.

------
spiffworks
I have a few friends who worked at DRDO, and the stories I've heard make them
out to be total clowns. They're clueless where it comes to anything except
missile design. I have no doubt that this is yet another clever plot to waste
taxpayer money in the name of national security.

------
tezza
Surely they'll need their own CPU, Motherboard Chips, RAM, Ethernet Cards,
Graphics Cards, HDD as well.

Why should software be the only attack vector?

~~~
mrduncan
And of course their own compiler.

Based on what I've read (which admittedly isn't a whole lot), it sounds like
they need to take a few minutes to read Ken Thompson's "Reflections on
Trusting Trust"[1].

[1]: <http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html>

~~~
limmeau
And their own chip manufacturing[1].

1\.
[http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/homes/kingst/Research_files/king08.pd...](http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/homes/kingst/Research_files/king08.pdf)

------
borisk
Russian government had similar plans a few years ago:

<http://www.cnews.ru/news/top/indexEn.shtml?2007/09/14/266177>

------
desigooner
Another attempt at Security by obscurity .. Security by obscurity is mostly an
illusion .. And it's not like MSFT has it easy either as far as keeping their
OS secure inspite of having hundreds of people working on it.

anyway, I have no idea what Real-time system with "Windows" software really
means. Bad quoting or they really need to polish up on what they say in press
conferences.

disclaimer: I'm Indian and while this is all typical in terms of getting
publicity, I have no idea on who makes these decisions.

------
ojbyrne
This seems like a recipe for a failed project - a government agency building
an OS. Either that or it will be another linux fork branded as "Government of
India."

~~~
mfukar
Turkey has done it. US has done it. Other have done it.

~~~
ojbyrne
Google suggests many governments have done it. And they're all linux variants.

~~~
mfukar
Why are you fixating on "Linux variants/forks"? Is there something inherently
undesirable about them?

~~~
ojbyrne
No, it's just that the linked article says that India is going to be designing
and developing a completely new architecture, and I'm suggesting that no
country has ever done that. And that the likely result will be monstrous cost
and time overruns followed by a quick and dirty forking and rebranding of
linux to save face.

~~~
mfukar
I don't have a link to the official announcement, so I can't be certain, but I
doubt they're going to build their own _hardware_ architecture. It's
reasonable to think they will develop a new OS; one can only hope to see an
actual OS based on the principles behind Minix, but that's my little dream
world there. :-)

------
yarapavan
There has been an attempt by C-DAC called "Bharat Operating System(BOSS)",
based on Debian, in collaboration with NRCFOSS. It was endorsed by the
Government of India for adoption and implementation on a national scale.

Grand plan right? Then, it went no where. Dead. period.

Having known a thing or two about C-DAC & DRDO, I seriously doubt this grand
secret OS plan.

~~~
prakashk
> Having known a thing or two about C-DAC & DRDO, [...]

A friend of mine used to work at C-DAC in the late '80s and early '90s. I
remember talking to him about the work they were doing in the area of parallel
processing. My memory is vague, but I remember he was quite excited to work
there. Not sure when things had started to go downhill.

------
twymer
I can see some worth in the idea where a country/culture creates a home spun
version of a Linux distro as it could come complete with the appropriate
language packs and more relevant software included.

However, I can't imagine building an OS from the ground up for the purpose of
fending for their own cyber security being a good idea.

~~~
pjscott
India has already done the former, with BOSS Linux. It's essentially Debian
with some different default language packs. Their web site also boasts "unique
features" like the ability to serve web pages from their server edition
(wow!), so I'm not sure how much they've actually added and how much is just
hype.

<http://bosslinux.in/>

------
viraptor
This reminded me of an actual OS with the security as its main goal.
Architecture document posted here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1796384>

------
br1
Brazil tried this stunt in the 80s. Google "Brazilian Informatics Policy".
Even when such a project fails its primary objective, it may advance the human
resources immensely.

~~~
jbarham
IIRC Lua (<http://www.lua.org>) was developed in part because of Brazil's
protectionist policies.

------
known
In India's dummy democracy, Govt is wasting 10,000 crore rupees on UIDAI
project where 80% Indians are living under 20 rupees per day.

------
Stevenup7002
Well from what I've seen, Indians do make great programmers!

------
bradleyland
>"The only way to protect it is to have a home-grown system, the complete
architecture ... source code is with you and then nobody knows what's that."

That is a choice quote. It's amazing that India is the go-to place for
outsourcing when they have such backwards ideas about security and software
development. Historically, the most secure operating systems on the market
have been "open", not closed.

~~~
dododo
can you provide some justification for "Historically, the most secure
operating systems on the market have been "open", not closed."?

if you take security to be assured in some sense, TCSEC might be a reasonable
standard. I do not know of any open source operating system certified to A1,
but there is at least one closed source OS:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XTS-400>

if you mean track record, in terms of number of compromises, i'd be interested
to see the data.

~~~
jbarham
> I do not know of any open source operating system certified...

Certification costs money which is most likely the real reason why open source
OS's have not been "certified" as secure, not because they're intrinsically
insecure. OpenBSD, for example, has a reputation for being secure.

FWIW none of the open source Unices have UNIX certification
(<http://www.opengroup.org/platform/unix_certification/>) but that obviously
is not preventing the spread of Linux into "enterprise" computing.

