
Indian Government adopts an open source policy - sinatra
http://opensource.com/government/15/8/india-adopts-open-source-policy
======
kumarm
I know we are supposed cheer this as victory for Open Source. But anything a
government of India (Current or former) does with Technology, I would take it
with a grain of salt.

Here are recent Indian Government (or Indian States) Projects:

1\. Cheap 35$ laptop. We all know how that turned out.

2\. Here a App developed by a State Government with Multi Million Dollars
budget recently:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apgov.apsp...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apgov.apspeaks)

Yes it has only 1000 downloads after multi million dollar budget and not even
localized to local language. This is by a state CM's personal pet project who
claims to be pro Technology.

When Governments like this announce any initiative, look beyond headlines,
Someone is making merry of tax payers money.

~~~
jezclaremurugan
I understand why you are cynical, but I've been part of the BOSS linux team
couple of years ago and I would say it was money well spent.

To cite just one example - BOSS Linux was installed along side Windows (dual
boot) in the free laptops given to students by the Tamil Nadu govt. This alone
helped introduce thousands of students to linux.

~~~
sliverstorm
_... helped introduce thousands of students to linux._

Why is that so good, and so worth lots of government money?

~~~
hrjet
> Why is that so good..

It encourages tinkering which is especially important for students.

Also, many other general benefits that open-source brings. For example, open
source code is more trustable than closed source.

~~~
hchenji
Yeah but if GNULinux is free in the first place, why spend so much govt. money
on it?

~~~
afarrell
GNU/Linux is Free as in Speech, not Free as in Beer. Much like printing
presses and political campaigns still cost money, so does hardware and
especially so does the time to mentor someone on how to use GNU/Linux.

For many organizations, Windows is actually monetarily cheaper than Linux,
particularly organizations that need to deploy non-web GUI applications for
users who are never going to be comfortable on a terminal.

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rushabh
This is based on a policy document released a couple months back. Here is a
better article [http://opensource.com/government/15/8/india-adopts-open-
sour...](http://opensource.com/government/15/8/india-adopts-open-source-
policy)

In general, this is just intent. I am not sure how the government plans to
implement this. Government in India is huge and complex and most of the arms
run independently, which is great for IT services vendors like IBM, TCS and
others since they make money by selling the same stuff over and over again.

People who I know and are working in various organizations with the government
are pretty frustrated with the pace and lack of intent on the ground.

Most Indian FOSS projects like BOSS Linux are pretty lame and they don't have
any real community behind them. I think they took down the forum on the BOSS
linux website, because there were no questions asked. Some of the other
"successful" services like Spoken Tutorials ([http://spoken-
tutorial.org/](http://spoken-tutorial.org/)) are pretty bad too (though I see
websites have improved).

As a tax paying Indian citizen, I really hope all this changes.

~~~
zanny
Most old guard politicians are not prepared to say "there is already a great
community project out there - be it Debian / Ubuntu / Fedora / etc - we should
probe which ones are interested in working with us rather than just taking
their code and trying to go it solo.

Their answer is always take the product in the market and throw a few million
dollars at it to make it do what we want. And then ignore the fact its
software, and needs constant maintenance and vigilance and they could get that
all for free if they were participatory rather than off on their own.

------
trequartista
While this is excellent news, couldn't find answers to a few important
questions:

1\. Where is the source for Boss Linux. It's based on Debian, but couldn't
find the link to view the source. It's all nice to talk about embracing open
source, but shouldn't CDAC also publish the source for Boss Linux?

2\. What is the update mechanism? How frequently will this distro be updated?

~~~
jezclaremurugan
1 - I'll edit this with the repo link - it is indeed public but my google
fu/memory fails me now 2 - Regular updates follow debian stable, new releases
are once every 1-2 years.

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sremani
The bigger question is Should the State be making an Operating System?
Choosing Linux is entirely different question and can be made successful with
abundance of spending on retraining.

~~~
swayvil
What retraining? I have several clients, computer illiterate old ladies, who
use Ubuntu and Debian just fine. No retraining required.

They just jump on that desktop and go.

~~~
dangerlibrary
Until something goes wrong.

Like if they can't read the tiny font in the file menu. Then they google it,
and discover they need to "sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool." Then they
manage to actually find a terminal window and run the command, and install the
tool, and turn up every available font rendering option, and it still doesn't
solve their problem.

That is just one real world example. Linux is an operating system used and
built primarily by people who are willing to put up with a little bit of crap
to get 99% of what they want, and live with the rest. Imagine if Windows or
OSX required you to open a terminal and install a third party lib to increase
your font size. People would call them insane.

Just to be clear: I use a linux desktop every day. I love it and it would
require a substantial increase in compensation for me to switch back to a
Windows machine. But saying that computer illiterate/naive workforce can
switch operating systems with no retraining costs is demonstrably false.

~~~
infinity0
How's that different from Windows? Instead of opening a terminal, I double
click?

~~~
dangerlibrary
I believe you can simply zoom, using ctrl-+ or ctrl-scroll wheel. It's a
common pattern that works across applications in windows and OSX, but for
whatever reason isn't implemented in the file menu of Ubuntu systems. Maybe
for open-source-y political reasons or maybe because component X of Y system
included in the file menu already uses that shortcut. It doesn't matter - the
existing knowledge of how to zoom in is useless, and you're stuck figuring out
the new system.

Again, it's just one example. Others are far worse: try to figure out how to
play a song or some other audio into a skype call by piping data directly into
the mic input channel. It's pretty trivial in windows, and there are third
party tools with easy to understand GUIs if you can't figure it out on your
own. On Linux you'll be futzing with jackd configs for hours.

~~~
infinity0
In many FOSS applications ctrl -/\+ works too. I've had to mess around with
audio and video on Windows too, it's not pretty. It definitely does _not_
"just work". I've never needed to pipe data into a mic input channel on Linux.
These days one probably wants "pavucontrol".

I don't like arbitrarily changing UX either, but it's not like Windows doesn't
have that problem. I had massive switching headaches moving to the new
"ribbon" based stuff in Microsoft Office.

Of course neither side is perfect, but I am thoroughly unconvinced by the
"unusable" argument. THere are definitely biases with ignoring the headaches
that Windows forces upon users.

~~~
dangerlibrary
Nobody in this thread said that linux is unusable.

------
jezclaremurugan
I worked in the BOSS linux team from 2010-2012. I can probably answer some
questions.

Let me address the most common sentiment.. Why BOSS when we already have
Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat etc.?

Support - gov bodies moving to linux need guaranteed support at optimal cost.

Localization - if you are working with Indian languages primarily, BOSS linux
provides a better experience out of the box.

Some customization - some depts. request and get further customized versions.

~~~
shared4you
What is BOSS Linux's contribution to upstream (Debian) ? AFAIK, it's zero.

Some gripes about BOSS:

(1) On the BOSS Download page, the download button downloads i386. Why isn't
the 64-bit ISO listed there ?

(2) Why are there no torrents for ISOs ? Don't they know how bad Internet
connection in India is ?

As far localization, my experience had been that BOSS is no better than
Debian.

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sillyryan
Very cool. Check them too
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters)

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remael
The article says India is following in the steps of Germany and UK. I'm not
aware of a policy in Germany that pushes government organistaions into using
open source software. There are city administrations, like Munich, which
switched over to Linux on their own account. Though that is nowhere near a
national policy. What is the author referring to?

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ayyapad
Interesting. Looks like a further framework for adoption is released as well -
[http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Final_Frame...](http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Final_Framework%20for%20Adoption%20of%20OSS.pdf)

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Apocryphon
I recall reading about the Brazilian government's OSS policy a decade ago:
[http://www.wired.com/2004/11/linux-6/](http://www.wired.com/2004/11/linux-6/)

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foolinaround
considering that so many of the systems are older spec, BOSSLinux should now
take off from CrunchBang instead of from Debian.

This way, they do not have to re-invent the wheel, but focus resources in the
localization efforts for the OS, as well as the applications supported in the
OS.

There would have been a meaningful contribution upstream.

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eklavya
Better late than never.

~~~
eklavya
Is that sentence offensive somehow? Why the down vote?

~~~
melling
Governments around the world aren't rushing to adopt open source. As far as
governments, they're an early adopter. So, it shouldn't rate a snarky comment.

~~~
eklavya
If that came out as snarky that was not my intent. It was kind of like
"finally, yay!" ;)

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mahouse
Designated Linux distribution.

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dharma1
great. more details somewhere? what distros?

~~~
eklavya
They have their own distro [https://bosslinux.in](https://bosslinux.in)

~~~
giis
Boss Linux is based on Debian. I don't think there much difference between the
two.

~~~
eklavya
Don't really know if it's included or how useful it is but they have this:
[https://bosslinux.in/boss-mool](https://bosslinux.in/boss-mool)

~~~
shared4you
Linus Torvalds would be so happy to hear that Linux is moving to C++ and OOP.
[http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus](http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus)

