

Indian Government to develop its own Operating System and anti virus products - rkord
http://www.pluggd.in/indian-government-operating-system-anti-virus-software-297/

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plinkplonk
With due respect to the Indian government (I am Indian and quite a bit of work
for the govt) producing a new operating system is a completely misguided
effort. And anyway this sounds like a new _distribution_ of linux (the article
does say "Derived from debian"), not a new "operating system".

I would imagine the simpler explanation is that a few "scientists" at CDAC
need to justify their existence and have convinced programming illiterate
politicians/bureaucrats they are doing something useful fo a change.

~~~
nickpp
Respect due for a government?! Wow, yours is a strange and different
country...

And from what we can see, it's not deserved.

~~~
eru
The phrase looked more like rhetorical device to me.

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jerf
I wish press would stop phrasing "will customize a Linux distribution for
their own use and internally standardize on that" as "will create their own
operating system". See also Red Flag Linux, which was described in the press
in the same way IIRC.

One is millions to billions of man hours, the other in the low thousands.
They're not synonyms.

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rmanocha
Building a new OS can come later (if ever) - they first need to build decent
websites for the houses of Parliaments - see
[http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/members/memberdebate14.aspx?mps...](http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/members/memberdebate14.aspx?mpsno=4064)
(JS Pagination hurts my sensibilities - as does the more than occasional
broken HTML).

I've written scrapers to gather data from these sites for my website, and
besides dealing with the above mentioned issues, I have to constantly beware
of not overloading their servers - as an example, simply fetching the next
page for each MP listed in
<http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/Members/Alphabaticallist.aspx> without a timeout
crashes their servers :(.

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niyazpk
Developing an OS is lame. First, the Govt OS is not going to be usable
(compared to the modern OSs). Second, not everyone (even in the Govt) is not
going to use it. The variety of apps deployed and being used in the Indian
offices is mind-blowing. There is no way the Govt can convince all these
offices to switch to a different platform without spending a huge amount as
switching costs.

[Tangential: I want the Indian Government to come up with its own
cryptographic protocols/algorithms like the NIST in the US does. Even if it is
a variant of the prevalent crypto systems, it is better than nothing, at least
for the top secret documents.

Anybody know what crypto algorithms/protocols the Govts other than US use for
their classified information?]

~~~
plinkplonk
" I want the Indian Government to some up with its own cryptographic
protocols/algorithms like the NIST in the US does. "

Fwiw they do use their own algorithms. I know (and have worked with) people
doing exactly this. Like most of the NSA's work in the USA what they do is
classified. I am sure every government worth its name does similair things.

~~~
Locke1689
_I am sure every government worth its name does similair things._

Eh, this is arguably bad. Cryptpography is only secure with _massive_ peer
review. The United States manages because the NSA is one of the largest
cryptographic organizations in the world. Very few governments have the
specialty mathematicians, cryptographs, and computer scientists to establish a
suitable internal peer review process. India may be one of those countries,
but I'm not sure.

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yarapavan
Nothing New.

BOSS, the Debian-based Linux flavor mentioned in the article, has been
available for quite some time (atleast 3 years). IMO, haven't seen anybody
using it (including majority of people who developed it - NRCFOSS and C-DAC)

------
lappie
The Indian Govt. first needs to provide electricity to run electronic devices.
Once they have figured that, and a million other basic necessities, maybe they
can go ahead and waste some scientists on stuff like this.

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shabda
Umm, I can't see a single source mentioned in the pluggd.in article, or the
TOI article.([http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/enterprise-
it/infras...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/enterprise-
it/infrastucture/Govt-to-develop-own-operating-
system/articleshow/5913140.cms?curpg=2)), or whether its a press release my
Ministry of IT, or a blog post by an employee.

------
arihant
This is a very badly written article. We are not familiar with the kind or
degree of attacks a government's information systems (in this case, Indian
Gov) may be facing. We are also not familiar how many other governments have
already done or are doing this (This stuff is generally not public).

When the defense ministry of the fourth largest military power is involved,
there are reasons.

~~~
robertandy1980
I can vouch for pluggd.in but not TOI, trust me. Refer
[http://www.pluggd.in/party-uid-the-big-opportunity-it-
servic...](http://www.pluggd.in/party-uid-the-big-opportunity-it-services-
industry-297/) and [http://www.pluggd.in/iit-jee-engineering-education-in-
india-...](http://www.pluggd.in/iit-jee-engineering-education-in-india-297/)
as some the most internationally appreciated coverages that this blog has
done.

Govt. in India has had a poor track record in technology and overspending too.

~~~
arihant
Comparing TOI with Pluggd.in is a terrible parallel. TOI (Times of India) is
world's largest read english daily with very high reputation in the country.

That said, I do agree with you that Indian Gov have had some past cases of
overspending. But when things like 9/11 (New York) and 26/11 (Mumbai) happen,
it's the Government we blame first. India is shifting towards a massive (given
the population) National electronic ID infrastructure, security is needed.

Moreover, creating an OS is hardly a significant expense in a country's
budget. After an event like 26/11 and given the fact that India is about to
host multiple worldwide sporting events in next 1-2 years, this hardly looks
like a waste.

~~~
AamirSoha
Refer this: " Moreover, creating an OS is hardly a significant expense in a
country's budget. After an event like 26/11 and given the fact that India is
about to host multiple worldwide sporting events in next 1-2 years, this
hardly looks like a waste."

That is one confused assessment of reality dude. Are you like saying guzzling
down millions means nothing for a poor country like India?

And dude saying "TOI is world's largest bla bla" and then commenting The
articles are badly written does really prove your mental state, is it?

~~~
arihant
The estimated Union budget for India this year is 10,20,838 Crore Indian
Rupees (1 crore = 10 Million). Yes, building an OS is hardly an expense.

I was commenting on Pluggd.in article being written badly.

------
arnorhs
It sounds like they're doing it simply because they have a lot of break ins.

How is a new operating system supposed to ensure better passwords? 99% of
break ins are because of really lame passwords, isn't that true?

Creating your own OS is for that reason like inventing your own type of house
because you never remember to lock your door.

~~~
eru
You could get away with passwords. There are some zero-knowledge protocols you
can do with humans, instead of handing over a password.

You would probably not need a new operating system, since revamping logins
(and similar) stuff would suffice. But you could get rid of passwords.

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sandGorgon
Please, the needs of a multi-lingual Asian government is vastly different
from, what is popularly construed, the popular choice.

For e.g. Harfbuzz - the unified text layout engine for Linux. The competing
technology is SIL-Graphite, which supports Smartfonts and compound alphabets.
So what does Harfbuzz say ?

 _For established scripts though, there is not much reason to prefer Graphite
over OpenType._

I am Indian and support this exercise - maybe 90% of it will be waste, maybe
10% wont be. Maybe finally we will have a Linux Desktop Summit in India, which
is potentially the biggest market for open source software.

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falsestprophet
Maybe operating systems are something governments need to worry about. I would
be happy if the National Security Agency submitted security patches.

~~~
eplanit
SELinux was an extraordinary contribution by the NSA, and is now pervasive in
Linux distributions.

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robertandy1980
Honestly creating an OS 40 years after desktops appeared on earth is a dumbass
approach. And that not the desktops are dying too! It seems purely a plan to
drain out taxpayers money as it has been the case in past for India anyway!

------
eviral
so tomorrow will they make their own cars because the driver couldn't keep off
an accident.

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winter_blue
What a waste of taxpayer money.

~~~
robertandy1980
+1

