Indian Government Announces Open Source Policy And It's A Brilliant Step

The government has announced open source policy which is applicable to all Government organizations under the Central Governments and those State Governments.

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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.
NextBigWhat’s Take: We hope that this isn’t a lip-service and won’t lead to aggressive ‘under-the-table’ deals that often happen between government organizations and closed source software companies.

[Read the announcement]