Indian Government plans to develop its own operating system (to be developed by DRDO) which will initially be used for defense applications (and later for commercial).
Two software engineering centers are being set up for this purpose in Bangalore and New Delhi, as per this report.
Perspective/Details: May of 2010, Government announced decision to build its own OS and anti virus product and seems this is an update, given the ‘supposedly’ successful development of $35 laptop.
Frankly, last thing one would expect the government to do is to develop its own Operating system or anti virus product.
Earlier, there was a $10 Laptop (which was not even a laptop, but a USB stick) and then ISRO Bhuvan, and then $200mn investment in building a micrprocessor [read Five Technology Vaporware from Indian Government] and the latest vaporware from government is that they want to develop its own operating system as well as an anti virus software.
Why OS?
Because too many government sites get hacked, the data is stolen so easily and building one’s own OS and anti-virus will help curb such situations.
“A sanitised, lower level operating system and application software may be preferred to the advanced versions, which necessarily require access to internet for upgrades. The new software could be deployed in key departments that have been under constant cyber attacks. The taskforce also includes officials of the Prime Minister’s Office as well as defence, home and telecom & IT ministries.
No sensitive information will be stored on systems connected to the internet, while ministries and departments have been told to carry out regular IT systems audits. The government has also established a Crisis Management Plan against cyber attacks to be implemented by all central ministries, state governments and critical sectors,- source
Government probably should be told that CDAC has developed OS (derived from Debian), called BOSS [i.e. Bharat Operating System Solutions].
Microsoft, are you reading this? If even an iota of this is true, MS stands to lose, but it won’t as we have seen in ODF/OOXML case.
