I had attended the press briefing, and one of the slides in their presentation was on Open Source and open standards. Sam said that the KC was keenly pushing for open source in e-governance projects and is trying to convince the govt. of adopting open standards. Since the objective is to bring uniformity across nation w.r.t. e-governance projects, it is crucial to have open standards. and the KC didnt rule out re-looking at some existing projects and modifying them.
Well, lets see how far the KC goes to keep the banner of open source flying high.
That is good news. Thanks for keeping us in the loop. Perhaps we should keep a directory of the applications that the government uses and on what platform... That will be a good way of measuring how Open the government is to open source.
I say this because a few months ago, I had a look at Delhi Police's FIR filing application. It was done in Java and left many frustrated users... As per my discussions with them, very little of their expectations have been met. Rather than being a tool to help them work effectively it frequently got in the way. Incidentally, NIC was responsible for making this application; and guess what, they had shown no intent of sharing the source with us or the Delhi Police.
Warm regards,
ah