Umashankar C said on Mon, Sep 01, 2003 at 03:47:49AM -0700,:

The development platform envisaged is Sun Java and deployment can be on any free tool such as Tomcat etc.

I'm afraid that there is some problem there. Java is not swatantra. You get it free of cost though. That always need not be the case, because re-distribution is prohibited. "swatantra" is a different concept.

The database envisaged is POSTGRESQL.

Yes, that is very popular, and swatantra.

At present these packages are in VB. Conversion to J2E has to take place within a period of, say 4-6 months. In the meanwhile the design, documentation etc., can be placed online for free download for use as well as to suggest better ways.

As I pointed out, Java is not swatantra. But, software which is otherwise swatantra, but depends on java is popular. It is not a good idea for software which has looooooong term use, like in e-governance to depend on non-free compilers and VMs.

An alternative would be to use jikes / kaffe, which claim to be substitutes for java.