A recent talk by Honb'le Mr.Justice Yatindra Singh on Leveraging Open Source Software was delivered at 9th e-Governance held from 2-4th February 2006 at Kochi Kerala and is available at http://www.allahabadhighcourt.in/event/Leveraging_OSS.odt

I should invite attention to the Q & A session mentioned therein, between the President and the Author, which brings out the benefits of spontaneity that is free, open, natural and relaxed:

<quote> 16. Last year I was at Bhopal attending a colloquium on 'Law, Science and ethics'. The President of India also addressed us through video conferencing. During the question session, I asked him, 'Computers and information technology have an important role in reducing the arrears in the court as well as in helping in other areas. Broadly there are two kinds of softwares to do that. Proprietary and Open Source. Which one is better?

17. He answered, 'First of all, I would like to clarify that the choice of proprietary vs. Open software is driven by the usage and requirements of the user at the operating system level. Since, proprietary software is predominantly used at the client level; many users are familiar and confor table with this. However, at the server level mature users choose the software as per their requirement. Open source operating system enables the development of language independent software's and also building one's own security algorithms to suit his requirement. Indian IT industry is capable of providing a solution for the justice delivery system and its eGovernance to the justice administration on top of any proprietary or open source systems. What is important here is justice delivery system should be interoperable system built on top of open standards such as web services.'

18. The challenges and difficulties in shifting over to OSS are apparent from the answer. The majority is used to proprietary software and is trained in it. The main challenge is, · in changing over; · getting used to the new environment; and · training the staff.

19. This is vicious a circle. If you don't shif t then you rely more on the proprietary sof tware and more you have to pay. Perhaps what is required is to change our perception regarding OSS and increse its awareness. We may consider the following points:

(i) The awareness regarding OSS should start from the school level: Computer education is already in curriculum of the schools and colleges. There is hardly any representation of OSS in their curriculam. Most of the topics that are there belong to proprietary sof tware. The operating system of computers are in proprietary sof tware. Curriculum of schools and colleges should compulsory have topics on OSS and the computers should leave operating system in OSS.

(ii) Utilisation of grant: The government gives grants for purchasing computers and for different projects. The government grant may be utilised for purchasing computers having OSS operating system. Apart from operating systems there are applications. Many applications are on OSS and run on all kinds of operating systems including the proprietary ones. Even if the operating system is the proprietary one, then at least it should have applications that are on OSS.

(iii) Exclusive OSS cell: It is ture that we are leading IT community in the world but many IT exper ts in government organisation work exclusively with proprietary software. It will be good idea to create separate cell in government and semi government departments to develop applications exclusively in OSS.

(iv) Solution in OSS first: A policy decision may be taken to find solutions of projects first in OSS and in case it is not possible only then it may be sought in the proprietary software.

20. The Allahabad High Court has taken a policy decision to work in Open Source Software and store documents in open document format. All new computers have linux as operating system. Apart from it, OpenOffice.org suite, Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird have been adopted as applications software. A chart mentioning others details and the projects under taken is appended as Appendix 1. </quote>

If the observations are taken seriously by the policy makers here, it could ensure a certain victory for all.

Regards, Ramanraj K __

A man to whom it has been given to bless the world with a great creative idea has no need for the praise of posterity. His very achievement has already conferred a higher boon upon him. -Albert Einstein at the Max Planck Memorial Services, 1948.