Dear All,
This mail comes in light of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' address to the NASSCOM CEO's Forum in New Delhi on 24th July, 2009 (source: The Hindu). Gates expressed Microsoft's interest in being involved with the National Unique Identification Project (UID). There is no surprise here that Microsoft wants to gain from the huge amount of funding. Also it is not unlikely that Microsoft will do everything in its power to be involved in the project. Such involvement by a propreitary vendor will only increase India's reliance on propreitary software and is bound to be a huge gain for such software. At a broader level, India's reliance on propreitary software will also put the vast amounts of our nationa's vital information in other's hands. There are several other shortcomings of using propreitary software and several advantages of using free-software, too long a list to be mentioned here.
Thus it become an onus on the part of the Free Software community in advising the Unique Identification Authority of favouring free-software technologies. I am not aware of any such campaign by the free-software community in this regard. If so I believe that we must start immediately at supporting such campaign and put up a united front against use of propreitary softare in the UID project and am releived that my concerns are not just isolated. It would also help to popularize free-software in India.
I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on this topic.
Thanks, Sanchith K.