The government has announced open source policy which is applicable to all
Government organizations under the Central Governments and those State Governments.
Key highlights of government’s open source policy include:
– All future Requests for Proposals (RFPs) of eGovernance projects shall include a mandatory clause for considering Open Source Software (OSS) as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software (CSS). Suppliers shall provide justification for exclusion of OSS in their response.
- Government Organizations shall ensure compliance with this requirement
and decide by comparing both OSS and CSS options with respect to capability, strategic control, scalability,security, life time costs and support requirements.
– GoI shall establish suitable support mechanism for the available OSS that includes Institutional Mechanism, Partnership with Industry, Academia and OSS Community.
Dear All,
I afraid, the clause-7 (Exception) may can easily mis-used by organizations influenced by $MS like preparatory software companies.
Clause 7 :Exception -
"However, in certain specialised domains where OSS solutions meeting essential functional requirements may not be available or in case of urgent / strategic need to deploy CSS based solutions or lack of expertise (skill set) in identified technologies, the concerned Government Organization may consider exceptions, with sufficient justification."
And I doubt, are we really lacking expertise and skillset, to identify the right Open-Source alternatives and implement it ?
You can download it from -
http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.p...
-- Siji Sunny