Indian political party embraces open source
India will be going to polls next month. Election process leading to constitution of Indian parliament has been a five year ritual and lauded by diplomats all round the world.
In the run up to the polls, the right wing opposition party has come out a 30 page IT vision document. The vision statement is quite impressive. With many other schemes which the party has advocated, the emphasis on Open Standard and Open Source has probably caught all in IT in India by surprise.
The vision will have reverberations everywhere. All major institutions in India, have Windows OS as their preferred choice because of service and sales support available. Linux or other open source platform, through free but requires quite a lot of effort in system maintenance and up-gradation. Replacing Windows from their pinnacle position as the preferred first choice for OS, is not going to be a easy. To implement this vision, lots of hard-work and strategization is required.
Over the years Linux has matured as the key player in Open source segment but whether it is ready to take the load of institutions and all governmental work sans service support, is a million dollar question.
The move is welcome but path is difficult but again not impossible. Open source movement definitely will get a fillip through these kind of support.
May also like to read: After India, now Hungarian Government gears up to embrace Open Source.
