Mrugesh Karnik wrote:
On Monday 08 Oct 2007 20:51:04 Rony wrote:
With due respect, he should have made the NIC guys switch to FOSS instead of getting it done by his team. This is what clients can fear about foss. After the foss guy is gone, who will maintain his systems? 'Teach a man how to fish.....'
Eh. Typical! I'm beginning to think that this whole FOSS thingie is becoming as bullish as Microsoft or <insert your most hated proprietary software vendor here>.
Dr. Kalam did what was in his power. Forcing NIC to change to FOSS would be abusing the power, because you see, the NIC people might not agree with his point of view that FOSS is better. Or maybe, they just don't have the man-power or the expertise to run the damn things on FOSS. You know, get out of the damn shell for once.
You got my statement wrong. The President leads the Nation. NIC http://home.nic.in/ is a Govt. organization and for a Democracy like India, FOSS is the way to go. The sheer cost saving in OS licenses will be enormous, considering the total number of systems used by every government department all over India. Over and above that, system security from viruses and spyware will be an added by-product. To make the FOSS platform popular, experts will have to spread their knowledge to the newbies, otherwise it is still some high tech stuff, out of reach of the normal people.
Another factor most important is that by letting foreign closed software giants work closely on Govt. systems, we are putting ourself at a risk of exposing ourselves to them and we will be at their mercy to take corrective action at their asking price.
What we individually feel about FOSS is fine but in the larger interests of the Nation, FOSS _is_ the way to go for India. Individuals may find it difficult to adapt themselves to FOSS, but it is not very difficult for Governments and large organizations plush with resources.