Digital India Program and Open Source Software
Pranay Pandey
CIO @ NOI Technologies | Customer Success | Member @ The ASF | Apache OFBiz PMC Member, Committer | Ex VP HotWax Commerce
You must be aware of it, the Government of India has already launched policy on evaluation and adoption of Free and Open Source Software(FOSS). There are major initiatives have been taken in this direction e.g. BOSS, Bharat Operating System Solutions, is a GNU/Linux-based localized Operating System distribution that supports 18 Indian languages, has been certified by Linux Foundation and is expected to meet the stringent demands of e-governance. There are other projects which are being researched, the list can be referred here. And there are products which have been launched which are built using FOSS, details can be referred on Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology website here.
Blog post(Open Source — an extremely important aspect of Digital India!) by Rajesh Ranjan provides more details on the three major policies formed by Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) of Ministry of Communication & Information Technology India.
It is clearly visible that future of eGovernance in India will be using Open Source Softwares extensively. The policy actually adds more value to it.
In my opinion use of open source software for eGovernance project should be a motivating factor for business owners in India. They would also like to go for FOSS alternatives if they are looking for business automation or ERP software. Small and big enterprises are playing important role in Indian Economy and must consider themselves part of Digital India movement.
The good thing here is, the policies outlined by DeitY can be referred by any of the business organization too if they are evaluating any OSS for their business automation. The reason is, the policies cover all the aspect of OSS usage that can help you scale in future. It can also help you setup your own IT staff maintaining the software and handling future requirements from the business. Open Source Software brings freedom from licensing cost for the main software and other dependent ones.
Here are the main advantages you have when opting for an OSS for business/process automation-
- It's free to download and use.
- All upgrades done by the community are also free, no cost involved.
- No limitations of using certain supporting systems provided by the vendor.
- Code ownership is yours.
- Customizations can be made based on your requirement by your own IT team.
- Free of cost community support for any guidance required.
While evaluating an OSS the most important thing to consider is to opt for the most popular open source software systems that have built up a large and efficient community of support behind them, so you have somewhere to go to if you need advice. Also to consider the fact that investing in training your IT team for the platform you have chosen.
I agree that sometimes this transition to OSS is not that easy if you already have a legacy system(CSS) installed and using it. But evaluating OSS alternatives can give you a leading edge if you plan your IT needs ahead of time.
Free and Open Source Software is going to be the game changer for sure. Let me know if you agree or disagree with my ideas. Share your comment below!