Department of Electronics and information Technology of India in short DeitY, has issued a new policy which makes the use of Open Source Software (OSS) mandatory across all Indian government offices.
The new policy encourages to use Open Source Software on all desktop systems and server workstations to minimize the software buying cost.
The new policy will be applicable to all Government organisations across India, such as Government offices, e-Governance applications and systems, Government institutions etc.
Currently most of the organizations including government offices and most of the educational Institutes use Closed Source Software for the computer systems.
To acquire these closed source software one has to pay the cost and the right to modify or re-distribution of the software stays with the software developer company only.
So, the main objective of the new OSS (Open Source Software) adoption policy is to provide a path for rapid and effective adoption of open-source software in Indian Government offices, as well as to ensure strategic control in e-Governance applications and systems from a long-term perspective.
All the adopted open source software shall be free from any royalty and easily re-distributable without any paid license.
It's really a good news that the Indian government is taking a step ahead towards the use of Open Source Software which not only just save the cost but also make the people of the nation aware of such things which will help the Open Source community grow drastically.
Here is the 8 page long PDF document published on the DeitY website.
Stay tuned to get more of such updates.
VIA | Softpedia