Indian Government Keen on Open Source

manugarg writes "The Indian government is distributing free CDs of localized open sorce softwares like Firefox, OpenOffice.org etc. to encourage the use of computers across the country. ZDNet reports, 'The Indian government's decision to ship free software in this way likely will be a blow to Microsoft, which plans to release a low-cost version of Windows in India soon. Microsoft originally hoped to release its Windows XP Starter Edition--a low-cost, feature-restricted version of Windows XP--by the end of March, but it's now aiming for a June release.'"

Comments

That's great

[TheWingThing]

As an Indian myself, one of the things that really plague users of Indian language versions of software is the non-standardized fonts and encodings. Most of them do not use UTF-8, and non-standard fonts are all over the place. This effort I think will promote the creators of software and content publishers to adhere to a standard, if the Govt initiatives gain a big userbase. Try visiting some Indian language websites, and you'll see what I mean. You need a custom font for every single website, it drives you crazy. I think the Govt efforts will encourage Indian language publishers (all 20+ languages) to adhere to standards like UTF-8.

Re:India likes OS software

[jpu8086]

Those 22 languages (AFAIK, there are only 18 official languages, but maybe this has changed recently) are the ones spoken by at least one million people.

There are many other "minor" languages spoken by other people.

Mind you, these are not dialects. These are full-blown unique languages with unique written scripts (however, many of them do share common traits).

It is amazing how we are able to maintain a democracy, let alone a country.