Tamil Nadu (India) Shutting the Door On Microsoft

aprasadh writes "The government of Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, has begun initiatives to convert all of their IT systems fully to OSS-based software. (The link is a copy of a news item that appeared recently in the Deccan Chronicle, an English-language daily.) The managing director of the IT procurement, consulting, and training agency for the Tamil Nadu government describes the reasons why he has chosen OSS, and also how he dealt with Microsoft executives." From the article: "Initially, 99 per cent of government systems have been running on Microsoft systems but then 2007 will be a watershed year for the state IT sector... We have already dispatched 6,500 Linux systems to village panchayats and another 6,100 Acer desktop systems with Suse Linux operating systems are on their way. We are procuring 20,000 desktop systems for schools, which will run only on Suse Linux... I require at least 500 trainers to train 30,000 state officials across Tamil Nadu in the next six months."

Comments

Not the first (and not the last, I hope)

[Gopal.V]

Kerala was the first state to do this - slashdot story (and the oblig. dupe).

But those stories paint Kerala as some hippie commune full of comrades - I've been following the developments in Kerala for a while and in general all that makes sense.

Of course, most of these states are picking F/OSS for economic reasons - but not exactly about freedom and stuff. I've heard whispers from the gubment that it is the support contracts which are deal killers for F/OSS in general, but of late the government has started taking a socialist approach of doing it in-house rather than contracting it out to vendors (well, it doesn't sound socialist when a company does I.T, right).

Re:Suse?

[MrWGW]

Contrary to popular belief, using Suse does not turn you into a vile subhuman ogre. Also, it didn't say what Suse they were migrating to, so if they're downloading free copies of OpenSuse, I really don't see why you'd even care. The various SUSE distros are wonderful operating systems, and they are (mostly) FOSS, so even if you don't agree with the Novell deal, I don't see why you feel the need to keep trolling about it.

Re:Suse?

[jc42]

Plus, there's also big movement in Europe. And Europe is the part of the world that CAN pay. They are choosing to switch because of Microsoft's monopoly. They want free choice and INTEROPERABILITY.

True, but there's another issue that's quietly getting attention: Microsoft's potential control over government's computers.

There was a funny example of the problem in the recent discussion here of Vista's DRM. When people mentioned MS's ability to disable your software remotely, one reply was that they've had this ability since XT. Really! This is a huge sword hanging over anyone that needs reliability and control of their own computer systems and data.

This is a really good issue for OSS supporters, and it should be used as a "talking point" at any opportunity. Do you really want a giant American corporation with such power over your computer's software? Such questions can really get the attention of government administrators.