Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

India Mandates Use of Open Source Software In Government

Posted by samzenpus on from the free-at-last dept.

jrepin writes The Indian government announced a policy yesterday that makes it mandatory to use open-source software in building apps and services, in an effort to "ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs." The new policy (PDF) states that all government organizations must include a requirement for their software suppliers to consider open-source options when implementing e-governance applications and systems. The move will bring the Indian government in line with other countries including the US, UK and Germany that opt for open-source software over proprietary tools.

2 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Consider" by CeasedCaring · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Expect MS to offer "significant" discounts in 3...2...1...

  2. Re:GPL is necessary and sufficient. by new_01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's nothing stopping the copyright holders of a GPL'd project from taking it proprietary. It's not much different than if the people running a permissive licensed project (BSD/MIT) decided to take it proprietary. Everything up to that point will still be available barring any patent issues. If one of the copyright holders decides they don't want their code proprietary then the project leaders can just rewrite their portion of the code and still take it closed source.