Govt makes a pitch for open source software in IT tenders

With an aim to reduce project costs, the government has decided to give preference to open source software (OSS) over proprietary in e-governance procurements.

“The government of India shall endeavour to adopt open source software in all e-governance systems implemented by various government organisations as a preferred option in comparison to closed source software (CSS),” states the policy titled ‘Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India’. It mentions this clause as ‘mandatory’ under the ‘nature of compliance’ category. 

A user of OSS can customise this software for own use without having to pay any royalty to its previous developer. Most offer OSS without any charge. This software is available for use both by end consumers and business organisations. Some of the known OSS players include Ubuntu, RedHat Linux, Joomla, Apache Software and GIMP.