Steps to adopt open source technology standards draw flak

India’s open source software lobbyists allege that the country’s proposed draft recommendations for adopting open technology standards and software for automating different government departments and functions, favours popular software solutions from large companies such as Microsoft.

According to people familiar with the draft recommendations, a meeting of the apex body on Standards for eGovernance was held last week, and the policy is close to being approved. ET was shown a copy of the proposed recommendations by one of the persons who requested anonymity.

“The modifications made to the suggestions given by an expert committee recommendations would make the policy very weak and not favour open standards,” says Dr G Nagarajan, chairman of the Free Software Foundation of India, which advocates that the software should be free and open for all. The draft is also not clear on whether it will also impact existing e-governance projects or only new tenders.

The policy is intended to guide the billion dollar e-governance purchases and tenders across government departments for software and hardware over next few years. The government has already allocated about $6 billion for various projects under the national e-governance plan. The new draft policy in its preamble recommends that standards which are ‘mature and have a large proliferation’ will be considered. This is being contended by the open source software community which says that it will favour proprietary standards which have large proliferation amongst masses. Last year, an expert committee comprising of many IIT professors had given suggestions to the Department of IT on the policy.

The most contentious point of the policy is that it includes standards which may be royalty free and non discriminatory (RAND) as compared to fair royalty free and non discriminatory (FRAND), which many experts had recommended. “The entire standard should be royalty-free and not just the “essential” parts of it. In other words, All patent claims necessary to implement the standard should be royaltyfree . Also, royalty free on FRAND/RAND is self-contradictory . If a Standard is Royalty Free (RF) then it cannot be RAND,” says Venkatesh Hariharan , a blogger and expert on open source affairs.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com

TCS, Infosys betting big on Cloud computing

Till a few years ago, the IT industry had three categories of companies - hardware companies, software product companies and IT services companies. If an organisation wanted to computerise a certain function such as payroll, it first bought the hardware, then the licences for the software, and finally hired the services of a third company to customise and implement the application according to its specifications. Naturally, it was an expensive and time-consuming process and managements debated on whether they had the budgets for it before embarking on such an exercise.

Smaller companies were the hardest hit because most of them didn't have the budgets for expensive hardware and even more expensive software licences. Many of them were forced to choose between postponing automation, building their own in-house applications or investing a huge amount money, which could have otherwise been invested elsewhere.

Now imagine if there was a choice of outsourcing all these requirements to a single provider and there were no investments in hardware, licences, or implementation to be made but just a single fee based on the usage of the application, wouldn't it be much more simpler and less expensive? That is the flexibility that cloud computing offers.

Cloud computing is an evolving technology that brings together all the elements of hardware, software and services in a single package. But despite being in popular use for last couple of years, there is still no standard definition for the term 'cloud computing'. Unlike terms like open source software (which indicates the source code software is open to all) or free software (which means it is free for users to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve) which have specific definitions, cloud computing is a more loosely defined term that can refer either to infrastructure, services or applications.

"Many market observers have offered up definitions of cloud and cloud computing - to no avail. Every party wants to adapt the definition to their own needs," pointed out technology research firm, Forrester, in one of its reports on this hot new technology.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

Open source slowly gaining momentum in India

Open Source software in not much in use in India compared to other countries primarily because of the lack of awareness among the developer communities

Developers in India are not much aware about open source technologies and there aren't much good development tools and support for them, says Joydip Kanjilal, ASP.NET professional at Microsoft, in conversation with CIOL.

How do you see software developer community in India?

The software developer community in India is at par with the west and is touted to rise in the coming years. There is plenty of scope and talent in the software developer community in India.

Where do you see the usage of open source software as against proprietary software from the developer community?

Open Source software in not much in use in India compared to other countries primarily because of the lack of awareness among the developer communities in the country.

However, with the state governments in India making open source an integral part of the state's IT policy, things might change over time. Usage of proprietary software has reduced over time and open source software is slowly getting popular.

How do you see the developer community involved with the Linux OS as against Windows based OS?

The developer community in India would continue to be more involved with Windows based OS than Linux OS.

There is a lot of user communities supporting Windows based development as against Linux based development. There isn't much good development tools and support for Linux based development yet, but, yes, it is picking up these days.

Being an independent software consultant and author of many books, which technology / platform will be used by most of the developers in 2010? and why?

I feel WCF and Rest would be the most sought after technologies in 2010 as far as .NET and its related technologies are concerned. Also, cloud computing would be very popular over time.

According to you, what's the best way to motivate developer community?

The developer community can be motivated best with seminars, conferences, etc, where they can participate.

How do you feel to be part of SPARK IT 2010 and what message you would like to give for aspiring engineers/developers?

I am excited to be a part of SPARK IT 2010 and would look forward to the event with keen interest. I feel great to be selected as a speaker among so many reputed international speakers.

The aspiring engineers/developers should develop their basics to the best possible standards. The need of the hour for them is to devote more and more time developing their basics and they should also participate in events, conferences and seminars so as to develop their skills and awareness.

Source: http://www.ciol.com