On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 4:38 AM, Bharathi Subramanian < sbhara...@midascomm.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Mar 2009, Arun SAG wrote: > > > LOL MOU with Microsoft to aid teachers in teaching FOSS. > > Joke of Year 2009. As IT became a part of political agenda in IT Super > Power(?) country, we may hear lot more jokes like this, in the coming > days. > > This might be hard to believe . But looks like all major political parties are using/promoting FOSS ! Congress: Has no special agenda for FOSS . Uses PHP for it's webpage http://www.aicc.org.in . The site according to an article in globalvoicesonline is still in web 1.0 But it's recent andhra pradesh site http://votecong.com/ also uses PHP and runs Joomla content Management site on it . This site has some blogs of political leaders but doesn't allow users to comment on it ! BJP: released a special agenda for FOSS . http://www.lkadvani.in/eng/images/stories/it-vision.pdf Uses foss on it's site www.bjp.org .BJP has pledged to use open source software and support open standards . BJP used FOSS for cutting down costs , whats more innovative from BJP is using a open source repository management (eprints ) for it's documents . Appointed special IT incharge for every loksabha seat ( surprise ) CPIM: uses mailman , in it's manifesto http://cpim.org/manifesto.pdf clearly states that " Promoting free software and other such new technologies, which are free from monopoly ownership through copyrights or patents; “knowledge commons” should be promoted across disciplines, like biotechnology and drug discovery" The new election site http://vote.cpim.org/ runs on drupal . The website they state is done enttirely on free software and is contributed by volunteers from Kochi free software notably also states that it has a " Free software and Research team " DMK: I can't understand the site www.dmk.in much but it looks pretty old "Viewed best with IE 4.0 & Netscape 4.0 and Above with 800x600 screen resolution " LOL , it makes me download a tamil font ,which I am not sure is a free font ? (amachu do check it ;) ) AIADMK: couldn't find a official website :( All said and done check http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/22/indias-first-digital-elections/ So what do we observe, three main political parties using FOSS , though little they ARE somehow dependent on FOSS . Other than kerala we haven't seen much of government support in FOSS. Suddenly Microsoft comes and tells that it is cutting down costs for governement and these people go and sign a MOU with it . What I would like to tell is FOSS is not a cheap software for cutting costs , it is quality software for which code has been contributed and tested by lot of volunteers :) Finally I just wish BOSS was properly designed and implemented in all the governement offices all over India . Regards, Pavithran -- pavithran sakamuri www.pavithran.org _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email ilugc-requ...@ae.iitm.ac.in with "unsubscribe <password> <address>" in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
