Please Sign:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stop-shift-towards-closed-source-proprietary-software-i.html
The text of the petition is
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STOP SHIFT TOWARDS CLOSED SOURCE PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE IN E-GOVERNANCE
AND EDUCATION, AND DECLARE A PRO-FOSS POLICY
Target: Department of IT, Government of West Bengal
Region: India
Background (Preamble):
We, the members of the Kolkata Chapter of the Indian GNU/Linux user
group (http://www.ilug-cal.info ;), Free Software Mancha of West Bengal
(http://www.fsmwb.org ;) and FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)
activists across the country have been observing a marked shift
towards the adoption of closed source proprietary software by the
present Government of West Bengal. This is a retrograde trend that is
bound to adversely affect earlier efforts towards adoption of FOSS in
e-Governance (at least in some sectors), Education and other sectors
by the previous Government and any concept of freedom that the people
at large of the state may entertain from foreign interest laden
proprietary closed source software.
A case in point is the happenings at WBPCB, where in-house personnel
for FOSS deployment were appointed by the previous Government. The
strategy permitted the best quality solutions at least TCO and with
the benefits of maximum security and transparency. The recent tender
at the WBPCB site (http://www.wbpcb.gov.in/cgi-bin/notice.cgi for
purchasing closed source proprietary software ) reeks of corruption,
kickbacks and nepotism by the new players. Of course it is ages away
from vendor neutrality or open standards. Similar actions have
happened in other departments as well.
Further the present Govt has signed MOUs with Microsoft according to
which the company will invest in Bengal if the Government of West
Bengal vetos the use of Microsoft's cloud platform and technology for
future e-governance projects. (Source: Business Standard ). We are
extremely concerned about an e-governance policy influenced by
proprietary software vendor like Microsoft, Oracle etc. . It took a
lot of effort by many of us to convince sections of the the previous
Government about the evils of proprietary software and finally they
agreed to change their pro Microsoft stand and support use of free and
open source software in e-governance projects to an extent (given the
restrictions imposed by the Central Government). There are several
examples of sustainable e-governance implementations like EMIS.
The technical superiority of free and open source software are proven
. All Internet giants Amazon, Facebook, Google , Twitter and Yahoo
uses free software to run their application and infrastructure. In
Microsoft's own land the Obama administration is going for Free
software as the means of delivering e-governance.
Government departments are known to be the largest consumer of
software and a short-sighted policy of the kind is bound to have
serious adverse effects beyond the wastage of tax payers money.
It is also never too late to make amends. The recent happenings in the
state of Tamil Nadu, as per this
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/cities/chennai/boss-shut-out-windows-247report,
should be suggestive of the same.
Petition:
We demand that the Government
1. Declare and implement a FOSS policy at least along the lines of
the policy adopted in Kerala and certainly beyond the minimal policy
lines in the Central Govt policy.
2. Try to understand the concept of 'vendor neutrality and open
standards' and follow it in all dealings. All e-Governance projects
should be built on top of open platform following open standards .None
of taxpayer's money should be spent in buying software licenses and
bringing vendor lock-ins and a host of evils in public services.
3. Revive bodies like WB-IOTA (that have not been witnessing much
activity since the formation of the present Govt) and also form
similar bodies for overseeing the adoption of FOSS in all spheres of
activity.
_______________________________
Best
A. Mani
--
A. Mani
CU, ASL, CLC,? AMS, CMS
http://www.logicamani.co.cc