● 01.22.10

●● Indian Government and Microsoft Accused of Writing Policies to Enrich Themselves

Posted in Asia, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft, Patents at 2:22 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Citizens of India finally comprehend how their rights are abolished through unjust policy making; the Economic Times reports

EARLIER this week we showed that software patents were being pushed into India by Microsoft [1, 2]. This is a very serious matter which for some reason only the Indian press is sometimes reporting. The press in the West does not seem to care.

Here is some of the latest coverage about inexcusable exclusion or demotion of Free software (both articles courtesy of the Economic Times):

i. Govt’s e-governance policy biased, say OSS lobbyists

India’s open source software (OSS) lobbyists allege that popular software solutions from large companies, such as Microsoft, are being favoured in the proposed draft recommendations for the country’s e-governance policy. The policy aims to adopt open technology standards and software for automating different government departments and functions.It intends to guide the billion-dollar e-governance purchases and tenders, across government departments, for software and hardware over the next few years. The government has already allocated about $6 billion for various projects under the national e-governance plan.

ii. ‘Trojan in govt draft’ for adopting open source software>

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 e-Governance 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.

In the above, proponents of software freedom are wrongly described as “lobbyists” when it fact they are probably just concerned volunteers and public figures, not necessarily employees of some company. The representation in the house does not equate to the actual population in the sense that it is not representative of the population’s interests. Microsoft is definitely not working in the interests of India; It takes extreme discipline to believe otherwise. █

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