On Sunday 22 Mar 2009, Rony wrote: > Pankaj Jangid wrote: > > Government can hire people for support. Two advantages this way: > > > > 1. They will get talented people on board and the cost of support > > this way will be less then what they pay to the proprietary > > players for support and consultancy. > > 2. They are creating jobs which is good for them to use as a card > > for the next election. > > From the various opinions expressed here, IMHO, adoption of FOSS > and Open Standards by a Govt. goes much beyond using FOSS on Govt. > computers and having competent vendors to support FOSS > installations. The Govt. has to create a National knowledge > infrastructure that is everything related to FOSS. > > This includes:- > > 1) Introduction and sponsoring of FOSS education in Schools, > Colleges and other educational institutions. > 2) Sponsoring the development and advancement of FOSS programming > in Educational Institutions. This also includes providing high > bandwidth and unlimited online storage space for FOS software > development and download. > 3) Organise and encourage youngsters from the school level to > participate in FOSS programming camps (Like summer of code). > 4) _Identify_ and encourage the development of FOSS alternatives to > expensive commercial closed softwares for Graphics, Animation, > Drafting, HRD, Accounting etc. > 5) As the first 4 processes gain momentum, adopt open data > standards in all Govt. institutions. By this time FOSS the > knowledge infrastructure should be able to handle this heavy load. > 6) Provide tax benefits to private organisations to adopt open > standards. Specially encourage Software training institutes to > teach FOSS instead of closed software. > > If these points are acceptable, they can be added to the FOSS > manifesto as a common minimum program that is expected of any Govt. > that comes to power.
Actually they need to do 5 first and compulsorily . This is because it is a fundamental requirement (or should be) that open standards be used on all public data. This is irrespective of the costs involved or the infrastructure available. Wherever the infrastructure is not available, the government puts it up and allows private individuals and organistaions to participate, therby spreading outwards. The rest will fall into place. If you attempt the order specified, the closed guys will accuse the government of bias. -- Rgds JTD -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
