[LIG] Delhi government departments decide to switch to ODF-based FLOSS suites

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1675248.cms
-- It's a free-for-all in the capital

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 2006 03:59:06 AM]

NEW DELHI: In a major victory for the Open Document Format (ODF)
Alliance spearheaded by Sun Microsystems, IBM, Novell, Red Hat and
Oracle in India, and a setback to Microsoft, several government
departments in Delhi have decided to switch over to the freely
available, ODF-based free source suites from proprietary office suites
(mostly MS Office). Initiated as a cost-cutting exercise, the move is
expected to save government departments crores of rupees spent each
year in buying licences for office suites from vendors such as
Microsoft.

Besides the software MNCs, the Indian chapter of ODF Alliance includes
CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), faculties of
IIT-Delhi, IIT-Mumbai and IIM-Ahmedabad.

According to a study by IIM-A, between September '04 and December '05,
out of its total IT software purchases of Rs 31 lakh, over Rs 24 lakh
was on spent on buying licences for office suites. With OpenOffice
available for free download from the internet, the government can now
save the entire amount. Besides, vendors such as Sun Microsystems and
Redhat sell their respective versions which come with a maintenance
tag for a fee.

A similar move is now taking place at Life Insurance Corporation,
Delhi High Court and the Election Commission. The Central government
has also planned to use ODF-based software in the national
e-governance project. The project envisages setting up of over one
lakh IT kiosks in rural areas across the country.

ODF is an open XML-based document file format that enables the
retrieval of information and exchange of documents (including
spreadsheets, charts and presentations) without regard to the
application or platform in which the document was created — both
present and future.

This means that a file saved/written in ODF can be opened or read in
any of the software compliant with the standard. In contrast, a
document created in proprietary format such as MS Office or Adobe PDF
can only be opened in their respective software or compliant software.

ODF-based softwares such as OpenOffice are available for
implementation and use, free of any licensing or royalty payments, and
other restrictions. Further, they are available for use by any
developer, including proprietary software vendors as well as open
source developers.
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Frederick 'FN' Noronha   | Yahoomessenger: fredericknoronha
http://fn.goa-india.org    | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436
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2248 copylefted photos from Goa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/

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