State flayed for picking Microsoft

BANGALORE: The OpenSource community and Kannada associations in Karnataka have come out in the open to criticize the state's decision in choosing Microsoft as the preferred partner for implementing its e-governance project- BangaloreOne, which would provide civic services to citizens.

Karnataka's secretary for e-governance Rajeev Chawla was recently quoted saying that Microsoft is popular even in villages and went on to say, "Let OpenSource become so popular, then we will have no problem using it."

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In his statement, OpenSource proponent and director of Exocore Consulting Atul Chitnis said, "Chawla conveniently neglects to mention that the only application running in villages today is the Bhoomi project, a Microsoft sponsored project, spearheaded by Chawla."

Further, he said that Chawla is ignorant of the fact that big players in Bangalore like Infosys, Wipro, Mindtree and Encore had good OpenSource development skills. Chitnis also pointed that the recently held Linux Bangalore conference, drew more developers than the Microsoft developers' conference.

He rued that it was a pity that India's most IT savvy state was not embracing OpenSource for its e-governance project. "States like Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal realized the flaws of Windows and have switched from Microsoft to OpenSource platform. So why not Karnataka?", he questioned.

Criticizing the government's move to go with Microsoft, VM Kumaraswamy, who heads the E-Kavi association, said, "Just Microsoft is not computers and computers are not Microsoft." Stating factors like high cost of implementation, instability of the platform and security loopholes, he came down on the

government for making this shortsighted move.

One of the main peeves of the opponents is that unlike OpenSource, Microsoft's proprietary technology could stifle the advantage of vernacular language support provided by OpenSource. Kumaraswamy believes that OpenSource would boost the growth of Kannada software developers.

E-Kavi member KT Satish Gowda said that they are not against Microsoft but against bringing in a monopoly. "Why should commercial interests in the state government overtake what people would use?" he said.

Local associations like the Dalit Sangha, Raithara Sangha (farmers' association),e-Kavi and others along with OpenSource supporters are also taking up the matter with the President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.