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<!-- pubdate: 20131025 -->
# FSF India's Response to the Proposed Framework by Govt of India
A half day Consultation Workshop on “Framework on Adoption
of Open Source Software” was organized at DeitY, Electronic
Niketan, New Delhi, on October 25, 2013.
**The document is available on eGov Standards portal** [https://egovstandards.gov.in/Public\_review\_Framework\_on\_oss][1].
[1]: https://egovstandards.gov.in/Public_review_Framework_on_oss
Dr. Nagarjuna G. from Free Software Foundation of India attended the
meeting and gave the following response to the draft document.
## Not recognizing that citizens are the primary stakeholders of Govt
The document tries to balance the advantages of free software (FS) and
proprietary software (PS), and would like to present FS merely as an
option available. This neutrality is against the interests of
expanding the public wealth of the commons.
Proprietary software companies have an explicit objective to expand
their ownership of technology, and industry bodies like NASSCOM
explicitly support these objectives. This comes in direct conflict
with the interests of the citizens in having control of the actions of
the state.
Why should Govt try to accommodate proprietary interest that goes
against its own mandate?
eGovt is an extension of Govt, and should not be considered primarily
as a platform for commercial companies. The companies can provide
services as long they follow the non-proprietary basis of FS. This
principle cannot be compromised, and the government must insist.
## “OSS” to be replaced with “FLOSS” consistently
“FLOSS” is a more inclusive term because it includes the
two broad communities. This is partially reflected in naming the two
other Govt of India projects, e.g. NRCFOSS and ICFOSS of Govt of
Kerala.
Though in the introductory section (2.4) it mentions that the document
considers the term inclusive of both FOSS and FLOSS, it is better to
use the widely used inclusive term than an explicit exclusive term to
bind the two communities.
If the text says “OSS”, it explicitly rejects the idea
that issues of the people's rights and the nation's sovereignty are at
stake.
## Incompatibility of TCO with Govt agencies and FLOSS models
What is the TCO for running a Govt or eGovt? Govt does not do business
with citizens. It provides services that are direclty paid by the
citizens. The cost of Govt is therefore granted by the people of
India. It is Govt responsibility to grant the ownership to
people. Please do not use terms that present the issue in terms of
commercial values to the exclusion of civic values. Acknowledging the
concept of free/libre software by using the term "FLOSS" explicitly
supports and stregthens Govt roles and responsibilities.
To compare TCO for free/libre software meaningfully with that of PS,
the government should include the cost of obtaining the source code
for that proprietary software, and the right to flexibly use it. Thus,
if Govt considers TCO as a criteria to choose between the software,
then Govt must procure the source code of a proprietary software and
include it in TCO analysis. This should include the entire platform on
which an eGov application runs, not merely the customized code of a
proprietary software.
Ultimately, the comparison of cost is made meaningless by the fact
that PS delivers far less. PS does not deliver the source code. Where
FS delivers sovereignty, PS delivers the state into dependence on a
company.
## Companies can bid with the Govt to create FS based on the need
As and when a specific application is missing in FLOSS, Govt could
spend its resources to create FS by hiring the services of
companies. Thus companies could have an important role in helping the
Govt to create FS as and when necessary. This will enhance Govt ICT
capacity. This can also be a role of the proposed center of excellence
for FLOSS.
FSF India opines that this document should propose a plan towards
eliminating the need for proprietary software in eGovernance.
## Licenses
This section does the analysis of licenses with a yardstick defined in
terms of opposition to freedom. The proper yardstick when we talk of
licenses should be the freedom that users (such as the government)
will have, and how certain they are to have it.
The copyleft licenses – the GNU GPL and the GNU Affero GPL – are
designed to make sure that modified versions of a program, if their
use is offered to the public, are available to users with
freedom. They have requirements, which add up to, “If you let
someone use your version of the program, you must let him have it as
free software.” This is defense of the public's rights,
including the government's rights.
For instance, using the GNU AGPL is a way to tell companies such as
Google, ”You can adapt or extend this code to make a service,
but then you must make your changed version of the code available, so
we can run on our services too.“ The GNU AGPL is specialy
crafted to suit the freedom of users such as the government for
software that runs on online portals (including eGovernement
portals). Therefore, the state has every reason to promote the GNU
AGPL for software that is likely to be useful on such portals.
Why would someone call this a “restriction”? Only if what
he wants to do is restrict the public. Copyleft licenses say,
“You can't use this code to restrict others.” Thus, the
government should prefer copyleft licenses when given the choice.
Use of FS by Govt should not follow how commecial companies think
about licenses. Using their model of analysis for Government agency
will lead to complete conflict of interest. Governemnt needs to
protect the software freedom of its users and itself, and not the
interests of software developing companies that would benefit by
denying that freedom.
The most important stake-holder for the Governement is the people it
serves. Further, copyleft licenses do not interfere with commerce,
except for unethical commerce.
Therefore, the recommendation at the end of section 5 should be
removed and replaced with the following:
Web based infrastructure used by a Govt project should be released
under AGPL, so as to maximize the extent to which improvements made by
others become available for the Govt to use.
## The idea of recommended Stacks
The section 2.5 misses the essential point of the use of free
software. The free software community has created certain frameworks
(a better choice than 'stack'), one of which is GLAMP (GNU, Linux,
Apache, MySQL, PHP). But GLAMP by no means is the only good
framework. There are other frameworks such as Django, Plone, Ruby on
Rails, Flask, Java based frameworks etc. Each of these frameworks
e.g. is based on a single programming language: e.g. GLAMP is based on
PHP, while Django, Plone and Flask are based on Python.
The state should not arbitrarily impose a particular framework. The
pros and cons of which free/libre framework to use for which project
should be left to the chosen on the basis of the function of the
platform by the competent developer and maintenance team.
Providing some guidelines such as availability of features, libraries,
wider use base, existence of strong developer communities and support
groups, established credentials etc. may be given, instead of
recomending one over the other.
Therefore the framework could recommend guidelines instead of naming
any platforms.
## SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis section needs more clarity, rigor and elaboration. First
of all, two important things have to be defined and identified before
a SWOT analysis can be done: 1. which is the organization or agency
for which this analysis is done? 2. what is the objective for which
this analysis is done? Unless the organization and objective are
explicitly laid out, SWOT analysis does not help us to give any
direction.
Therefore section 3.3 needs an overhaul.
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