Random Rants & Raves

The Government of India (GoI) has been lately revising a Draft Policy on E-Governance – which is all well and good. However, a number of clauses in this are quite concerning – especially the ambiguity and general mix-up between what is called “Open Standards” and “Open Source”.

Open Standards are just that – standards created to be used by anyone – whether it was created by a commercial company or not. Many of the Open Standards are royalty-free and many are not. In fact, the term “Open Standards” itself is not standardized – take for instance the different definitions listed at the Wikipedia entry for it.

So what should the GoI do? They need to decide based on merits of an existing standard and choose the best among them – not just whether it’s the lowest common denominator. After all, such an important policy as the nation’s e-governance should be based on the best available.

Unfortunately, as is seen in the Indian Parliament, those who shout the loudest get the most attention. This is precisely what the “Open Source” bandwagon is trying to do. By making the most noise, they’ve effectively confused the issue between the standard and source. It’s very important to note that OPEN STANDARDS ≠ OPEN SOURCE!

Commercial open source vendor, like IBM and Red Hat, love this scenario. By pretending that everything is “free” and “open source” they can push their agenda in place of the standard even if they have an inferior implementation or inferior standard. They make their tons of money by giving “support”. I find this very similar to drug dealing. I know – very harsh – but think about this. The product is “free” but for any major requirement later on you need to purchase the support at premium prices. And don’t give me the argument that since you have the code you can do away with the support. Large corporations and governments require a better answer and assurance than that – they require stuff to be running fine without needing to tinker around in the guts of the software or waiting for the community to help out. There has to be a real chain of command and escalation for issues that come up.

A case (actually two) in point. Recently it was seen that Alan Cox, a major Linux kernel patch maintainer quit due to differences with others in the hierarchy. This has put the entire kernel patch scene into jeopardy. People are rushing to fill the void but the danger of losing the entire project looms near. Another case is of the CentOS project (which runs on many Internet and intranet sites) where the lead member has vanished with no replies to mails and phones and is the one that holds the keys to the project’s funds, domain and concept. Others in the project are in a tizzy regarding this. Would you want to trust your setup, especially if it’s on a open source one based on “community” help? This is what you get in that case – uncertainty and instability.

What makes more sense? Going in for a software (whether commercial or not) for the best merits that follows any good open standard or a software that follows one particular standard even if sub-standard? Remember that when buying a commercial product/technology based on a standard the support is built in and the vendor would love to minimize the cost of support provided by delivering a good quality product. On the other hand, a commercial open source vendor would love to get more support requirements since that is what makes them the money. Would it be beneficial for them to release a quality product? it is also important to note that companies like Microsoft do divulge the source of their products to key government agencies under specific conditions.

Coming back to the issue at hand, the draft policy has been “commented upon” by a number of FOSS enthusiasts. I’m not linking to any of them since the point of this post is not to start a flame war but to put across a different perspective. If the GoI is serious about e-governance, they need to include representatives from industry – both commercial and communities – to work with them. They should not be bullied into confusing the standard or source issue. India has enough problems with religious fanatics and non-meritorious quotas to let it affect software policy as well.

Remember that FREE is not always the best. Would you give the soldiers in the army weapons built by the lowest bidder (I can do that – create slingshots with wood and rubber) or things that can kill accurately at 2000m? It takes time, money and effort to come up with a standard and many companies spend a lot of all of them in R&D to get the best for their consumers. If there is a standard equivalent in all respects and is free, go for it and get the implementation that best fits it.

Here’s to good e-governance in India. I just hope they are not bulldozed in doing something that can be less beneficial to the country. The choice of the standards AND the choice of the implementation must be taken based on merits – not the philosophy of a subset of commercial vendors disguising themselves as “community”.