NEW DELHI: The government on Sunday announced a policy on adoption of open source software, which makes it mandatory for all software applications and services of the government be built using open source software, so that projects under Digital India "ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs".
"Government of India shall endeavour to adopt Open Source Software in all e-Governance systems implemented by various Government organizations, as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software," said the policy statement, put on the website of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology. ET had reported in November that the government was looking to adopt open source development in a big way. At that time, the DeitY secretary had said open source would be preferred "wherever possible".