India plans free software for all

India is expanding a government-led program to provide free, local language software to all of its citizens, as it tries to broaden computer use in the country.

The move to widely distribute free desktop applications and tools could be seen as a setback for Microsoft, but the Indian government says it has no agenda to promote open source-software over proprietary products. What’s more, all of the applications and tools run on Windows, while some do not run on Linux, and any move to expand computer use in one of the world’s most populous countries could arguably benefit Microsoft

India’s Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a Pune-based research and development (R&D) organization of the Indian government, is distributing CDs with the software in Tamil and Hindi, two important languages in India. C-DAC plans to introduce versions of the software in other Indian languages later this year.

The project was initiated by India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which aims to take computing to the country’s masses in the language they are most familiar with.

The CD contains productivity software such as a browser, e-mail client and word processor, as well as tools such as a dictionary and spell-checker. While many of the productivity applications are open source and run on both Linux and Microsoft’s Windows operating system, some of the utilities are closed-source and run only on Windows. The software can also be downloaded at http://www.ildc.in/

In an interview with IDG News Service, R.K.V.S. Raman, staff scientist in the National Center for Software Technology (NCST) wing of C-DAC, talked about the project, including the decision to offer both open source and closed source software. Below is an edited transcript.

IDG News Service: How did this project get initiated ?

Raman: The project was started by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, and C-DAC was given the responsibility to do all the work for it. The starting point of this initiative is that people in India prefer to use their own language for computing.

There were not many organizations in India that were concentrating on creating end user tools in Indian languages. At C-DAC we have been working on it for quite some time. C-DAC also has a huge repository of fonts. At the Bangalore center, where I lead a team, we were working mostly on open-source tools, and we were working, for example, on the localization of OpenOffice. So when the ministry asked what could be offered to the public in Indian languages, we said there are a lot of fonts available at Pune, and also open-source tools that we do at the Bangalore center. Apart from this we could also get some private players to donate what they can, and finally package all that as a CD and offer it to the people.

IDGNS: Is there great interest in India for local language computing ?

Raman: For most of the people living in rural areas, the first issue is that they don’t have Internet connectivity. Even if connectivity does improve, and people are able to get on the Internet, the basic problem they would still face is using the computer, because the applications would be in English. We thought that if we could make some basic tools like the browser available in the local language, people will start using this software without having to learn a new language. English is used by only about 5 percent of people in the country, and if we want people to start using computers, we can’t expect them to go learn English. So there is a huge market out there for computing in local languages, which is why Microsoft is offering Indian-language versions of their products.

IDGNS: Why was it decided to offer the software for free?

Raman: The government decided to offer it free as an incentive to get people to use it. Also, there were tools available that were free, mostly with government-funded research organizations, and it is not that we are buying tools and distributing them free. Government is taking up the cost of packaging and distributing it in a CD.

IDGNS: Why are you offering the utility tools on Windows and not Linux ?

Raman: Most people in India still use Windows, whether it is pirated or legal software. So it did not make sense to force people to change to Linux. Our objective is to promote local language computing and not a particular ideology or point of view. Although some of the third-party tools that we have included in the CD only run on Windows, the tools that we developed run on both Windows and Linux. So when Linux becomes popular, users who have been using our tools will be able to make the shift very quickly and run these tools on Linux.

IDGNS: Why did you decide to have both open-source and closed-source software on the CD ?

Raman: There were private participants who did not mind giving the current versions of their software free, but were not willing to offer it in open source. By not making the software open source, they can now come with newer versions of the software, and get a return on their investment. As I said earlier, we have not been rigid about any ideology or point of view, although the software developed by my group for this project has all been open sourced. Likewise we are not trying to take on Microsoft or any one else. We recognize that for local language computing to take off, we need local language tools, and we need them to be free to start with.

IDGNS: In which other languages will the software be offered ?

Raman: A Punjabi version will be out by the end July or mid-August. Then we will have a Bengali language version. We are targeting all 22 languages in India, though to start with our focus is on the 11 languages that are used very extensively in computing.