Distribution of free applications is part of an effort to promote computing in India BANGALORE, INDIA — India’s Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is distributing a CD of free productivity applications in the Tamil language, part of an effort to promote computing among the country’s inhabitants.The CD contains productivity software such as a Web browser, e-mail client, and word processor, as well as tools such as a spell checker and optical character recognition software, according to R.K.V.S. Raman, staff scientist in C-DAC’s National Center for Software Technology wing.The browser, e-mail client, and word processor are open-source applications and run on both Linux and Microsoft’s Windows operating system, although some of the utilities on the CD are closed-source and run only on Windows, Raman said Thursday. The CDs are being distributed to citizens by C-DAC, a Pune-based research and development (R&D) organization of the Indian government, as part of a government initiative to facilitate computing in local Indian languages, Raman said. Tamil is a dominant language in South India, particularly in the state of Tamil Nadu.Over 50,000 CDs have been distributed so far, according to Raman, and C-DAC aims to distribute 3.5 million of them. The software can also be downloaded from a Web site maintained by C-DAC, at http://www.ildc.in.The Indian government has declined to take a stand in favor of either open-source or closed-source software. Some federal government agencies and state governments are working with Microsoft on e-governance projects, as well as projects for enabling local language support on applications. “Most of the market in India today is captured by software from Microsoft — a lot of it pirated — and we kept this in mind when we shipped out the CD,” said Raman. “If we tell the user that the software is only available on Linux, he will say he doesn’t want it because there is this perception among users that Linux is complex to use.”Microsoft already sells a version of its Office suite in India, called Microsoft Office Hindi, that supports nine Indian languages. In June it is expected to launch a Hindi version of Windows XP Starter Edition, a stripped down, low-cost version of Windows XP that is being piloted in emerging markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. It has said it will offer other local languages in the future.The National Center for Software Technology, which merged with C-DAC in 2002, has focussed primarily on open-source software because it is easier to modify applications when the source code is available, Raman said. NCST developed Tamil language versions of open-source products such as the Firefox browser, OpenOffice productivity suite and Columba e-mail client, he added. However, some of the software on the CD, such as the spell-checker and optical character recognition tools, were provided free by third parties including research organizations, and are not open source.“We bundled all the software on one CD, as our priority was to get free software in Tamil quickly to users, and we are not religious about open-source,” said Raman. Still, NCST is working on open-source versions of some of the tools. That software is still in the early stages of development, he said.A version of the free software in Hindi is scheduled for release in June. Based on users’ demand for products in their own languages, C-DAC will also work on other Indian languages, Raman said. Software Development