India's Free Software Program Gets Boost

Open-source groups in India are assisting the country's government in its effort to distribute free copies of desktop productivity software by developing localized versions of products for several regions of the country.

The open-source groups agreed to help even though the CDs that are being distributed include some proprietary software. Kiran Chandra, convenor of the Andhra Pradesh state chapter of the Free Software Foundation of India in Kerala, said ensuring that open-source software is included on the CDs is "an opportunity for us to proliferate free software." Punjab-based Punlinux, another open-source advocate, is also translating software as part of the effort.

The government's plans were disclosed last summer, and the first version of the software that's being given away has been translated into eight of the country's 22 languages so far. It is being distributed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a government research and development organization.

The package contains open-source e-mail client and word processor applications that can run on Linux and Windows, as well as utilities such as spell-checker and optical character-recognition software that run only on Windows, said R.K.V.S. Raman, a staff scientist at C-DAC's National Centre for Software Technology. A second version of the CD is likely to ship in April, Raman said.