MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD)
(a): The Operating systems generally used by the Government in various departments include Windows, Linux (variants like Redhat, Ubuntu, BOSS etc.), Android, Unix etc.
(b): The proprietary software Windows and Redhat Linux is being supplied by NICSI to the Government departments. However, Linux software is Free & Open Source and can be freely downloaded by the users and as such no percentage figures are available.
(c): Currently, around 2.5 million deployments of “Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) ” Linux have been done by CDAC in education, government and e-governance sectors. Moreover, BOSS is available for free download from the website http://bosslinux.in and number of downloads reported from the site is around 70000. However, exact details of number of Government computers deployed with BOSS are not available.
(d): The Government has entrusted C-DAC with the development, support and promotion of Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) which is a GNU/Linux based Operating System distribution with wide Indian languages support. BOSS can be downloaded freely from http://bosslinux.in. Also, BOSS CDs are available for free distribution.
BOSS Support Centres are being set up across the country for adoption of BOSS. Workshops/ Awareness programs are conducted to encourage the use of BOSS in the country.
DeitY has written to all the State Governments for possible deployment of BOSS Linux in the States/UTs.
BOSS is being deployed in various initiatives jointly with Central and State Governments.
(e) and (f): The National policy on ICT Policy in School Education expresses a preference for Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) in order to expand the range of learning , creation and sharing;
# MHRD has released the National Policy on ICT in School Education in year 2012, in which it articulates preference for Free & Open Source Software in schools. http:// ictschools.gov.in
# NCERT has released National Curriculum on ICT in Education, based completely on Free & Open Source Software applications. The ICT course is being piloted in Navodaya Vidyalayas across the country. The course material is made available on a DVD based on Linux Operating System, Ubuntu and Free & Open Source Learning Management system MOODLE. The curriculum and the course material DVD has been circulated to all the states.
# The ICT in Education course for teachers by NCERT is also entirely based on FOSS and is available as an online course platform at http://ictcurriculum.gov.in.
# MHRD has issued a circular to all Boards of School Education across the country to not conduct any examination based on proprietary software.
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