[Fsf-friends] NIC goes Open

[Mahesh T. Pai]

The  National Informatics  Centre, has  taken the  first  step towards
freedom. and set up a PORTAL - yes, a portal. See http://osf.nic.in/

First, the nitpicks.

They are  describing it as the  `Open Source' forum,  an initiative to
address software tools based on `Open Standard' (note the singular)

The first  thing which hits  you on the  face as you open  the opening
page it that it  contains proprietary nonstandard tags (marquee).  And
images in a non standard format (gif).

The NIC cannot  apparently get out of the thinking  that the home page
has to be  a `click to continue' page. Well,  `high security' on their
servers has seen home pages of sites hosted on nic servers compromised
more  often than  a desktop  running ......  (umm snip  that,  we have
better things to discuss).

So, I  started clicking  on each  link, (luckily, in  a new  tab). The
first  page, http://osf.nic.in/openSourceSite/index_html  seems  to be
the  default plone theme.  I scroll  down, and  first see  the jarring
copyright notice.

`OPEN SOURCE FORUM and its visual design is Copyright © 2003-2004 by NIC'

I'm not sure that authors of default plone CSS'es will like that.

So, I do a `ctrl u' and  confirm that the CSS design is from the plone
and not by NIC.  (correct me is I am wrong).

The  lines  below the  copyright  notice  claims  to comply  with  the
following standards:

    * Section 508
    * WAI-AAA
    * Valid XHTML
    * Valid CSS
    * Usable in any browser

Great!!!! Though I  have no idea why the  Government of _India_ should
claim conformance to  a law by a foreign sovereign,  it certainly is a
good  idea that  out government  is getting  around to  the  fact that
disabled people are capable of using digital tools.

I did  not want to  log in  (I am revealing  my identity now,  and the
visitor number too, so they can find me out anyway).

After clicking  on 25 or so  links, nothing useful has  turned up. But
then, the site seems to have been created on 19 July, and I am visitor
No. 132. Probably, the first or  second in fact, and the rest might be
the webadmin testing the site, FWIW.

One  of those links  were http://osf.nic.in/openSourceSite/state/view,
In the list are Delhi,  Karnataka, Kerala, Maharastra, and Tamil Nadu.
Clicking  on them  requires  another  three links  to  get any  useful
information.

At the moment, I am at 
http://osf.nic.in/openSourceSite/openSourceDocument/openStandard/view
and
http://osf.nic.in/openSourceSite/openSourceDocument/openSource/view

Some useful URLs from the `portal':-

http://osf.nic.in/openSourceSite/openSourceDocument/publishedDocument/egov_services/egov/view
(look out for warped url).

This one contains a few links  to documents, most of which are already
known to most of us.

For the rest, visit the site. 

Ah, the positive side? They have  made a beginning; and the failure to
recognise the importance of _freedom_ IS bad. They need to switch over
to the `freedom' angle.

If  you do  not  understand why  the  term `free  software' should  be
preferred over the term `Open Source', you should read 
www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html and 
www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html

-- 
         Mahesh T. Pai    <<>>   http://paivakil.port5.com
~/\$ mv -vfi linux gnu/linux