Linux Journal: Indian Government’s Reported Move Makes News, Then Fuels Skepticism

“Economic Times, India’s most influential business newspaper,
has dropped hints of government plans to push a ‘countrywide drive’
to promote GNU/Linux as the ‘platform of choice;. But Indian
enthusiasts of Free/Libre Software and open source are treating the
promises with skepticism, if not downright suspicion.

“On October 9, the Economic Times published an article, ‘Open
IT–Government to Rewrite Source Code in Linux’, which caused a
flurry of interest and then doubt…

“The feature article ran on the front page of many editions of
the paper across India, but some were quick to call it a lie.
GNU/Linux groups were buzzing with comments on the report, largely
critical. Their opinion is the claim is little more than a
bargaining chip to extract a better deal from the dominant
proprietary software player, Microsoft…”

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