FOSS powered Indian Political Party

Many politicians are not IT Savvy in INDIA but this news is really interesting. FOSS can help us build the softwares that are required for the e-Governance and there is no need to depend on an multinational for our country’s IT empowerment. We got to build e-Governance software Independently. Today Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is India’s largest political party, is going ahead with FOSS to build its party IT infrastructure.

Some states in India are going ahead for tie-ups with Microsoft and other proprietary software vendors for software solutions. We have been protesting against such tie-ups and I want to quote “Save Kannada” protest which apposed Karnataka government’s MoM with Microsoft. The protest page explains us why it’s not safe to give access to any MNC to get country’s sensitive data.

BJPs stand to go with FOSS is very much appreciated. Though there were no visible talks with the FOSS community and the party, this step will set a new example for other parties and governments.

Marco Fioretti writes on Linux.com

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is India’s largest political party, with around 20 million Ordinary Members and about 4 million Active Members. In June, BJP announced its goal to become one of the most high-tech political parties in the next two years, and free and open source software (FOSS) will play an essential role in this project. Continue Reading…


Function	Chosen software
List of software programs used by BJP
Server Virtualization	OpenVZ and Vtonf
Router + Firewall + VPN	Vyatta
Unified Threat Management	Untangle
HTTP Accelerator	Varnish
Proxy Server	Squid
Digital Repository	ePrints
Email	Qmail, Courier Imap and Squirrelmail
Instant Messaging	OpenFire plus Spark
Video and Voice Telephony	Asterisk, Hylafax
Mailing List	Ezmlm
Security Camera Management	ZoneMinder
Identity Management	Fedora Directory Server
Web Content Management	Joomla!
Remote WAN-based Backup	VZDump and rSync
Storage Area Network	OpenFiler
Network Management	Zenoss