Tuesday, December 14, 2010

RETURN OF VAMAN IN AN E-GOVERNED E-SOCIETY

R-2 D-2 from the film 'Star Wars'
Importance of Open Source and Open Format for better E-Governance
(Summary: This talk explains the importance of open source and open format. And why their use is crucial in e-governace and e-society.
It was delivered by Justice Yatindra Singh in the National Conference on 'E-Government & E-Society' on 11-12 December 2010 at Allahabad by the Computer Society of India, Allahabad Chapter.
A pdf format of this article may be downloaded from here.)

नमस्ते, and a very good afternoon to all of you.

I am proud to say that our website says,
'Allahabad High Court has taken a policy decision to work in Open Source Software and use open standards

We have chosen Linux, Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org softwares as they are Open Source softwares. Our Website is also best viewed in Firefox.'

Ours is a success story of open source applications and my other Brother judges, who are at present concerned with Computer committee of the court will tell you about it . However the process of shifting over to open source and open format was done at the time when I was associated with the computer committee of the court and obviously I was requested to speak about their relevance in e-governance and e-society.

But what the heck, the fifth avtaar (reincarnation) of God Visnu (see Endnote-1), Vaman (see Endnote-2) doing out here. If he is to be born again then who would be the demon king Bali in the e-society, from whose clutches Vaman would free us?

And what is this robot doing out here—isn't he Artoo-Dtoo (R2-D2) from 'Star Wars'.  Oh, what a confusion? 

Don't worry, just sit, relax, and enjoy. I will connect them up.

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