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.

BEFORE THE BATTLE BEGAN

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