Is India’s premier space agency all set to break free from the walls of IT giants and their proprietary software? If sources are to be believed, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is on a gradual process to move its operations to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
As a first step towards this direction, ‘Bhuvan’ the Google Earth competitor from ISRO is in the process of being shifted to an opensource platform.
Bhuvan 2D a web mapping service application, which aims to provide a highly responsive, intuitive mapping interface with detailed imagery and embedded map data has already been made compatible with Linux and Mac.
Bhuvan 2D has the functional capabilities of map navigation and map panning.
In an official communication sent to a Bhuvan user, the Bhuvan team in Hyderabad revealed that they are in the process of migrating to open source.
“Thank you for the suggestion to move towards opensource software. We are in the process of migrating everything to opensource. For the moment, Bhuvan 2D is compatible with Linux and Mac,” the Bhuvan team said. “Currently, Bhuvan 3D is not compatible with opensource, but the process towards this goal is on,” said sources on condition of anonymity.
The Free and Open Source Software community across the country welcomed the decision by the ISRO Bhuvan team to move to opensource software.
“According to the open software policy in egovernance by the Centre, it is mandatory for all egovernance platforms to shift to Free and Open Source Software. A number of major organisations such as the Life Insurance Corporation of India has shifted some of its systems and user interface to opensource. Many Central government organisations are gradually moving to opensource. Now, the state governments will have to opt for open source to run software in egovernance platform,” general secretary of the Free Software Movement of India Y Kiran Chandra said.
With Bhuvan moving to opensource platform, it is expected that other similar projects from ISRO may also shift to the same in the near future.
Source:http://expressbuzz.com/nation/isro-on-course-to-free-and-open-source-software/227068.html
