Electricity Billing and Super Computing

My friend Hiran bought it to my notice, when this particular news was telecasted on Manorama news, the idiot box version of the largest (in circulation) Malayalam Newspaper. He was quite astounded by the foolishness of the news report, even though I thought it was too silly to even make some noise around it. There is no English version of the report available; This is the brief:

Kerala Govt is going to lose Rs. 214 Crore grant from Indian Govt, allowed for the IT development in Electricity Dept. This is due to the pro-Free software policies of the Kerala Govt. Apparently, as per the report the software (which includes billing process) is impossible to develop in a free software, since many of the required ‘components’ will not work on free software. The report also worries about the inexperience of the company quoted the lowest amount on the tender, can add to the ‘obvious failure possibilities of free software’. It seems that of all states in India, only Kerala is so rigid on using free software for Government projects, and it ridicules the Govt on its stance which might result in the loss of the grant.

While I’m unsure if there’s any propaganda behind this news attack against free software at large, there definitely seems to be some hidden agenda behind this. The news doesn’t quote any expert on the inability of free software to develop such a ‘complex’ solution, or neither it does quote the source which talks about the terms and conditions of the grant. Since it seems that the opinions expressed at the report are of the reporter, we’ll have assume that he is a expert in this area, who have never heard of GNU/Linux, LAMP, Wiki, et al.

I just wonder just what this particular project need more than 91% of the Top 500 super computers, 8 out of 10 reliable hosting solutions,  and the one which powers IBM Sequoia, a 20 petaflop super computer.