Aware of the pitfalls of vulnerabilities in its cyberspace following Snowden reports and countless attacks by Chinese hackers on key government websites, Centre has taken a vital step towards having its own operating system (OS) with which it plans to replace all other OSs, including the most popular Microsoft Windows in future.
A highly improved version of BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) developed by C-DAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) will be unveiled and discussed in an internal meeting in union home ministry in this week.
The government developed BOSS in order to reduce dependance on foreign operating systems. The OS was first launched back in January 2007, however it lost ground quickly due to the lack of adoption and faster upgrades offered by other operating systems. The official said, “We have no dearth of developers here. BOSS has almost all the features that one can get in, say, Windows. The earlier version was less user-friendly and had few features. We will seek help of Indian software biggies to develop it further.” He also said that the system was tested over the past three months. Many government agencies asked to check for vulnerabilities and the OS worked as it was supposed to.
The new OS – Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) – was originally developed in 2007 by India’s own National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS). The latest version of the OS was developed in 2013 and has since been tweaked and adapted to suit the government’s purposes.
By Jeet Rami
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