Enhancing Sustainability of Software: A Case-Study with Monitoring Software for MGNREGS in India

Software can be perceived either as a resource or as a property. Software is a resource if its ownership is in public domain, and a property if it is ownership wrests with some entity. Quite often, the license under which a software is made available determines whether the software can be treated as a resource or as a property. Licenses like GNU General Public License enforce the resource characteristics upon the software. Proprietary licenses render the software under some form of private ownership. Usually sustainability of projects are determined by the resource/property characteristics of their constituents. Sustainability of software projects can be enhanced if software can be transformed to possess resource characteristics. Software deployed in ICT applications is often dependent on data standards and protocols. While ownership issues determine the characteristics of data standards, issues related to transparency determine resourcefulness of protocols. Fairness in implementation and accessibility to test or inspect are guaranteed before the public, only when software data standards and protocols are made available as resources. By adhering to open data standards and transparent protocols, the resource characteristics of software data standards and protocols can be enforced. Once the resource characteristics prevail over software, data standards and protocols, the sustainability of software would get enhanced.