At 12 am midnight on the 27th of May 2020, Aarogya Setu — India’s digital contact tracing app — will go open-source and be uploaded to a public GitHub repository. Initially, the Android client code will be available, which will be followed in two weeks by the iOS client (for Apple devices) and KaiOS code (for Jio feature phones). The back-end code for servers that process the data provided by Aarogya Setu users, will also be open-sourced at a future date. This is a significant step forward toward transparency in the collection and usage of sensitive data about COVID-19 patients. India currently leads the world in cases of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).
...
...
What does open-sourcing mean for Aarogya Setu?
According to Kant, 98% of Aarogya Setu installs are on Android devices, which explains the initial release of the Android client source code for the app. The app has been open-sourced with the Apache 2.0 license, which means other parties may freely use and change the code, as long as a notice of the change is carried with the code. NITI Aayog and MEITY (Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology) are inviting programmers to look at the code, find bugs and suggest changes and improvements. According to Kant, open-sourcing a government app that operates at this scale has never been done before.
...
