<p>Bengaluru: Kanaja, an open source online portal for Kannada knowledge launched in 2009, has been inaccessible to the public for over three months. The site, which serves as a digital repository of Kannada literature and history, is currently offline due to the non-renewal of its SSL (Security) certificate and ongoing server issues.</p>.<p>The shutdown has sparked anger among scholars and Kannada enthusiasts who rely on the portal for free access to lakhs of books, dictionaries, and rare manuscripts.</p>.<p><strong>Digital assets at risk</strong></p>.<p>Belur Sudarshan, former co-ordinator of Kanaja and former E-governance advisor to the chief minister, expressed concern over the potential loss of digital assets.</p>.<p>“During the Covid lockdown, I had single-handedly converted about 1.68 lakh pages of more than 800 valuable books into text form using OCR technology and sent them to Kanaja. Even if we sit down and just do the DTP calculation, its value is at least Rs 50 lakh. I don’t know what happened to those digital files that I worked so hard to provide,” Sudarshan told <span class="italic">DH</span>. </p>.<p>He lamented the Department of Kannada and Culture’s apathy towards the state of the portal. </p>.<p>A source who worked with Kanaja earlier said, “The website holds immense amount of data like the complete works of major Kannada writers; also we uploaded thousands of rare videos, photos, hastalipis (handwritten works of great Kannada writers) unpublished books, but now nobody cares or maintains the website properly. However, the delay has already left a vacuum for researchers and students who rely on the portal for dictionaries, glossaries, and ebooks.”</p>.<p>Department officials attributed the downtime to a platform migration. The website originally ran on a WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack, and officials claim there is currently no SSL installation or server support for WAMP-powered applications.</p>.<p>Joint Director of the department Banashankari said, “The website was under maintenance and we were migrating it and is in the process of attaining FSL certificate which is to be renewed every 5 years. The website will be operational from tomorrow.” </p>
<p>Bengaluru: Kanaja, an open source online portal for Kannada knowledge launched in 2009, has been inaccessible to the public for over three months. The site, which serves as a digital repository of Kannada literature and history, is currently offline due to the non-renewal of its SSL (Security) certificate and ongoing server issues.</p>.<p>The shutdown has sparked anger among scholars and Kannada enthusiasts who rely on the portal for free access to lakhs of books, dictionaries, and rare manuscripts.</p>.<p><strong>Digital assets at risk</strong></p>.<p>Belur Sudarshan, former co-ordinator of Kanaja and former E-governance advisor to the chief minister, expressed concern over the potential loss of digital assets.</p>.<p>“During the Covid lockdown, I had single-handedly converted about 1.68 lakh pages of more than 800 valuable books into text form using OCR technology and sent them to Kanaja. Even if we sit down and just do the DTP calculation, its value is at least Rs 50 lakh. I don’t know what happened to those digital files that I worked so hard to provide,” Sudarshan told <span class="italic">DH</span>. </p>.<p>He lamented the Department of Kannada and Culture’s apathy towards the state of the portal. </p>.<p>A source who worked with Kanaja earlier said, “The website holds immense amount of data like the complete works of major Kannada writers; also we uploaded thousands of rare videos, photos, hastalipis (handwritten works of great Kannada writers) unpublished books, but now nobody cares or maintains the website properly. However, the delay has already left a vacuum for researchers and students who rely on the portal for dictionaries, glossaries, and ebooks.”</p>.<p>Department officials attributed the downtime to a platform migration. The website originally ran on a WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack, and officials claim there is currently no SSL installation or server support for WAMP-powered applications.</p>.<p>Joint Director of the department Banashankari said, “The website was under maintenance and we were migrating it and is in the process of attaining FSL certificate which is to be renewed every 5 years. The website will be operational from tomorrow.” </p>