Re: Nationalism for the sake of Nationalism?
"what can an Indian made FOSS browser offer over just encouraging contributions to, and maybe even mandating use of, existing FOSS browsers?"
My interpretation from the article: control. For example, we've got this bit:
The desired browser will have its own trust store, use a root certificate from India's Controller of Certifying Authorities,
This may sound familiar. It is what the government of Kazakhstan said they were going to do about six years ago. An attempt to be able to MITM all traffic by making any certificate they wanted. The open source browsers responded by both refusing to include that certificate by default, and a couple versions later, modifying the code so that, even if it was installed, they would refuse to use it. Mozilla doesn't like shredding its users' privacy for a dictatorship's benefit. So what would they do if India suggested that its government should have that level of control over certificates? I don't think they'd let them.
If I'm correct, India will have to do more things to make sure people use this browser, because as I said in an earlier comment, I don't think people will be installing it very often. They have indicated a willingness to punish those who don't comply with restrictions, even odd ones, that they've just made up. They have the option to be much stronger about this if they're interested in increasing control. At the moment, I don't think they have sufficient investment to get what they've asked for, though, so it's probably not a big concern at the moment.