open sourcing india - knowledge must

8/8/2019 Open Sourcing India - Knowledge Must

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Knowledge Must

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Open Sourcing India

Open Sourcing India

by Stefan Heil, Chief Information Officer Knowledge Must

Most people have no concept of the term open source in general, or the maybe more specific termopen source software (OSS) in particular. Even a little bit more confusing, many people use the termFree and Open Source Software (FOSS), and that is also the one the author is using throughout thisarticle. In order to grasp the subject, let us first clarify the subject a little.

FOSS Conference 2008 in Bangaloreby James Morris (http://www.flickr.com/photos/x_jamesmorris/3059384474)

Let us start from the beginning, with the word free. Although many people have an immediate idea ofthe meaning of this rather simple word, most do not see the double meaning here. Most commonly, thisdouble meaning is explained by the free as in free beer but also free as in free speech idiom.


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Open Sourcing India

The first one referring to the price indicates that usually one does not have to pay for such software,as opposed to the traditional model of proprietary software which costs anything from a couple of dollars

to tens of thousands of dollars (or Euros or rupees, for that matter).

The second meaning of free and disciples of FOSS insist that this is by far the more important one refers to the freedom of modifying or extending any such software. In the proprietary model, this isgenerally illegal, but also technically impossible or at least obstructed, because there is no internaldocumentation, and most importantly: no so-called source code.

The source code is the raw version of any software, written by the software developer in one of themany programming languages (such as C, C++, C#, Java, etc.), which later gets compiled (thinktranslated) into machine readable code, and finally published as the finished applications or programmes.In FOSS, it is not only common, but a legal duty (according to the chosen license, the most popular being

the General Public License or short GPL) to publish the source code along with the executableversion, or short: open-sourcing the code.

This makes it possible for anybody with the knowledge of the respective programming language ofcourse to read and understand the inner structure of that software, and then modify or extend itaccording to their needs. Due to the already mentioned licenses such as the GPL, any modified FOSShas to stay open / free, thereby guaranteeing that this open nature will survive, no matter how small orbig the modifications to the original code are. In other words, if somebody takes a FOSS programme andextends it, the source code of the extended version has to be published as well, so anybody who mightwant to extend the extended version is able to do just that.

This cycle of publishing software which then gets modified by others again and again is a fundamentalchange in how software is produced and is also the main reason of success of the open source model ofsoftware development. New functionality can be added by anybody, and so the software gets betterbecause more people, more brains, are part of the development process.

This collaborative model of development is also the chosen way to rid software of errors, or bugs, whichare unavoidable especially if the source code grows to thousands of lines of text (and the biggerprogrammes out there often have hundreds of thousands lines of code). Errors get fixed by thecommunity in specialised forums (some of you might have heard of Bugzilla, a software for collaborativelydeveloping software) and the fixed code is quickly reintegrated into the programme by the maintainer.

The result of all these changes away from the proprietary model is software, which quickly adapts to newneeds, an often higher quality of code, a transparent and open process which allows talented minds tobuild on others software and thereby create synergies that would otherwise not be possible. And, for themere user of FOSS, all that comes at zero cost.

For the longest time critics of FOSS have argued that such software is not as good or as powerful assoftware that is exclusively developed by huge multinationals (Microsoft being the biggest of them), butreality has made most of them keep silent in recent years. Especially programmes written for servers (asopposed to software for the desktops or notebooks of home users) such as the famous Apache HTTP

Server (which is the most widely used web-server on the Internet and also serves our websites at


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The low cost for FOSS is surely a reastalking about years of market dominatieverybody would have stopped using ititself, the core technologies that allowpowered by FOSS and it is not likely

India is going Open Source (Tux the pe

So, what is the state of FOSS in India?three different sides, and separately dithe public sector, the private economy

Public Sector Making FOSS Offici

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ySQL are the biggest players in the marketweb-server or MSSQL) in the number of de

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Open Sourcing India

governments of the West (in Europe even slower than in the USA) to accept and use the Internet as away to communicate with their citizens and potential voters. But what about the use of computers in

government offices, institutions, schools and universities?

Not only the lower cost but also the easy extendibility of FOSS is appealing to more and more publicinstitutions. A change that often comes from the grass-roots level, but sometimes as in the case ofIndia becomes a topic of national interest and is being discussed on a ministerial level.

Whereas institutions in many Western countries often have contracts with big companies like Microsoft tosupply them with cheaper-than-regular versions of operating systems, word processing or spreadsheetcalculation software, this is only on short sight a good bargain for these institutions. Problems like follow-up costs through annual license fees, costs of the latest updates and versions, vendor lock-in effects(meaning the problem, that once you start using a proprietary software, the cost of changing to another

software becomes to high due to incompatibilities, even if the other software is significantly better orcheaper) in the long run add up and turn the bargain into a never ending spending spree.

The claim of large software companies that the Total Cost of Ownership for FOSS software is higherthan for their own, rests on weak arguments, such as training costs for administrators and users to makethem fit for the new software and they fail to mention the costs of training users for their own softwarealong the way (which, by the way, is also a key direct or indirect source of income for them).

In India, however, especially in the last decade, the governments on both the state level and the nationallevel have become advocates for FOSS. To cite some prominent examples:

-In 2002 the Goa Department of Information Technology issued a circular recommending the useof Linuxi

- In 2003 the Department for Information Technology supported the development of an IndianLinux distribution called Indixii

- In 2003 and 2004 the then Indian president Kalam called for open source in defenceiii- In 2004 the Department for Information Technology launched a website to promote and support

the use of and share experiences with FOSS in Indiaiv- In 2005 the Indian Government distributed millions of CDs with FOSS in Tamil and Hindi

languages because big companies for the longest time failed to offer their products in exoticlanguagesv

- In 2005 the State of Tamil Nadu called for the use of FOSS on all desktop computers.Proprietary software can only be used if proven that it is absolutely necessaryvi

- In 2005 the State of Maharashtra distributed a CD with an indianised Linux-based operatingsystem and FOSS applicationsvii

- In 2007 the State of Kerala proposed the establishment of an International Centre for FreeSoftware and Computing for Development, ITES Training Centre (in Kochi)viii

- In 2007 the State of Kerala partnered with Linux distributor Red Hat to train teachers andgovernment users for the Linux operating systemix

- In 2009 the Government of India Ministry of Communications & Information Technologyformulated a draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance which will essentiallymake the use of FOSS the norm in all eGoverment projects on the national level if enacted (highly

likely)x


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Open Sourcing India

Private Economy Harvesting the Economic Boon That Is FOSS

The fact that one can save a lot of money through the use of FOSS instead of licensed proprietarysoftware is pretty obvious, but the figure of an estimated 2 billion USD in saved costs (for royalty freesoftware) which the IIT Mumbai announced was still surprisingly high for most people.

Many companies already use FOSS on their servers or build applications on top of FOSS, therebyeliminating expensive software and annual fees. The adoption of FOSS in Indian enterprises is happeningright now more than ever, and it is still gaining momentum. And with big players like ICICI, Reliance andMahindra-British Telecom jumping on board, FOSS has finally arrived in big corporations, which will mostlikely add another boost to the adoption rate of FOSS in India.

It might sound strange at first, but even though FOSS is free of cost, many companies have build viable

businesses around it, for example, training institutes for FOSS, consultants for migrating to FOSS,offering paid support for FOSS, or more recently through paid web-services built on top of FOSS. Thepotential for growth in these sectors is huge, and given the support for FOSS by government bodies andinstitutions on all levels of the Indian political system, there is no end in sight.

The last decade also saw the development of a hybrid that is often referred to as commercial opensource software. For many Indian companies this offers a legitimate middle way between publishingentirely open and entirely closed source software. Often a basic version of the program is FOSS, whileadd-ons for enterprise customers remain closed source and have to be paid for. There exist a plethora ofspecialised service providers which work on a per-demand basis and customise FOSS for companies thatwant to use FOSS but need some extra functionality or further customisation. This FOSS economy isone of the core components in Indias IT export earnings.

The Community Developing and Using FOSS

The last of the three pillars we have identified are the users of FOSS. And since development of suchsoftware is an inherently collaborative process, the distinction between mere users of a software and theones who are helping in development are not as clear-cut as in the proprietary software world. Manypeople even though they might not be programmers have helped FOSS spread in India, foremostthrough localised language versions of already existing FOSS. One should not forget that even in India,

where a large part of the population has some proficiency in English (the main language for softwaredevelopment still), for the majority of the population the non-availability of local language versions ofoperating systems and software is barring them not only from using a specific software, but often fromusing a computer at all. India not least through political decisions has gone a long way already, and sotoday, especially in the FOSS scene, localisation has gone much further than with proprietary software.One cannot over-emphasise the importance of this often neglected fact.

However, compared to Europe, participation in coding (the writing of the software itself) is still low inrelative terms, but given the sheer number of talented young FOSS users, this will change rapidly in thenear future. On big collaborative development websites like Sourceforge or Sarovar forge, Indiandevelopers are still rare (as compared to other countries like the USA or Germany), but definitely on the


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rise. It has been argued that with moredramatically. This expectation is sound,

Internet, and an expensive and slow cUp to now, Indian contributions to Fengineering colleges and universities.some 15 years ago, but it has changimpact in India over the coming years.

Open Source India 2009 Conferenceby James Morris (http://www.flickr.coThe number of Indian Linux User Grouexchanging experiences, teaching eacwith 233xi already higher than everywcomes as no surprise as India is the sea fairly recent one, and other states likChinese LUGs, but reliable numbers ar

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, faster and cheaper Internet connections in Ibecause FOSS development happens almo

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Open Sourcing India

Conclusion

India is embracing not only free and open source software, but in more general terms an environment ofopen standards and open development processes especially, but not exclusively, in the IT realm. It israpidly catching up with the older players in the game, not least because the State has made efforts toturn FOSS into the de-facto standard. In most other countries, FOSS has won administrators and ITdepartments hearts solely through its own merits, and is now making headway not only in the serverrealm but increasingly so also on users desktops. In India, with such strong support from many sides, itwill win not only the techies but the average users heart by storm, because it suits the Indian needsbetter than proprietary software ever will, and, yes, also because it is free (as in free beer)!


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Open Sourcing India

i PeacefulAction.org: Goa Govt. Adopts Linux. Posted June 19, 2002. Department of Information Technology Circular:http://peacefulaction.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=40&mode=&order=0&thold=0

ii United Nations Conference on Trade and Development: E-Commerce and Development Report 2003. Chapter 4: Free andopen-source software: Implications for ICT policy and development, page 118.http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ecdr2003ch4_en.pdf

iii Dinesh C. Sharma: Indian president calls for open source in defense. CNET News. July 7, 2004.http://news.com.com/Indian+president+calls+for+open+source+in+defense/2100-7344_3-5259836.html?part=rss&tag=5259836&subj=news.7344.5

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam: Convergence of Technologies. Address at the Dedication Function at InternationalInstitute of Information Technology. May 28, 2003.http://presidentofindia.nic.in/S/html/speeches/others/may28_2003_2.htm

iv

Matt Loney: India shares open-source experience. ZDNet UK. September 24, 2004.http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/developer/0,39020387,39167741,00.htmNational Informatics Centre web page: http://osf.nic.in/openSourceSite

v Ingrid Marson: Free CDs spread open source in India. CNET News. May 25, 2005.http://netscape.com.com/Free+CDs+spread+open+source+in+India/2100-7344_3-5720008.html

vi Akhila Seetharaman: Open source software, boon for e-governance. The Hindu. May 25, 2005.http://www.hindu.com/2005/05/25/stories/2005052501730600.htm

vii Vaishnavi C. Sekhar: State govt logs on to cost-cutting drive. The Times of India. April 19, 2005.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1081589.cms

viii Unnamed author: Keralas draft IT policy released. The Hindu. January 18, 2007.http://www.hindu.com/2007/01/18/stories/2007011801800700.htm

ix Aaron Tan: Indias Kerala state goes open source. CNET News. June 29, 2007.http://news.com.com/India%27s+Kerala+state+goes+open+source/2100-7344_3-6194118.html?tag=fd_nbs_ent&tag=nl.e703

xGovernment of India, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Department of Information Technology:National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance. 2009.http://fosscomm.in/OpenStandards?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Policy_On_Open_Standards_V2.pdf

xi FLOSSWORLD / United Nations University / Rey Juan Carlos University: Free and Open Source Software: Worldwide

Impact Study 2007.www.flossworld.org

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