The Future is Open - or is it ?
Each and every community goes through a period of elation coupled with introspection. The time spent in looking inwards provides answers to questions and deep seated philosophical moorings that characterise the intent of the development.

In his recent feature article for Linux For You, Frederick Noronha (FN) (fred at bytesforall dot org) raises a similar question - 'Why are big businesses doing F/LOSS ? What does it mean for the community as a whole in India ? '

The Indian GNU/Linux Users Group-Kolkata mailing list sometime back was flooded with congratulatory messages on the spate of 'The Future is Open' insertions for various high-TRP programmes on television. And the question that begs to be asked is - why now of all times ? What does it foretell ?

It is pertinent to begin with a comment from Javed Tapia, Director - Red Hat India Pvt Ltd. During the course of an interview for the iLUG-Kolkata site, when asked about the entry of Novell in the Indian Open Source business market, he provides an insightful answer - "attractive markets attract players". This is the context in which the argument put forward by FN should be read.

The same issue of Linux For You has an interview from Brian Behlendorf where he states "I would like to see Indian developers less focussed on what technologies they need to learn to get a job and more focussed on what technologies they should learn because these are the right types of technologies".

Some of the leading IT-related and CXO read magazines carry full page advertisement spreads from Microsoft asking readers and end-users to 'Get The Facts'. Businesses can only be too willing to invest in technologies which are economically viable and have a chance of bringing in recurring business(es). The world is littered with dime a dozen examples of good tech-ideas failing due to being badly implemented or by being unviable. The pace of modern business does not allow companies the luxury of being altruists.

One of the oft-heard laments is that 'IT does not happen in India'. True and false. IT does happen, what needs to be done more is to incubate development and research. R&D has for long been the domain of the red-brick institutions of classical academics. F/LOSS provides a disruptive model that will be able to break this glass ceiling.

What also needs to be done is creating a rethink on government policies. For far too long, the juju of OpenSource has been there to ram down prices of proprietary products. This has to change. The field must be made level and on par at the technological aspects. With the government being one of the major consumers of software customised towards its various business process, the 'IT does not happen' problem could be addressed.

Corporate interest in F/LOSS (or most importantly OSS) is flattering. What is the need of the hour in India is the interaction with the community. The UGs (and I deliberately bring all of them under one label) provide an unique outreach platform for the corporates. They also form the the synergistic role as lobbying groups. Constant interactions with the various UGs would provide a relevant and real-time response systems to policies that contravene the content and intent of the movement.

Lawrence Lessig in his now downloadable tract on 'Free Culture' provides a small peek into the ramifications of 'freedom'. Free Software addresses the freedom issue from the software industry niche and attempts to provide a model roadmap towards a time where the core principles permeate human interactions in daily life.

In the Indian context, the time is so much right to use and utilise the interest. A broad based notion of how best to use F/LOSS to change the way current processes work is best achieved through a participatory model. One can only hope that in current times, this is the future we are looking at.

- posted by sankarshan @ 4/01/2004 05:19:00 AM