tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-227043972024-03-13T21:34:21.299-07:00Open Source IndiaAn open source evangelist's opinionated take on the worldAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.comBlogger124125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-9785283499488835732016-01-22T01:41:00.005-08:002016-01-22T01:41:36.967-08:00TRAI Open House on Net Neutrality<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
By some miracle, I was in Delhi, and was able to attend the open house. The telcos made a huge pitch for differential pricing at the TRAI Open House on Net Neutrality, but civil society and the Save The Internet coalition and others argued that the Internet cannot be regulated like telecom networks because users on the Internet are both content creators and consumers.<br />
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I made the following points when I got a chance to speak:</div>
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1) The original vision of Sir. Tim Berners Lee, was that of a platform that enabled universal access to knowledge. Differential pricing violates this vision.</div>
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2) As an entrepreneur, if I have to choose between Free Basics, X Basic and Y Basics, instead of publishing my content and software onto a unified, open internet, my task as a startup becomes much harder. This goes against the government's Startup India goals of making it easier for startups to do business in India.</div>
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3) Differential Pricing is a very divisive agenda. With Internet penetration still very low, the telcos and the Internet industry should work together to solve the larger problem of empowering millions of Indians with Internet access. For example, there is a massive amount of work that needs to be done to enable Indians to use the Internet in their own languages.</div>
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Some coverage of the issue is below.<br /><div>
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<a href="http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/features/trai-differential-pricing-open-house-what-facebook-airtel-and-others-said-792959" style="color: #7e57c2; position: relative; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">http://gadgets.ndtv.com/<wbr></wbr>internet/features/trai-<wbr></wbr>differential-pricing-open-<wbr></wbr>house-what-facebook-airtel-<wbr></wbr>and-others-said-792959</a></div>
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Tweets are at <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=TRAI+open+house&ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Esearch" style="color: #7e57c2; position: relative; z-index: 0;" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/search?<wbr></wbr>q=TRAI+open+house&ref_src=<wbr></wbr>twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%<wbr></wbr>5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Esearch</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-66001595032082164242015-04-17T02:46:00.000-07:002015-04-17T02:47:36.439-07:00Net Neutrality and the Death of Distance<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /><br />Many years ago, I had interviewed Kevin Kelly, the celebrated former editor of Wired magazine. From that interview, it was clear that the telcos and the Internet players would end up clashing one day. The net is a global platform where distance does not matter, while the telco world is metered on distance through different rates for STD and ISD calls. The advent of smartphones and the mobile Internet has lead to a collision of both these worlds. In a world where bandwidth is abundant and cheap, the concept of metering based on distance will fade away. This is the reason that telcos are mortally scared of services like Skype, Whatsapp and others that take away their voice and SMS revenues. The death of distance is a consumer friendly evolution that the telcos will keep resisting till their last breath.<br /><br />Telcos have also not been terrible at fostering innovation as the failure of Value Added Services proves. In sharp contrast, the combination of smartphones and mobile internet has lead to a thriving app ecosystem. The telcos have only themselves to blame for the fact that the app ecosystem has completely bypassed them. The VAS ecosystem they controlled was extremely unfriendly to entrepreneurs and customers. If the telcos are allowed to decide which app to promote, it could lead to another fiasco. The Internet is a level playing field where innovation and consumer friendliness wins. Private arrangements like Airtel Zero could distort this market through sheer money power, because those who pay to be featured on such platforms would get an advantage over others. However, I have mixed feelings about <a href="http://internet.org/">Internet.org</a>, which provides some Internet services for free, since those who could not afford Internet would at least get a taste of it.<br /><br />Tampering with the level playing field of the Internet is an extremely bad idea which will destroy the innovative nature of the Internet. If we go down this path it could take years, if not decades to repair the damage. TRAI has done a great disservice by putting out a discussion paper that articulated only the telco's point of view. I hope the government nips this proposal in the bud and defends net neutrality.<br /><br />I am quoted in <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/only-net-neutral-india-can-create-next-google-free-internet-an-absolute-condition-for-innovation/articleshow/46925459.cms" target="_blank">this article in Economic Times</a>. My quotes have been heavily edited, and hence this lengthy preamble.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-13058111218405010432014-12-16T22:27:00.001-08:002014-12-16T22:27:51.753-08:00The doyen of Open Access in India<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3999996185303px; line-height: 15.4559993743896px;">Met with </span><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=811440569" href="https://www.facebook.com/subbiah.arunachalam.3" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3999996185303px; line-height: 15.4559993743896px; text-decoration: none;">Subbiah Arunachalam</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3999996185303px; line-height: 15.4559993743896px;">, the doyen of Open Access in Science. He must be in his 70s, but his passion and enthusiasm for Open Access always amazes me. I asked him how he got interested in this area, and he said that when he was at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), he wanted access to a journal, Surface Science, and asked a friend of his in the US to send him a copy. His friend quietly subscribed him to the journal, and Arun started getting the copies. When Arun look</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #141823; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14.3999996185303px; line-height: 15.4559993743896px;">ed at the cost of the journal, he was shocked, and realized that even IISc could not afford to subscribe to this journal. That lead him to stumble upon the Open Access movement, which aims to make scientific, and other kinds of literature freely accessible. Arun, then started writing to politicians, bureaucrats and academics on Open Access, and got many people interested in the subject. I think he is a great example of how one person with passion and drive can make a great difference. A big salute to you, sir!</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-19423594515545528822014-06-20T01:26:00.000-07:002014-06-20T01:33:07.621-07:00Will the Internet kill Indian languages?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 19px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">India might be home to six of the top 20 spoken languages in the world, but its languages are languishing in the online world.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When it comes to software exports, India is rightly considered a software superpower. With 86 billion dollars in exports, India’s software industry has helped companies around the world achieve significant improvements in productivity. It is time that the industry’s formidable capabilities are deployed to empower Indian citizens to use IT in their own languages.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In contrast to the healthy state of Indian software exports, the state of Indian languages online is a picture of malnourishment. Hindi is the fourth largest spoken language in the world with 360 million speakers, but, on Wikipedia, it has a mere 101,297 articles, and ranks 49, as on 1st April, 2014. Hindi ranks just below Nynorsk, one of the two official languages in Norway. It should be noted that Nynorsk is not even the most popular language in Norway, a tiny country with a population that barely crosses five million. That honour goes to Bokmål (literally "book tongue"), which is the preferred written standard for 85–90% of the population in Norway. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The state of the other Indian languages is no different, as can be seen from the accompanying table. How has Hindi sunk so low that it is lower than a languages which is not even the most popular language in a country with five million people? Even as the Internet flourishes in India, why are Indian languages stagnating online? What can be done to salvage the situation and give Indian languages the pride-of-place they deserve in the online world?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why so malnourished?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The average Indian language IT user has to traverse such a vast range of hurdles, that it is a miracle that there is any content in Indian languages at all. The most basic starting point for computing in Indian languages, the keyboard, was not easily available until the advent of smartphones and their software-driven, touch screen keyboards. In many parts of the world, if you buy a computing device, it would come bundled with a keyboard for the national language of that country. Not so in India, despite the fact that the number of speakers in most Indian languages exceeds the population of most European countries! </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, let us talk of font, the most basic necessity for computing in any language. A really good font is a marriage of art (calligraphy) and technology, and we have no dearth of either skill in India. The average English user probably has a choice of 60-70 high quality fonts to choose from. The average Hindi user has a choice of 3-4 modern Hindi fonts that they have to install themselves. The catch is that most average users would never go through the trouble of installing a font themselves. It is for this reason that there are only two categories of Indian language users online -- journalists who are supported by their in-house tech departments, and “early adopters” who are undeterred by the challenges of installing fonts, keyboards and other bits of software. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In his classic book, “Crossing the Chasm,” technology marketing guru, Geoffrey Moore talks of how there is a vast chasm between early adopters, and the other two categories that follow them on the technology adoption curve -- the early majority and the late majority. While early adopters are willing to put up with imperfections and embrace change, the early majority want to enhance their productivity and want technology to work flawlessly. The Indian language computing market (or Indic Computing, in short) is stuck in the chasm between the early adopters and the early majority. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i style="background-color: white;">(Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DiffusionOfInnovation.png)</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The early majority and the late majority categories form the significant bulk of users and these users are not going to fiddle with installing fonts, keyboards and other paraphernalia. To entice them, computing devices will have to work out of the box, in Indian languages. In other words, Indic users have to be given parity with the English world, and devices should work in Indian languages with the same ease and efficiency that they do in the English language. A user should be able to unpack his device and get started with using it in Hindi, Gujarati or any other Indian language with a minimum of fuss.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">India’s Domestic IT industry is dominated by users in the English language, who constitute approximately 15 percent of the country’s population, adding up to 180 million people, in a population of 1.2 billion people. India has around 213 million Internet users, which adds up to a 17.5 percent penetration. To expand the market, and bring the next 300 million users into the digital world, we must empower them to access IT in their native languages. Not doing this could significantly limit the headroom for growth, and stunt the domestic IT industry. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enabling computing in Indian languages is essential for growing the domestic IT industry. This will unleash the next wave of innovation in the app ecosystem, software product development, Internet services, e-commerce and other related areas. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Indian Government has a group called Technology Development in Indian Languages (TDIL), which has developed many Indian language technologies like fonts, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) etc. However, these technologies need to be re-packaged in such a manner that they reach millions of users. The software industry has created bits and pieces of the ecosystem, but these efforts are disaggregated and lack scale. A few smartphone vendors have brought smartphones to the market with Indian language interfaces. However, this capability needs to be brought to market at affordable price points. To get the next 300 million users online in Indian languages, industry, government, hardware and software companies will have to work across the value chain to deliver a great user experience. The alternative is to sit back, and watch Indian languages die slowly in the Internet age.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Note: An edited version of this article appeared in <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/analysis/indian-languages-under-threat-in-the-digital-age/article1-1230559.aspx" target="_blank">Hindustan Times</a> edition dated June 17, 2014.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-36550920725121202112013-07-11T02:17:00.000-07:002013-07-11T02:24:32.920-07:00Marathi Journalism in the Internet Age<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On Saturday, 6th July, 2013, the Observer Research Foundation held a conference titled, "<span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Journalism</span> in the Internet Age." The conference was attended by around 30 <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span> from various <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> publications, and Satish Lalit, the Public Relations Officer of the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Dr. Sudheendra Kulkarni, Chairman of ORF welcomed the participants and said that when he was advisor to Prime Minister AB Vajpayee, Vajpayee used to say that IT was "India's Tomorrow." However, those who speak Indian languages have no role to play in India's Tomorrow. This was leading to a new secessionist movement with people moving away from their mother tongues. He added that the grossly inadequate development of Indian languages on the Net was one of the biggest barriers to inclusive development. He said that what is important to India's development cannot be left to the private sector and that the government must actively support Indian languages online. In particular, he proposed that advertising support to online <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> publications should be stepped up dramatically. </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anant Goenka, Head of New Media for the Indian Express Group Internet penetration in India is very low and nothing that people need to use the net in Indian languages is easily available. He said that a Flipkart in Hindi or <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> would be a wonderful idea. He claimed that when Loksatta, the <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> newspaper of the Indian Express group launched their Android app, they got 10,000 downloads within a week, most of them from expensive Samsung Galaxy phones, proving that the <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> language audience had purchasing power. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lalitesh Katragadda, Head of the Emerging Markets team of Google joined this meeting over a conference call and gave an overview of Google's work in Indian languages and the road ahead. One of the points he made about Indian language computing being taught in schools was taken up by the Chief Minister's PRO, who said that he agreed with this demand and would place it in front of the CM. Incidentally, Prithviraj Chavan, the Maharashtra CM had started a company developing fonts and other Indian language technologies after completing his MS from UC, Berkeley. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was followed by an interactive session that was jointly moderated by Vinayak Parab, Editor of Lokprabha and myself, where the participants spoke on the challenges facing <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> online journali<wbr></wbr>sts. Vinayak said that <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span> had a huge role to play in establishing <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> language on the Internet. He said that he was part of a group of 25 <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span> who had met the Maharashtra CM and successfully petitioned the Maharashtra government to use Unicode. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I mentioned that Wikipedia, Red Hat and Google have come together to create the Indic Computing Consortium. I made the point that while Indic scripts are complicated, may other scripts like are far greater in terms of complexity and yet have a significant presence on the Internet. India has all the technical capabilities required to solve the problem but lacked thew will to do so. If we worked in a focused manner to build the tool set for Indian language computing, we can solve this problem, once and for all.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of the key takeaways were:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) Fonts render very differently on different platforms, and this is a big problem for publishers.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) Most of the hits that <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> newspapers are getting nowadays are from links they post on their Facebook pages. This is because search in <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> is used by very few users because keyboards and input methods are significant barriers to entry. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) Many newspaper have e-paper versions that do not show up in search results. These papers should move to Unicode. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4) Some <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> sites are now beginning to leverage YouTube to generate more viewership. During the recent Uttarakhand tragedy, one <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> newspaper posted videos from Uttarakhand which were in <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span>. However, by translating the videos and captioning them in English, they generated many more hits. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5) There was a strong pitch from the <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span> that Google AdSense and Google News should support <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span>. The web sites of <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> newspapers are seen as a cost center and are therefore resource starved. I got the clear sense that the online <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span> were itching to break out of this rut and were keen on seeing their online editions bring in revenues. Some <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span> also asked if we could build tablet/smartphone tools that could convert <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> handwriting into documents. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6) Satish Lalit, the PRO to the Maharashtra CM said that the government was creating a new advertising policy and invited the online <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span> to sen in their representation demanding support for online publications. He said that the Inscript keyboard had been made compulsory across the Maharashtra government. He said that all Maharashtra government press releases are being sent out in Unicode and a PDF copy of the same is also attached. The CM's Facebook page was recently launched and a blog set up. He said that in his travels across Maharashtra, he has found people in remote districts like Gadchiroli access <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> news over the Internet because the printed papers would take time reaching the districts. In his role, he said that he used to scan 20 newsp0aers every day at 7AM in order to prepare a daily news digest for the CM. That job has become much easier nowadays due to online publications. He also said that he uses Whatsapp extensively to keep in touch with people. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">7) It was suggested that the number of glyphs in fonts should also be standardized.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of the action items that were identified were:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1) Create a forum for <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> online <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span><wbr></wbr> so that online <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalism</span> is recognized as a distinct skill. Since most<span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> online <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span><wbr></wbr> have received very little training, the group has decided to create a handbook for <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> online<span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span>.<wbr></wbr> ORF promised all the support needed for setting up this group.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2) The group will petition the Maharashtra CM and ask the Maharashtra Government to create tools like dictionaries etc and make them available for free, in order to promote <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> computing. It was suggested that the Maharashtra Government could make a one-time payment to CDAC and acquire their fonts and other <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">Marathi</span> language technologies and release them as open source. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3) Dr. Kulkarni said that he will also reach out to the newly appointed NASSCOM president, R Chandrashekar, who was former IT Secretary of India, and request him to support this initiative. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Credit goes to Dr. Kulkarni who has taken up this cause with a lot of passion. The organizing committee consisted of Anay Joglekar of ORF, Nilesh Bane of Maharashtra Times, Vinayak Parab of Lokprabha and myself. This event convinces me that online <span class="il" style="background-color: #ffffcc; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;">journalists</span> can be a powerful support group for us in making Indian language computing popular, over the next few years.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-24611556938581795652013-06-03T22:50:00.000-07:002013-06-03T22:50:05.303-07:00RIP Atul ChitnisOne of the biggest names in the Indian FOSS community, Atul Chitnis, is no more. Several months ago, I was saddened to hear that he was diagnosed with cancer and, since then, I have followed his updates on Facebook. I must say that Atul put on a brave face and went down fighting (and cooking!).<br />
<br />
Atul was one of the pioneers of the open source movement, popularizing Linux and open source with his numerous articles. Many years ago, as a part of the Mumbai Linux Users Group, I kept hearing of how popular the Bangalore Linux User's Group was and saw its popularity for myself when I was in Bangalore. I don't remember the year, but it was a wonderful feeling to attend the BangLinux meeting and see around a 100 FOSS enthusiasts gathered there. Over the years, I spoke at a couple of Bangalore Linux (later renamed to FOSS.IN) events and sought his help during the policy battles around OOXML and Open Standards.<br />
<br />
With Raj Mathur and now Atul Chitnis passing away, the FOSS community has lost two of its pioneers, who will be sorely missed.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-25728894242289085182012-06-19T04:33:00.002-07:002012-06-19T04:33:36.624-07:00A quest for change in education<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">For the last few
years, I have been increasingly interested in the area of Open
Education Resources (OERs). <a href="http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm" target="_blank">MIT's Open Course Ware</a> was one of the
pioneers of OER and the manner in which it was used across the world
was truly fascinating. <a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/" target="_blank">Khan Academy</a> took the concept of OERs and made
it wildly popular – the 3000 videos on its web site have been
viewed more than 133 million times! </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Why this
interests me is because I believe (as do many others) that education
is one of the most critical inputs for India's development. Well,
more than an input, I'd say this is the critical factor that decides
whether our country descends into chaos in the next few decades or
emerges out of poverty and takes a place of pride on the world state
as one of the developed nations. Think of it as that moment when an
aeroplane gathers speed on the runway and generates enough thrust to
break free from the gravitational pull of the earth and soar into the
sky. If we educate our youth and make them skilled and able citizens
of India, we will soar into the skies. If we don't, we will land with
a thud. As simple (and scary) as that. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Over the last few
months, I've been trying to understand the education space in India
and within that space, how OERs can help the Indian education system.
It is no secret that there is a huge demand supply gap with the need
for educational infrastructure and teachers not being matched by the
Indian education system. Even among teachers that I have spoken to,
there are huge gaps in the skills imparted to them. It is obvious
that, as a country we still have a tremendous amount of work in terms
of breadth and depth – breadth, in creating a network of teachers
that reaches the remote villages of India and depth, in terms of
ensuring that these teachers are equipped with sufficient skills and
knowledge to teach their students. To understand this, I have been
visiting educational institutions across India and I will be writing
and documenting these experiences as I go along. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">One of the first
such educational institutions I visited as part of my quest was
appropriately named <a href="http://www.quest.org.in/" target="_blank">QUEST</a>, which is short for “Quality Education
Support Trust.” QUEST is an NGO that works on enhancing quality of
education and has its office in Saloni Village in Wada District, an
underdeveloped tribal area of Maharashtra State in India. Some of the
teachers I met their had done their BEd from premier institutions in
India, but I was shocked when they told me that they had no training
in how to teach in real-life situations. QUEST has been working to
fill that gap. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Saloni village is
a two hour drive out of Mumbai and by the time we reached the QUEST
office around 9.30AM in the morning, the heat is above a blistering
40 degrees celsius. Accompanying me in the car are Nilesh Nimkar, a<span lang="en-GB">n
educationist working for the last 15 years in tribal belts of Thane;
and Rammohan Khanapurkar, a young techie working with the <a href="http://www.orfonline.org/" target="_blank">ObserverResearch Foundation</a>. Together, they have implemented <a href="http://www.moodle.org/" target="_blank">Moodle</a>, an open
source Learning Management System, which has been customized to
Marathi, for the benefits of the teachers who are being trained by
QUEST. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Some of the work
that QUEST has been doing to improve education quality has been so
simple that one wishes more people adopt it. For example, o<span lang="en-GB">ver
a hundred teachers affiliated to QUEST are now using the Moodle forum
in Marathi, to exchange ideas with each other on improving education
quality. I find about 25 of these teachers assembled at the QUEST
office in Saloni village for a workshop. When I quizzed these
teachers about the benefits of the Moodle forum, they said that many
teachers who were too shy to ask questions in a classroom would open
up and ask questions online. They found that the forum had an impact
on education quality because they could post problems and find
solutions quickly. One teacher said that he was struggling with slow
learners in his class and the ideas from other teachers in the forum
helped him bring the slower kids up to speed. The teachers were so
enthused by the online forum that many of them spent their own money
to buy netbooks and data cards to connect to the forum. One of the
key factors for the success of the forum was that the teachers were
given a 15 day training in using the Inscript keyboard in Marathi,
which helped them use the online forum more fluently. Khanapurkar
says that the usage of the forum shot up once the training was
completed. For the Indic computing community, this is a point worth
noting, for ensuring the success of Indic computing. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-GB">Another
intervention that QUEST has made for improving education quality is
the creation of videos that explain how teaching can be done in an
actual classroom. In one such video, a teacher is <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_59655202">teaching </a></span></span><span style="background-color: white;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cBouKkEPbA" target="_blank">the Marathi alphabet “Na”</a> to </span><span style="background-color: white;">a class of
kids who are around two-three years old. She uses more than 20 words with the alphabet “Na” in it,
emphasizing the “Na” and makes her students repeat the word. Then
she asks each of the students to give her one word with “Na” in
it and finally tears up a newspaper into pieces and asks the students
to underline every occurrence of “Na” in the piece handed over to
them. The video serves as a powerful example of how multiple methods
of learning (auditory, kinesthetic etc) can be combined to serve the
core concepts being taught. The video is barely ten minutes long, but
the teachers say that it has made a difference to the way they teach
alphabets in their classes. Nimkar tells me that QUEST sometimes uses
as many as eight cameras to make these videos, and pay particular
attention to capturing the reactions of the students. Such videos
can be a powerful means of upgrading the skills of teachers in India.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-GB">Most
readers will also agree with me that we need a fundamental rethinking
of the education system in India. Critics say that India's education
system was created by the British to fulfil their need for clerks who
could keep the colonial empire running. Be that as it may, our system
treats students as inert objects whose only task is to soak in the
information dished out to them, and regurgitate/ vomit it at exam
time. When I completed my graduation, I looked back on my five years
in college, and the ten years in school, and came to the sad
conclusion that those were my most wasted years of my life.
Therefore, when I saw <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y2sj_G4Njg" target="_blank">Kiran Bir Sethi's video on TED</a>, I looked
forward eagerly to meeting her and seeing the <a href="http://www.schoolriverside.org/" target="_blank">Riverside School</a> that
she founded. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-GB">Kiran
got a standing ovation for her TED talk and a well deserved one too
because she is teaching her kids at Riverside to be doers instead of
being inert absorbers of knowledge. If India is to emerge out of this
immense morass of corruption and incompetence, we need more people
who believe that they can change the world for the better, and then
go out and do it. As Indians, we whine about corruption and wallow in
our miseries because our education system loads us with inert
information but teaches us nothing about what to do with it. At
Riverside, Kiran worked on a program called <a href="http://www.dfcworld.com/" target="_blank">Design for Change</a> that is
transforming kids </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Liberation Serif', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB">into
individuals who say, </span></span></span></span><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Liberation Serif', serif;"><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-weight: normal;">‘</span></span></span></span></strong><strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Liberation Serif', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
CAN’ instead of ‘Can I?’ Riverside kids have lobbied and
campaigned for child-safe zebra crossings and for parts of Ahmedabad
to be closed to traffic and dedicated exclusively for children. </span></span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Liberation Serif', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
believe this kind of education is the need of the hour for India. If
we as a nation do not believe that we can make change happen, we will
continue living in the mess we have created and that is a horrible
thought. If we teach our children how to make change happen, we can
emerge as a strong, powerful and well developed nation in the next
few decades and rout poverty from our country. Personally, Kiran's
work also appealed to me enormously because in the last seven-eight
years that I have worked in public policy and advocacy, I have seen
with my own eyes that making policy change is not a difficult as people imagine it to be. The Indian
government might be a byzantine and complex organism but there are
definite ways of making it work. The Design for Change program
started at Riverside has now become a global movement encompassing 35
countries of the world, which encourages children to work on
challenges like health, environment, education and others facing our
world. Search for “Riverside School Ahmedabad” on YouTube and you
see some amazing possibilities how our education system can create
better students and a better India. I hope these videos become more
popular, and more and more educators rethink how they teach their
kids. </span></span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<strong><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Liberation Serif', serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
good news is that QUEST and Riverside believe in OERs and are willing
to share their work with the rest of the world. In that, I see seeds
of hope for a better future for India's students, teachers, our
education system, and ultimately for India itself. </span></span></span></span></span></strong>
</div>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-85268797636209124122011-04-23T08:43:00.001-07:002011-04-23T09:00:02.802-07:00The World Foresight Forum: Envisioning a better future<div>A few months ago, an invitation from an event titled the World Foresight Forum landed in my inbox and the mail said, </div><div><blockquote>we would like to include your speech in the Convention, in the Seminar "Dealing with global challenges: a leadership crisis?", in particular on the topic "Development of a knowledge-based economy."</blockquote></div><div>The invitation added that, </div><div><blockquote>The project, an initiative of the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, Granaria Holdings and TNO, aims at turning The Hague into the centre of the international debate on “Security, Peace and Justice for Sustainable Global Growth”, being already the de facto judicial capital of the United Nations, where institutions, such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court are headquartered.</blockquote></div><div>The theme of “Security, Peace and Justice for Sustainable Global Growth” is something that interests me deeply, so it took about a few milliseconds to say yes. I landed up last week at The Hague without much expectations, knowing only that it sounded very interesting, and interesting it was. A few prime ministers, the Chairman of Goldman Sachs, the CEO of Thomson Reuters, Edward De Bono (the founder of lateral thinking), several futurists, the Mayor of The Hague, academics, entrepreneurs and many others attended this event at The Hague, The Netherlands. </div><div><br /></div><div>My session was moderated by the very jovial and sharp, Dr. Stephan de Spiegelerie. Stephan, as he insisted we call him, hit the nail on the head when he said that what was interesting about our session titled, "Development of a knowledge-based economy" was that it was all about possibilities, whereas many of the sessions at the WFF were concerned with issues of the past. In another session, earleier that day, Glen Hiemstra, Founder of Futurist.com said that (and I am paraphrasing a bit here and may not be exact) that there are two ways of creating the future. One was extrapolating from the present and the other was looking to the future and letting that create the present. Taking a cue from Stephan and Hiemstra, I painted a blue-sky picture (and most would say, a very idealistic picture) of the opportunities thrown up by the Internet. I started with a story about Emperor Ashoka, who was one of the greatest rulers of India, that I had read in my childhood that had a deep impact on me.</div><div><br /></div><div>After the brutal battle of Kalinga, the Emperor Ashoka was so overcome with remorse that he renounced bloodshed and embraced Buddhism. As part of his penance, Ashoka went to monasteries across the country. At each monastery, he would leave munificent donations of gold coins. At one monastery, the emperor left behind one solitary gold coin. When his perplexed followers asked him to explain, Ashoka said that the abbot of the monastery was a great man but he did not share his knowledge with others.</div><div><br /></div><div>I followed that up with another story. As a child growing up in India, one of the first things I learned is a hymn to Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge, which says that:</div><div><br /></div><div>Wonderful is your gift of knowledge</div><div>the more we share, the more it grows</div><div>the more we hoard it, the more it diminishes </div><div><br /></div><div>These two stories amply illustrate the fact that there was a moral imperative to sharing knowledge, in Indian traditions. From these stories, I cut to the present where the Internet and the open source model based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of knowledge was leading to tremendous creativity and knowledge sharing, in a manner that Emperor Ashoka might have approved. I cited the example of Linux that has grown from 10,000 lines of code in September 1991 to around 204 million lines of code valued at 10.8 billion dollars and Wikipedia, the open source collaborative encyclopedia, that has grown from a standing start in 2000 to over 13 million entries in 260 languages of the world. Both these examples prove that by through Collaborative Innovation and sharing knowledge, we can grow richer as a society. With the Internet connecting almost 2 billion people, collaborating and sharing is now possible on a scale that no other technology could have enabled. </div><div><br /></div><div>As the Internet grows and reaches more of humanity, and as it becomes a part of our day to day lives, is it possible that, as a species we will become more of a collaborative species, instead of a competitive one. Like Emperor Ashoka, will we renounce fighting over finite property like land and borders, and learn the value of sharing knowledge? I know that sounds wildly imaginative, but one of the advantages of speaking at an event titled, the World Foresight Forum is that you are not necessarily constrained by the past, and can imagine a future that is discontinuous (and hopefully, much better!) from the past. </div><div><br /></div><div>To conclude, I quoted four lines from one of my favorite poems, the immortal "Imagine" by John Lennon. The last four lines of Imagine are,</div><div><br /></div><div>You may say that I'm a dreamer</div><div>But I'm not the only one</div><div>I hope someday you'll join us</div><div>And the world will live as one </div><div><br /></div><div>As I concluded, Stephan looked me in the eye and asked me if we all could sing along. We all had a hearty laugh at that and moved along to the next presentation. My presentation was followed by another jovial Dutchman, Jaap Roos, VP of Capgemini, Netherlands. Roos spoke about how words that defined our age, words like "Co-value creation, Exponential globalisation, Collaborative innovation, Prosumerism, The long tail etc" did not even exist five years ago. He said that the web creates a 2 billion person, "no-borders amplification effect." Roos concluded with a final slide that said:</div><div><br /></div><div>* The web is changing all, people remain central</div><div>* Our global society and economy will remain very dependent on raw materials, energy, transportation and industry</div><div>* The process of Innovation determines success</div><div>* Cyber Security and Identity Integrity are the challenges for the web and our knowledge based future</div><div><br /></div><div>In the afternoon, I was invited to speak to a group alled, TheYoungTheHague, an important Dutch association of young entrepreneurs. These young entrepreneurs were working on “The Hague's Top Ten Improvements” that they would then present to the Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, Government of The Netherlands. The event was held inside a gorgeous church called the Klosterkerk and the lead speaker was drs. Albert van der Touw, the CEO of Siemens Netherlands. van der Touw spoke about how Siemens gets involved in the cities it is involved in, its work in renewable energy, and areas like desaliniating sea water and making it fit for human consumption, in Africa. van der Touw spoke with a lot of passion about these initiatives and I felt happy to see leaders at his level speaking about their social initiatives, with such conviction. I gave a talk similar to the one I gave earlier in the day, but added the point that technology can enable new possibilities, but building a better society is a human endeavour and we can build better societies only if we have compassion in our hearts. </div><div><br /></div><div>The many discussions at the WFF around concerns like climate change, security, happiness in society etc, made me recall Gandhi's insightful words that, "There is enough on this earth for everyone's needs, but not enough for everyone's greed." Many of the urgent and pressing challenges that we face in areas like climate change can be solved only if we engaged with them in a spirit of collaboration and sharing, and therefore, the need for compassion and a sense collective good was more urgent than ever. The audience consisted of a group of about 100-120 members of TheYoungTheHague, and I hesitated a few minutes before saying something that has been brewing in my heart and mind for a very long time. Having seen many businesses put private profit ahead of the collective good, especially in areas like open standards, an issue that I was closely involved with in India, I said that I was struck by how the world of business is being treated as a "compassion-free" zone, how it seems to operate as if it is above the norms that govern human society. Today, businesses are the dominant economic and social forces in our society and what they do has a profound impact on all of us. It is therefore even more imperative that businesses be guided by strong moral values like compassion and the collective good. It was very encouraging to see some members of the audience nodding their heads and agreeing with these thoughts. Mr. van der Touw later told me that some of the breakout sessions created for suggesting improvements to The Hague referred to my talk. On the last day, we had dinner at the beautiful Peace Palace, which also houses the International Criminal Court. </div><div><br /></div><div>Among the personal highlights for me at the event were sessions by Edward De Bono, the founder of lateral thinking, the author of "Six thinking Hats" and many other books. De Bono ran us through the principles of the six thinking hats and said that his ideas were being implemented in schools in India and China and showed significant improvements in learning effectiveness. There were many distinguished people in the audience, but that did not faze De Bono, who went about his task like a school master, using a sharp whistle every few minutes to prod people into changing their metaphorical hats. I also met some amazing entrepreneurs from the <a href="http://kairossociety.com/">Kairos Society</a>, a global network of top student and global leaders using entrepreneurship and innovation to solve the world's greatest challenges. It was inspiring to see these young motivated individuals talk about doing good in a way that makes commercial sense. </div><div><br /></div><div>One tangible example is a company called <a href="http://www.rethinkrelite.com/">ThinkLite</a> run by Dinesh Wadhwani that is helping businesses go green without the upfront costs. ThinkLite evaluates a customer's lighting infrastructure and replaces their old, inefficient lighting systems with energy efficient, mercury free lighting at its own cost, and takes a percentage of the savings as its fees. This is the kind of innovative model that can accelerate the adoption of green technologies in the world. I found the Kairos fellows, lead by Ankur Jain to be energetic and enthusiastic and look forward to seeing them bring their work to India. </div><div><br /></div><div>There were many discussions around cybersecurity and these sessions were very interesting but not very conclusive. On one hand, we had Christopher Painter, coordinator for cyber issues, US Department of State saying that most people paint security and privacy as issues opposed to each other, but that was not necessarily true. After the session, I tried to probe him further on this and his answer was that the surveillance would be around keywords. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to dig deeper. On the other hand, was Pablos Holman, a futurist, IT security expert, and a notorious hacker with a unique view into both breaking and building new technologies. Holman who was born in the Soviet Union, was very skeptical about the aims of governments around the world to do 24 by 7 surveillance of e-mails and Internet traffic. He spoke with feeling of of how the Soviet culture of surveillance lead to neighbors suspecting each other and ended up creating a very unhappy society. It would take a 100 years to change that culture now, he said. As a hacker, Holman said that he ran a personal server on every continent, so that no government could get his hands on his e-mail. He sportingly admitted that it was an experiment that he ran purely because he could as hacker and a technology expert. Between Painter and Holman, I am still searching for a common ground between security and privacy on the Internet, and I expect this to be a long search. </div><div><br /></div><div>At the World Foresight Forum, one of the most interesting persons I met was Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp. A very warm and affectionate person, I was delighted to know that the Rabbi spoke about the role of compassion at the WFF. He shared a Jewish story about heaven and hell that I wanted to share with you. There was a man who wanted to know the difference between heaven and hell. God took him to hell and there he saw people sitting around a table laden with tasty food, but the people all had arms so stiff that they couldn't bend their elbows and bring it to their mouths. God then took him to heaven and he saw the same thing, people with stiff hands who could not bring the food to their mouths. The man said, 'What the difference? There is no difference between heaven and hell." God said, 'Wait my son.' The man waited and he saw that the people in heaven were feeding each other." If we are to really seek, “Security, Peace and Justice for Sustainable Global Growth” we need tons and tons of the spirit of sharing that the venerable Rabbi spoke about.</div><div><br /></div><div>-0-</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-73893082828448956462011-04-03T03:11:00.000-07:002011-04-03T04:12:43.079-07:00Moving on from Red Hat to GoogleLast month, I moved from Red Hat to Google. After spending six-and-half years at Red Hat, it was a tough decision to make because I got to work on issues like open standards and open source that have such long-term implications for India. To tell the truth, I had also gotten into a warm comfort zone in my previous job and was wondering what to do next, after we won the open standards fight in India.<br /><br />In the last year or so, there were several offers, but none of them really excited me because I was looking for a role that has a large social impact. When Google sounded me out, I thought this could be interesting because Internet penetration in India, especially the web in India languages, is one area that can have a large impact. I know that broadband, 3G, 4G etc are on their way, yadda, yadda, yadda, and Internet usage will inevitably grow, but those who have been involved in policy know that there is a great difference between having policies on paper and actually having *political will* behind those policies. For example, every politician and bureaucrat agrees that computing in Indian languages is a good idea, but our so-called software superpower of a country has not made this a reality, even as it relentlessly churns out code for the rest of the world.<br /><br />Another reason for taking up Google's offer was that I'll be able to continue my involvement in open source and open standards. In some ways, it was also a good time to leave Red Hat because most of the defensive work needed to protect the open source community -- open standards, software patents etc -- have been taken care of. Apart from the FOSS non-profits like FSF and FSMI, the Indian FOSS community now has an layer of non-profits like IT For Change, the Center for Internet and Society, Knowledge Commons and others who look at FOSS from an outside-in perspective and advocate for FOSS as a social good. The setting up of the Software Freedom Law Center's India chapter has also helped give the community some sorely needed legal firepower. I feel that these developments have greatly strengthened the community.<br /><br />I want to conclude by saying that I see great hope for the future, event though the current policy environment seems so bleak and depressing. is is because, in the last six-and-half years, I have had the privilege of working with many bright, passionate individuals who are working for the larger good. Some of them have left the civil service or the corporate world to work in NGOs, and most of them have the caliber to be successful entrepreneurs or business leaders but have chosen to be involved in the area of public policy. This is an exciting development that will change India's destiny.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-91217283760804523592011-01-03T22:43:00.000-08:002011-01-03T22:57:26.792-08:00ODF, OGG listed as standards approved for e-governance in IndiaHere is some good news to kick off the new year. As a follow-up to the Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, the Department of Information Technology has published the <a href="http://egovstandards.gov.in/public-review/egscontent.2010-12-28.3570952294/base_view">"Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (IFEG)." </a><br /><br />The draft of the IFEG lists out the standards approved for e-governance in India. The last date for comments on this draft is 27th Jan 2011. The IFEG draft clearly says that ODF and OGG are standards approved for e-governance in India and proprietary document formats and multimedia formats are not mentioned at all. My understanding is that these standards will be included in the future Requests for Proposals (RFP) for e-Governance applications, which means that these standards will be baked-in to all future e-Governance applications.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-74700685130337871012010-11-12T07:54:00.000-08:002010-11-12T08:09:41.213-08:00Indian Open Standards policy finalized--major victory for the FOSS communityAfter three years of continuous running battles, India's Department of Information Technology has finalized the <a href="http://egovstandards.gov.in/approved-standards/egscontent.2010-11-12.9124322046/at_download/file">National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance</a>. This incorporates many of the key points submitted by Red Hat. Over the last three years, we worked with our friends in government, academic, civil society and the media to push the Indian government in favor of a policy that mandates a single, royalty-free standard. The final policy and the comments that Red Hat had submitted are attached.<br /><br />In the previous draft dated 25/11/2009, our major objection was to section 4.1.2 of the policy which said,<br /><br /><blockquote>"4.1.2 The essential patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard should preferably be available on a Royalty-Free (no payment and no restrictions) basis for the life time of the standard. However, if such Standards are not found feasible and in the wider public interest, then RF on Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) could be considered." </blockquote>The comments I submitted on behalf of Red Hat reads:.<br /><blockquote><br />While the term “Mandatory Characteristics” indicates that section is binding, the usage of terms like “should preferably” conveys the impression that this is non-binding. Since thousands of government agencies, systems integrators and others connected with e-Governance will look up to this policy for guidance, we request that the mandatory characteristics should be laid out clearly and unambiguously. As with the previous section, we feel that the intent and will of the GoI should be clearly expressed in this section. In any case, Sections 4.3, 4.4 and<br />5 deal with the exceptions.<br /><br />The term “essential patent claims,” is not defined in the policy and this could prove to be a huge loophole. This term is also a new introduction and it would have been helpful to know the rationale for its introduction. Ultimately, any patent necessary for the implementation of a standard is an “essential patent claim” because a<br />standard cannot be implemented partially. In this context, I would like to point out that the Chinese government has issued a notification for the compulsory licensing of patents related to standards used in China. An English translation of this notice is attached with this letter for your reference. <br /> <br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Recommendation:</span> We request that the wording of this section should be changed to "ALL patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard should be available on a Royalty-Free (no payment and no restrictions) basis for the life time of the standard.” We also request that the following statement, “However, if such Standards are not found feasible and in the wider public interest, then Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) could be considered,” be moved to the sections dealing with exceptions. We feel that this section is the heart of the Draft Policy and placing an exception statement in the very heart of the policy will send out wrong and conflicting signals. </blockquote><br /><br />As you can see from the extract below, the points mentioned above have<br />been incorporated In the recently finalized policy. This section now reads:<br /><br /><blockquote>4.1.2 The Patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard<br />shall be made available on a Royalty-Free basis for the life time of the<br />Standard.<br /></blockquote><br />Overall, I'd say this is a major victory for the Indian FOSS community<br />and more than three years of hard work have paid off. Now I need a loooooong break!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-90020214337720344592010-06-09T23:30:00.000-07:002010-06-09T23:33:03.416-07:00The challenges in using proprietary standards<h1 style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://coldhardflash.com/2010/05/flash-co-creator-jonathan-gay-responds-to-steve-jobs.html">Flash Co-Creator Jonathan Gay</a> talks of the challenges they faced in using H.264 standard.<br /></span></h1><blockquote>The second challenge was selecting a video codec. We wanted to use the cool new H.264 open standard but Macromedia did not feel they could afford the H.264 license fee. I believe that the capped $5M per year H.264 license fee was similar in scale to the annual Flash engineering budget at the time. The H.264 license fee model is very anticompetitive. H.264 licensing is free for very small users, expensive for medium size companies and inexpensive for very large companies. This model puts the midsize companies who could challenge the dominant companies at a significant competitive disadvantage and is the reason that we implemented the proprietary but affordable On2 codec in Flash instead of the open and expensive H.264 codec. The capped license fee also discourages large companies from building a competitor to H.264 because they can simply pay the capped license fee and know they are managing their patent risk and suppressing their smaller competitors. For example, it would have cost Macromedia $5M per year to add H.264 to Flash but it probably cost Adobe much less to add H.264 because they were probably already paying a substantial fee for their video editing products. You can probably thank the success of Flash video for the fact that streaming H.264 video over the Internet is free for another 5 years. Solving this patent license problem is probably why Google purchased On2. However, if they open source the latest On2 codec as people suspect they want to, it’s much easier to launch a patent lawsuit against them because anyone can inspect the source code. Given the large number of patents in the video space, it may not actually be possible to build an open source codec that does not inadvertently infringe on someone’s patent. The MPEG Licensing Authority solves the problem in a Borg-like way by adding any new patent challengers to their patent pool.</blockquote>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-35504067672661839082010-06-03T06:56:00.000-07:002010-06-03T07:24:02.691-07:00Red Hat's comments on Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance Version 1.1 dated May 2010These are the comments that I submitted to Department of Information Technology on behalf of Red Hat on the <a href="http://egovstandards.gov.in/openstd2">Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance Version 1.1 dated May 2010</a>. Overall, it is a good policy with a few loopholes that need to be plugged. If approved in a slightly improved form, it will be a huge landmark for e-governance in India and for the open source and open standards community.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">General Review Comments</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Wonderful is your gift of knowledge </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">the more we share, the more it grows </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">the more we hoard, the more it diminishes </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hymn to Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge</span><br /><br />Information Technology, and the Internet in particular, have opened up tremendous avenues for the sharing of knowledge. In the next two years, over two billion people (or one-third of humanity) will be connected to the Internet, making it the largest collaborative network in the history of mankind. Open standards are the most fundamental tool for the sharing of knowledge and we therefore appreciate DIT's leadership in creating the Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance Version 1.1 dated May 2010.<br /><br />In creating and implementing the Open Standards Policy, we hope that DIT will live up to the best of Indian knowledge traditions that placed tremendous emphasis on the sharing of knowledge. While genuine open standards foster the sharing of knowledge, proprietary standards prevent the free flow of knowledge by treating standards as a priced commodity or as trade secrets, owned and controlled by private entities. We hope that DIT will make a clear distinction between open standards and proprietary standards because this has larger implications beyond e-Governance and impacts the information society as a whole.<br /><br />We recognize and respect the fact that DIT has a significant challenge on its hands when it comes to genuine open standards because many standards, currently in use, have evolved as de-facto standards that are proprietary in nature. At the same time, we request DIT to recognize the larger historical perspective, which places standards firmly in the commons; and that proprietary digital standards are an aberration of this norm. It is a well established convention of civil society that standards should be treated as a “common wealth” and belong to all, and NOT be controlled by private entities. If standards that we take for granted – like weights and measures – were proprietary standards that required royalties and OEM licenses for usage, the cost and social impact of the same can well be imagined. For example, multimedia standards are some of the most expensive standards in the world. <a href="https://www.fluendo.com/shop/category/end-user-products/">A complete set of playback plug-ins costs around EUR 28 </a>(approximately Rs 1,624). As we deliver e-government services right down to the village panchayats and seek to put computers in every school, the cost of these proprietary playback plug-ins could prove to be a heavy drain on the country's finances, affect IT penetration in India and thereby hinder the spread of knowledge.<br /><br />On the other hand, open standards can accelerate the sharing of knowledge and the Internet and World Wide Web are the finest examples of this. For example, in 1994, Sir Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT. It comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that they could easily be adopted by anyone.<br /><br />It is therefore clear that open standards promote the public good, which is the primary responsibility of any government. The ultimate test of any open standard is – does it give us the freedom to share knowledge without any hindrance, without any terms and conditions? We hope that this is the yardstick that will be used to determine open standards for India.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Comments on Specific Sections</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Section 4.1.2 of the policy states, “ The patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard shall be available on a Royalty-Free basis for the life time of the Standard. If such Standards are not found feasible then in the wider public interest, Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) with no payment could be considered.”</span><br /><br />We request that the following statement, “If such Standards are not found feasible then in the wider public interest, Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) with no payment could be considered” be moved to the section 4.3 which deals with “Non-availability of Open Standard which meets all Mandatory Characteristics dealing with exceptions.” We strongly feel that this sentence is completely out of place, especially considering that it is currently housed in section 4.1 titled, “Mandatory Characteristics.”<br /><br />We feel that section 4.1.2 is the heart of the Draft Policy and placing an exception statement in the very heart of the policy will send out wrong and conflicting signals. Also, in terms of sequence, the RAND/FRAND clause pre-empts the selection criteria listed in Section 4.4. It should also be noted that standards that are RAND/FRAND should be termed as “Interim Standards” and should NOT be termed as “Open Standards.”<br /><br />For example, the H.264-encoded Internet Video format is <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">currently free to end users until at least December 31, 2015</a>. Once this period ends, MPEG LA, the licensing agency for H.264 may start charging royalties. Therefore, H.264 is a partially-royalty free standard, but cannot be considered an open standard because users do not have the freedom to encode and decode data and have to adhere to complex licensing conditions. Under the current wording of Section 4.1.2, H.264 may qualify as a suitable open standard for e-governance but this is clearly unacceptable in the long-term. For example, if Doordarshan uses H.264 to transmit a National Address by the Prime Minister of India over the web on 1st January, 2016, it may attract royalty that “...shall be no more than the economic equivalent of royalties payable during the same time for free television."<br />Therefore, we suggest, once again, that this sentence be moved to Section 4.4 and be modified to read, "If such Standards are not found feasible then in the wider public interest, Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) with no payment, AND NO RESTRICTIONS ON REUSE, could be considered.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">4.3 Non-availability of Open Standard which meets all Mandatory Characteristics </span><br /><br />Given the strategic importance of open source and its ability to free India from being technologically dependent on proprietary software vendors, we request that the open source community should have a strong representation in the Designated Body selecting the standards. We request that the process of selecting these Interim Standards should be an open and transparent process that seeks inputs from the public. Citizens should be clearly explained the logic for selecting these standards.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">5. Exceptions for Selecting One or More Additional Open Standard in an Area </span><br /><br />If multiple standards are selected for a particular area, the government should ensure that data is interchanged without any loss of information. If information is lost in the process of exchanging data, it would defeat the very purpose of having this policy. As with many other policies in India, we are seriously concerned that this exception clause should be used only in the rarest of rare cases and that the exception should not become the norm. Therefore we suggest that this sentence be modified to read as, “Such standard shall be compatible and bi-directionally interoperable, without any loss of data, with the already existing selected Standard.”<br /><br />Going by past experience, we have seen that proprietary vendors who stand to lose their billion dollar monopolies, are willing to do anything possible to exploit every loophole available to them. Therefore, the constitution of the Designated Body is critically important. DIT must ensure that a transparent process is followed to include multiple stakeholders, including civil society in order to prevent institutional capture of the designated body. The constitution of the LITD 15 committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards is an example worthy of consideration.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Annexure Section m: Maturity -- An standard is considered mature if different implementations, commercial/open, are available, widely adopted and have been stable for some time.</span><br /><br />We request that this be reworded to read as, “Maturity -- A standard is considered mature if different implementations in proprietary and open source software, are available, widely adopted and have been stable for some time.” It should be noted that open source software licenses do not differentiate between commercial and non-commercial implementations. The two major development models in the software world are proprietary (where the ownership of the source code is closely held) and open source (where users have the freedom to modify, share and redistribute the source code). Therefore, it would be more accurate to replace the term, “commercial/open” with the term, “proprietary and open source.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A-I-6 Open Source: The term is most commonly applied to the source code of software that is available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions.</span><br /><br />The definition of “open source” is not accurate. There are specific licensing restrictions on Open Source Software. The purpose of these restrictions is to preserve the users' right to share, modify and redistribute the source code. We therefore suggest that the <a href="http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd">Open Source Definition</a> of the <a href="www.opensource.org">Open Source Initiative</a> be followed. It is the OSI that approves the open source licenses. The Open Source Definition is as under: <br /><br /><div class="content clear-block"> <h2>Introduction</h2> <p>Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:</p> <h3>1. Free Redistribution</h3> <p>The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.</p> <h3>2. Source Code</h3> <p>The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.</p> <h3>3. Derived Works</h3> <p>The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.</p> <h3>4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code</h3> <p>The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form <em>only</em> if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.</p> <h3>5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups</h3> <p>The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.</p> <h3>6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor</h3> <p>The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.</p> <h3>7. Distribution of License</h3> <p>The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.</p> <h3>8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product</h3> <p>The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.</p> <h3>9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software</h3> <p>The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.</p> <h3>10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral</h3> <p>No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.</p> </div><span style="font-style: italic;">A-II-6: What is meant by maturity? An Open Standard is considered mature if different implementations, commercial/Open, are available, widely adopted and have been stable for some time.</span><br /><br />As with Annexure M, we request that the term, “commercial/open” be replaced with “proprietary and open source.” We would also like to suggest the addition of the following sentence, “The date on which the open standard came into existence will be given priority when it comes to making a choice between two competing open standards.” The reason for this is that an open standard that has been in existence longer is likely to be more mature.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-28180179057027916042010-05-04T05:26:00.000-07:002010-05-04T05:31:32.935-07:00Open Source offers more to CIOs<span style="font-style: italic;">An edited version of this article of mine appeared in the April 2010 edition of IT Next magazine in India, in their <a href="http://www.itnext.in/content/pocket-wise-otherwise-too">"Moneywise"</a> column. Please feel free to translate, rewrite and publish it in your local geo to promote the message of open source. If this gets published elsewhere, kindly send me a copy/the link. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Open Source offers more to CIOs </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>“Quality. Price. Service. Pick any two,” said a very succinct placard in Damodar's tailor shop. Back in the days when clothes were tailored, Damodar was one of the best in the business and he definitely knew what he was talking about.<br /><br />However, in the software industry, the emergence of open source software (OSS) has turned this dynamic on its head. It is no longer about, “Pick any two,” but “Pick ALL three.”<br /><br />Take quality for a start. Studies by Coverity, have found that the number of defects per thousand lines of code is lower with OSS than with proprietary software. One of the most famous sayings in the OSS community is that “Many eyes make bugs shallow.” The open, transparent, community driven development model of open source has lead to the creation of some of the most robust software systems ever built. Those who have migrated from proprietary server operating systems to open source systems will happily testify to this fact. Is it any surprise that 446 out of the top 500 supercomputers in the world run on Linux? Or that mission critical applications like telecom billing solutions, stock exchanges and others are increasingly moving to Linux and other OSS systems?<br /><br />On the price front, the industry has had to deal with the forced upgrade cycles, vendor lock-in and hugely bloated software licenses imposed by proprietary software vendors. While the development model of OSS is community driven, many commercial vendors have built business models around service and support for OSS deployments. Many top-notch system integrators around the world routinely incorporate OSS in the solutions they offer to their clients. Unlike their proprietary competitors, OSS vendors do not have to incur huge development costs and this enables them to offer high quality software implementations at prices lower than proprietary software vendors. The good news for CIOs is that OSS is no longer restricted to infrastructure software categories like operating systems and middleware, but has expanded to encompass application areas like CRM, ERP, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Portals, Content Management Systems and many others.<br /><br />On the service front, everything boils down to how well the software is implemented and supported. In OSS, commercial vendors usually sell their services in the form of annual subscriptions that have to be renewed. The quality of services rendered to the client determine whether subscriptions are renewed or not. This gives OSS vendors an inherent incentive to offer good quality services. Therefore, CIOs should actively consider OSS while procuring software, especially where the OSS option is mature and meets their functional requirements.<br /><br />Given the recent downturn in the economy, cost has been one of the reasons for more and more CIOs to turn to OSS. However, to be moneywise, CIOs should focus on all three aspects--quality, price and service. It may be tempting to go with OSS vendors who are the cheapest, but CIOs should evaluate the quality of skills available within the vendor organization before taking a final call. As I sum up, I cannot resist quoting from another placard in Damodar's tailor shop. “I have no quarrel with competitors who charge less. They know the value of their goods and services.”Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-91206718661390450382009-12-12T23:39:00.000-08:002009-12-12T23:50:24.160-08:00A quick visit to ChinaI made my first China trip last week and spent two days in Beijing. I explored the possibility of working with the Chinese open source community on policy issues of mutual interest like open standards and software patents. India and China (and other emerging economies like Brazil) are already <a href="http://sify.com/news/India-Brazil-China-have-39-basic-draft-39-on-climate-change-Jairam-news-Features-jmhnuccajgd.html">coordinating with each other</a> on policy issues around climate change, therefore my suggestion seemed practical to the people I met. A longer trip to China is planned for April or May and I hope to work out a more concrete action plan during that trip.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-32815166324708510222009-12-11T02:38:00.000-08:002009-12-11T02:44:20.098-08:00Assam government includes FOSS in state IT policyYet another Indian state government made open source an integral part of its state IT policy. The policy is because it mandates open standards and ODF, in particular, which has been advocated open source supporters the open standard for office documents (instead of Microsoft's proprietary .doc, OOXML and other data formats). It also extends beyond software and says that all generic hardware purchased by the government should have support for open source software. The section mandating that source code developed for any State Government body shall be duly archived in a repository, indicates that the policy makers also understand the power of the open source development model. Overall, it is a good policy and worth forwarding to all the government policy makers that we are in touch with.<br /><br />The full text of Section 3.12 of the Assam Government's state IT Policy says:<br /><br />(a) The Government would promote use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in all the departments and State agencies, bodies and authorities.<br /><br />(b) The State Government would promote manpower development and training in use of FOSS, especially in day to day office works.<br /><br />(c) The State Government would promote imparting training on FOSS in schools and colleges.<br /><br />(d)Entrepreneurs/ companies using FOSS for application/website development would be given preference over those using third party packaged applications.<br /><br />(e)All source codes customized/developed for any State Government body shall be duly archived in a repository, and shall be made available freely to other Government departments.<br /><br />(f) The Government departments and bodies would ensure that Open Document Format (ODF) is adhered to in creating and storing editable documents, data and information and all applications developed by the respective departments adhere to ODF and other Open Standards and are largely independent of Operating Systems (OS) and web browsers.<br /><br />(g)The Government departments and bodies would ensure that any generic hardware procured has support for multiple Operating Systems(OS) such as Unix, Linux, Opensolaris and other open source platforms.<br /><br />To download the full text of Assam's IT Policy, <a href="http://assamgovt.nic.in/pdf/ITPOLICY-2009-Final-Gazette-Style.pdf">click here</a>.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-78501102521741205072009-10-23T13:19:00.000-07:002009-10-23T13:34:02.675-07:00Even slaves were considered property: South African MinisterI re-read <a href="http://www.fossfa.net/index.php?q=node/33">the address given by Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi</a> (<a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-443526201833707871&hl=en#">video</a>), Former South African Minister for Public Service and Administration, at the third Idlelo Conference. This part, especially, gave me goose pimples.<br /><br /><blockquote>We cannot be in Dakar without being painfully aware of the tragic history of the slave trade. For three hundred years, the Maison des Esclaves (Slave House) on Gorée Island, was a hub in the system of forceful transportation of Africans as slaves to the plantations of the West Indies and the southern states of America. Over the same period people were being brought as slaves from the Malay Archipelago and elsewhere to South Africa. The institution of slavery played such a fundamental role in the early development of our current global economy, that by the end of the 18th century, the slave trade was a dominant factor in the globalised system of trade of the day.<br /><br />As we find ourselves today in this new era of the globalised Knowledge Economy there are lessons we can and must draw from that earlier era. That a crime against humanity of such monstrous proportions was justified by the need to uphold the property rights of slave owners and traders should certainly make us more than a little cautious about what should and should not be considered suitable for protection as property.</blockquote>It is good to remember this at a time when organizations aim to justify the privatization of knowledge and ideas under the guise that this is essential for promoting innovation.<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;">In the area of <a href="http://osindia.blogspot.com/2008/11/practical-problem-with-software-patents.html">software patents</a>, this is nothing but a land grab, a conversion of was in the commons into a private enclosure.<br /></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-8559971540531124672009-10-07T09:45:00.000-07:002009-10-07T09:49:12.105-07:00FOSSCOMM Meeting this Sunday (11th October, 2009)<pre wrap=""><a href="http://www.fosscomm.in">FOSSCOMM</a> (FOSS Community of India) will hold its third meeting in Mumbai at the Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Mankhurd (Near BARC/Anushakti Nagar).<br /><br />The first meeting held in Bangalore started to process of getting the FOSS Community of India working together. After the second meeting held in Delhi in July 09, FOSSCOMM started making <a href="http://fosscomm.in/Interventions">interventions</a> in areas like open standards, school education etc. I hope that the Mumbai meeting will lead to the creation of working groups that will provide leadership to FOSSCOMM's efforts to accelerate the growth of Free and Open Source Software movement in India.<br /><br />Those interested working with the community are invited to attend the upcoming <a href="http://fosscomm.in/MumbaiMeeting">FOSSCOMM Meeting on 11th October, 2009</a>.<br /></pre>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-37523613142649636782009-09-10T06:36:00.000-07:002009-09-10T06:37:58.519-07:00Dilbert on Patent TrollingYou know that patent trolling has become big business when Dilbert runs a comic strip!<br /><br /><a href="http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-09-09/" title="Dilbert.com"><img src="http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/60000/7000/200/67292/67292.strip.gif" border="0" alt="Dilbert.com" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-82447475725879232652009-08-12T03:35:00.000-07:002009-08-12T04:15:34.117-07:00Patent Woes: Speechless about the Word judgmentThis is one of the times when you rub your eyes in disbelief, speechlessly gape at the screen and read the same e-mail over and over again. Pranesh Prakash of the <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/">Center for Internet and Society</a> forwarded an article titled, <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/176223.asp">"Judge: Microsoft can't sell Word anymore."</a> The article says,<br /><br /><blockquote>Judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ordered a permanent injunction that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML," according to <a href="http://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/latest.jsp?resourceid=4041905&access=EH">an announcement</a> by the plaintiff, Toronto-based <a href="http://www.i4i.com/">i4i</a> Inc.</blockquote>Judge Davis ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages. The <a href="http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=y8UkAAAAEBAJ">abstract of the i4i patent</a> reads,<br /><blockquote>A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture<br />and content of a document, particularly for data representation and<br />transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers,<br />removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of<br />operation.</blockquote>While I am not a big fan of Microsoft, even I have to admit that this is crazy. But wait a minute! Didn't Microsoft get a patent last week for <a href="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,571,169.PN.&OS=PN/7,571,169&RS=PN/7,571,169">"Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML."</a><br /><br />The abstract of the Microsoft patent reads,<br /><blockquote>A word processor including a native XML file format is provided. The well formed XML file fully represents the word-processor document, and fully supports 100% of word-processor's rich formatting. There are no feature losses when saving the word-processor documents as XML. A published XSD file defines all the rules behind the word-processor's XML file format. Hints may be provided within the XML associated files providing applications that understand XML a shortcut to understanding some of the features provided by the word-processor. The word-processing document is stored in a single XML file. Additionally, manipulation of word-processing documents may be done on computing devices that do not include the word-processor itself.</blockquote>So, is someone playing tit-for-tat or an-eye-for-an-eye? Mahatma Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." In the weird, wonderful world of digital technology where greedy corporations can convert standards (that should rightfully belong in the commons) into private property, anything can happen.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-54837467350788398352009-08-07T04:04:00.000-07:002009-08-07T04:09:11.437-07:00The Power of Open Source Development<span style="font-style: italic;">This article of mine appeared in the August 2009 edition of Network Computing's India edition. Please feel free to translate, rewrite and publish it in your local geo to promote the message of open source. If this gets published elsewhere, kindly send me a copy/the link so that I get some sense of how useful this is. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Power of Open Source Development </span><br /><br />Using open source development methodologies, John O'Hara, of JPMorgan developed a standards-based alternative to expensive proprietary middle ware<br /><br />By Venkatesh Hariharan<br /><br />Most literature around open source focus on using open source software. While the benefits of OSS are gaining increased recognition, some smart organizations are going a step further and applying the Open Source Development Model (OSDM) to solve problems that proved to be otherwise intractable. OSDM is based on collaboration, community and the shared ownership of knowledge and Linux is one of the best examples of how this model works.<br /><br />In September 1991, Linus Torvalds released 10,000 lines of source code for Linux and licensed it under the liberal General Public License that gave anyone permission to copy, modify and redistribute the code. The only condition was that anyone making improvements to the software and redistributing the changes had to share the improvements with the rest of the community. This liberal license attracted thousand of contributors over the years who contributed their bit to improving the code base of Linux. A Linux Foundation study found that Fedora, a community Linux distribution has now grown to contain almost 204 million lines of code.<br /><br />There are two reasons why Linux and other open source software have demonstrated such explosive growth. One is the growth of the Internet, which is the largest collaborative platform in the history of mankind, connecting 1.4 billion people across the world. The other is the open, participative, distributed development model of open source where users are actually encourage to contribute to the development of the software. This is in sharp contrast to proprietary software that allows very limited rights to users.<br /><br />Some of the most savvy technology users are embracing the participative nature of open source software to build technologies that suit their needs. For example, John O'Hara, senior architect and distinguished engineer at JPMorgan launched AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) as an open source project after being frustrated with developing front- and back-office processing systems at investment banks. “It seemed to me that we were living in integration Groundhog Day - the same problems of connecting systems together would crop up with depressing regularity. Each time the same discussions about which products to use would happen, and each time the architecture of some system would be curtailed to allow for the fact that the chosen middleware was reassuringly expensive,” says O'Hara.<br /><br />In 2003, O'Hara embarked on a quest to standardize MOM (message-oriented middleware) technology, to enable mission critical enterprise applications to send messages to each other in a reliable and scalable manner. He decided to break from the past by using OSDM to start the AMQP project and sought Red Hat's expertise in governing open source projects. “Red Hat took the lead in establishing the legal framework for the standard; it, too, understood the issues in managing open intellectual property. The key part of doing this is to ensure that everyone contributing has the authority to do so and that there is a paper trail from every potential owner of IP through to the group effort, and that the intent to share is clear even in draft revisions of specifications. The result was a contract that clearly committed the members of the working group to promote unrestricted open middleware through AMQP.” For developing the software, O'Hara tapped iMatix, a boutique European development house that had clearly demonstrated a commitment to open source.<br />The AMQP project is a perfect example of what Prof. Eric Von Hippel, Professor of Innovation at MIT's Sloan School of Management calls, “user-driven innovation.” In his book, Democratizing Innovation, Von Hippel says that open source software projects are exciting examples of complete innovation development and consumption communities run by and for users. Today, users like Credit Suisse, Deutsche Börse Systems, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase Bank Inc, the TWIST consortium and others partner with IT leaders like Cisco, Red Hat, Microsoft and others in the AMQP consortium.<br /><br />Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. AMQP today has several implementations in open source and proprietary software. Imatix built an open-source implementation called, OpenAMQP. The beta version went live in 2006 and by the following year it was supporting 2,000 users on five continents and processing 300 million messages per day. Today, there are several open source and proprietary implementations of AMQP, including OpenAMQ, the original open source implementation. In a powerfully interconnected world, the open source development model used to build AMQP demonstrates the the power—and value—of collaborative software development.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-30052446983300409732009-07-21T04:34:00.000-07:002009-07-30T06:33:39.701-07:00Delaying tactics from industry associations?<span style="font-style: italic;">Update: Last week, NASSCOM invited me to meet them and I am trying to work out a suitable date. </span><br /><br />I am told that industry associations have asked for more time to submit the views of their members and therefore Department of IT has postponed the next meeting of the Apex Committee to review the Draft Open Standards Policy. The meeting was to have happened on 15th July, 2009 but will now probably be held in August 2009.<br /><br />Now here is the interesting bit. The industry associations asked for more time so that they could go back to their members and ask for their opinions. And here, I am trying to break down the doors of NASSCOM to submit Red Hat's opinion and what do I get? Dead silence. I hear that their deadline was June 7th and then extended to June 15th and I don't know if there is a new cut-off date. But I do know that despite writing to NASSCOM, I haven't heard back from them.<br /><br />Is this one more ploy to delay a policy that has already been long delayed?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-78597076226539741612009-07-16T10:08:00.000-07:002009-07-16T10:14:44.205-07:00A (non) conversation with NASSCOM<blockquote type="cite">I wrote to NASSCOM asking for a copy of their submission to DIT on Open Standards. This is their reply and my reply to them. For the record, my reply asking for details was sent yesterday around 4PM. No reply yet on how they submitted an "industry view" without consulting some of us forgotten souls in the industry.<br /><br />Dear Mr. Hariharan,<br /><br />Thank you for your email sent to Mr. Som Mittal. NASSCOM has yet to<br />submit its recommendations to the revised National e-Gov Standards<br />Policy and we will send them our recommendations once we submit it to<br />DIT.<br /><br />Regards,<br /><br /></blockquote><br />Dear XYZ,<br /><br />Thanks for the prompt reply. According to the minutes of the second<br />meeting of the Apex Committee [1], "Mr. Rajdeep of NASSCOM re-iterated<br />that government should allow multiple standards at any instance."<br /><br />The minutes adds that, "Secretary DIT and DG (NIC) suggested that<br />NASSCOM and MAIT should have an industry consultation on the revised<br />draft Policy and come out with a collective view ensuring that the<br />objectives of open standards are fully met and achievable. Both the<br />members i.e. NASSCOM & MAIT have agreed to do so and suggested to come<br />back to DIT with the industry view by 7-8th July 09."<br /><br />Based on the above, I have a couple of questions:<br /><br />1) Will Red Hat's views be taken into consideration when submitting<br />inputs to the Apex Committee?<br /><br />2) What was the process that was followed when Mr. Rajdeep submitted the<br />NASSCOM's views recorded in the minutes of the second meeting of the<br />Apex Committee?<br /><br />As a member, we are seriously interested in the above questions since<br />open standards is a critical issue for the future of e-Governance and<br />the IT industry.<br /><br />We look forward to hearing from you at the earliest.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-92005769131735082882009-07-13T06:25:00.000-07:002009-07-13T06:38:40.150-07:00Prodyut Bora's Blog on Open StandardsProdyut Bora, Head of the IT Cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party has put up a blog post titled, <a href="http://blog.prodyutbora.org/?p=116">When Commercial Considerations and National Interests Collide</a>. Bora was one of the main architects of the BJP's IT Vision that supported open source and open standards. Commenting on NASSCOM's push for the inclusion of multiple standards in the <a href="http://www.mit.gov.in/download/Policyonopensandards.pdf">Department of IT's Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-governance</a>, Bora says:<br /><p></p><blockquote><p>[...] the current demand for multiple standards by Nasscom is misplaced. Multiple standards would introduce duplicacy and reduce perfect interoperability between competing products. Whereas a single open standard would remove entry barriers and encourage innovation by small local firms with limited risk appetite, multiple standards would favour market-dominating multinational Goliaths and the Indian software services majors that make money by servicing such Goliaths. Multiple standards would also result in unnecessarily high costs incurred in writing ‘bridge’ code to connect different products, and things like data migration.</p> <p>It is because of such short-sightedness in the past that we have landed up with a plethora of identity systems—Election ID Card, PAN Card, Ration Card—before finally the wisdom of a unified ID system dawned.</p> <p>So far, the Government has very wisely thought in terms of an ‘open’ IT ecosystem. But where commercial considerations and national interests have collided, Nasscom very sadly seems to have favoured the former.</p></blockquote><p></p>I hope that the folks at DIT listen and finalize the policy soon!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22704397.post-13979733988390875022009-07-08T03:37:00.000-07:002009-07-08T06:06:47.667-07:00Draft on open source standards splits IT industry: Economic Times Report<pre wrap="">Economic Times carried a <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Draft-on-open-source-split-IT-sector/articleshow/4752282.cms">news report</a> on the Draft IT Policy. For the last two or more years while the policy has been in the works, not a peep was heard out of NASSCOM or MAIT. Last month, when the policy was close to finalization, they argued for including royalty-based standards and the use of multiple standards for the same domain. According to the Economic Times report:<br /><blockquote>[] NASSCOM, the apex body for software companies, is vehemently opposed <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to the idea of a single and royalty-free standard. “Ways can be worked <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>out commercially to make a large e-governance project viable. Making <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>everything patent-free may not be a commercial proposition as there <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>might not be good standards available. On the other hand, adopting a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>single standard may constrict the country to adopt an old standard, if a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>new and better standard emerges in future. We support multiple standards <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>which ensure interoperability at zero cost,” says Rajdeep Sehrawat, VP, <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Nasscom.<br /></blockquote>If the Automobile Association of India took a cue from NASSCOM's stand on multiple standards and argued that cars sold in India should have right hand or left hand drives (the choice being that of the vendor, of course) the number of accidents would go up exponentially. Now, if users also demanded their, ahem, "rights," and said, "We should have a choice of which side of the road we should drive on," accidents will go up another exponential level. The point is that standards are <span style="font-weight: bold;">collective choices</span> that are <span style="font-weight: bold;">imposed</span> upon society for the better of all. I have no choice in deciding which side of the road I can drive on, but my life is better off for it. How many standards do <span style="font-weight: bold;">you</span> wish to use? Do you want two different standards for web pages and the corresponding mess of pages not displaying properly? There is only one single HTML standard because the vision of the creators of the web was to unify people, not divide them. The best standards, like HTML and Unicode are those that are universally supported.<br /><br />NASSCOM's Mr. Sehrawat says, "On the other hand, adopting a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>single standard may constrict the country to adopt an old standard, if a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>new and better standard emerges in future. We support multiple standards <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>which ensure interoperability at zero cost.”<br /><br />Is India "constricted" because we have adopted "old standards" like HTML and Unicode? The world migrated from ASCII to Unicode and is migrating from HTML to XML-based web pages even as we speak. The "multiple standards <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>which ensure interoperability at zero cost" is a nice Trojan Horse to sneak in proprietary standards.<br /><br />Finally, will NASSCOM's suggestions benefit India? No, because the vast majority of standards are controlled by entities that lie outside our borders. If accepted, NASSCOM (and MAIT's) suggestions will mean that the country will pay huge royalties to foreign outfits. Does anyone remember what happened to us when the British East India Company came to us with a similar proposal?<br /></pre>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03702249722460925793noreply@blogger.com0