Microsoft files complaint on OOXML vote to apex office and Ministry of Consumer Affairs

I love Microsoft for their sheer willingness to piss off every human being on this planet in their quest for approval of OOXML. At the meeting held on 20th March 2008, we were informed that Microsoft has complained to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and to the apex office of the country about the constitution of the committee and also cast aspersions on the impartiality of the chairperson of LITD15, Mrs. Neeta Verma. The chairperson was furious and offered to step down from her post. She pointed out that the committee has met numerous times and Microsoft never brought this issue up in front of the committee nor did they check the facts with her or her organization before complaining to the apex office. I do not have a copy of their complaint but am assuming that their complaint is that the committee is packed with supporters of ODF.

Mrs. Verma was persuaded to stay back only after all the other members requested her to stay. After that, Dr. Arora of CSI displayed great statesmanship by asking the Microsoft representative if Microsoft would like to withdraw its complaint. Sadly, the Microsoft representative said that it cannot be withdrawn because it was sent by his senior or some similar reason. The Wipro representative then chimed in and tried to stall the vote by saying that he did not believe that the committee has not been able to apply its mind to the subject and should therefore abstain from voting on this issue! For those of us who have been engaged in this issue from the very beginning (as compared to the software exporters who put in cameo, guest appearances and contributed very little to discussing technical issues) this was obviously not acceptable.

I am just amazed and shocked by the depths to which Microsoft is willing to descend. I have had the privilege of representing Red Hat and the Indian open source community on the LITD 15 committee and have attended almost all the meetings convened on OOXML over the last one year. I would therefore like to place on record my appreciation for the Bureau of Indian Standards and Mrs. Neeta Verma for the transparency and openness with which they conducted an exceptionally difficult task. The manner in which they conducted the proceedings has done India proud and is in stark contrast to the controversies surrounding committees reviewing OOXML in other countries.

Some of the most respected academic institutions (IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IISc, ISI Kolkatta and IIM Ahmedabad) besides several government organizations were part of this committee and I have no doubt that they will wholeheartedly agree with my opinion. I would also like to point out that the academia and government bodies have comprehensively voted against OOXML after spending more than a year reviewing it. Doubters who are still not satisfied can verify the transparency of these meetings by requesting recordings of the meetings from the Bureau of Indian Standards and anyone under the Right to Information Act.

To cite just one example, a four-member committee at IIT Bombay spent countless hours reviewing OOXML before voting against the proposal due to its technical flaws. The only group to vote in favor of OOXML was the software exports group and that too on the basis of “support for multiple standards,” an argument which had no relevance because the committee was asked to review OOXML on technical merits and national interest.

Considering the fact that some of the finest technical minds in the country have spent more than a year reviewing OOXML before India finally voted No, I feel that Microsoft's complaint is a great disservice to the committee, its chairperson and the Bureau of Indian Standards. For those who are interested, this is how the committee voted on the question, "Should India change its NO vote on OOXML?"

1. National Informatics Center - NO
2. Center for Development of Advanced Computing - NO
3. Computer Society of India - NO
4. Department of IT - NO
5. IBM - NO
6. Institute for Electronic Governance - Absent
7. Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad - NO
8. Indian Institute of Science - NO
9. Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi - NO
10. Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay - NO
11. Infosys - YES
12. Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkatta - NO
13. Manufacturers Association of IT - Abstain
14. Microsoft - YES
15. National Association of Software and Services Companies - YES
16. National Institute of Smart Governance - Absent
17. Reserve Bank of India - Absent
18. Red Hat - No
19. Standardization Testing and Quality Certification Directorate - NO
20. Sun - NO
21. Tata Computer Services - YES
22. Wipro - YES (for changing India's vote from NO to Abstain)

India's comments on BRM to ISO

There were widespread reports of irregularities in the BRM held in Geneva. At the meeting held on 13th March 2008, the Indian delegation to the BRM gave a debriefing to members of LITD15, which is reviewing OOXML. The very diplomatic Deputy Director General of BIS said that he had not attended such a meeting in 28 years of his career. Based on the debriefing, the LITD15 committee sent a message to ISO with India's suggestions (we are too polite to call it a protest!) on how the BRM should be conducted. Before sending off these comments, everyone was asked if they have any objections and since no one (including Microsoft) had any objections, these comments were unanimously approved.

LITD15's comments to ISO are given below along with my comments.

1. All technical issues raised by different member bodies should be discussed adequately during BRM. If balloting on technical issues is envisaged, it should not be done during BRM. Balloting may be done after discussion within corresponding mirror committees of the national bodies providing sufficient time for discussions. In other words, duration of BRM should be in consonance with the requirement of time to sufficiently discuss all technical issues raised.

MY COMMENT: The biggest complaint about the BRM was that five days is too little time to review the changes. The five day BRM was sufficient only to discuss 54 issues and the rest of the issues were decided over a paper ballot. The Indian delegation pointed out that if a paper ballot is to be done, why should countries go to the expense of sending four people to Geneva for five days? It would be much simpler to do a ballot from the home country after discussion with committee members.

2. If the basic structure of the submitted document is proposed to be changed during BRM, provision for circulation of restructured integrated document for consideration of member bodies should be incorporated in the Fast Track Process as well. Enough time should be given to member bodies to examine/carry out the impact assessment of the modifications proposed.

MY COMMENT: The scope of the document has changed. The document is being split into five parts. If the scope and nature of the document changes substantially (as it has in this case) then adequate time needs to be given to review the changed proposal. As one of the esteemed academic members of LITD15 says, "What document is there for us to vote upon?"

3. Definitions of newly introduced terminologies should be clearly articulated before discussions are initiated on the related issues.

MY COMMENTS: The fact that we have to make such an elementary request highlights the hollowness of the "Fast-track" process and the BRM.

4. Voting process especially in terms of considering simple majority/two-third majority and counting of P member/O Member votes at BRM should strictly be adhered to as defined in JTC 1 Directives.

MY COMMENTS: This is a serious ethical and governance issue. If O member votes are not counted (as per JTC 1 directives) then the Microsoft claim of getting "more than 98 percent of the comments were accepted" falls flat. The voting was forced upon the BRM after overruling the objections of several countries, including India. The vote was to be decided by a simple majority by paper ballot for 847 issues which could not be discussed. Four P members (Czech Republic, Finland, Norway and Poland) voted for approving the 847 issues, Four P members (including India, Malaysia, South Africa and the US) voted against these issues. The votes of two O members (Chile and Ivory Coast) was improperly counted in contravention of JTC1 rules. The head of the Chile delegation landed in Geneva on the last day, just to vote Yes. The head of the Ivory Coast delegation is Wemba Opota, a Senegalese citizen, who is responsible for Microsoft West Africa!

Even by the "simple majority" rule imposed by the ISO conveners on the BRM, the result is a TIE and not a majority, as claimed by Microsoft.

5. It is suggested that the resolution to the issues raised during the process of development of standard shall be provided before the publication of the standard and shall be included in the published standard and shall not be deferred to the maintenance phase.

MY COMMENTS: As the delegation said, maintenance is for issues that are identified *after* the standard has been frozen. Known issues cannot be swept under the carpet under the guise of "maintenance."

OSFI comment on India's No vote on OOXML

The open source and free software communities are motivated by the
desire to build an inclusive information society. Open standards are
the foundation of this vision. With respect to Microsoft's OOXML
proposal submitted to International Organization for Standards (ISO)
through ECMA, the open source community has consistently pointed out
that ISO's "fast-track" processes were never meant for a complex,
6,000 page proposal like OOXML. Several serious ethical and governance
issues were also pointed out with respect to the Ballot Resolution
Meeting (BRM) on OOXML that was held in Geneva in February 2008 and
the European Union has initiated an investigation into OOXML. The
Indian committee consisting of government, academia, industry and
software exporters voted overwhelmingly against approving OOXML as an
industry standard with 13 votes against and only five votes in favor.
It is worth noting that the academia consisting of the most respected
Indian institutes; and the government voted against OOXML.

The Open Source Foundation of India believes that all stakeholders
should collaborate on the creation of standards and should compete on
creating the best implementation of these standards. As we have seen
in countless standards battles (VHS versus Betamax, Blu-Ray versus
HD-DVD, Microsoft's proprietary extensions to HTML versus Netscape's
proprietary extensions) battles over standards end up hurting
consumers and the industry. On the other hand, unified standards like
the HTML standard that governs the Internet, ends up benefiting
everyone. Standardization around HTML has converted the Internet into
a global platform that is now used by 1.2 billion users. The amount of
innovation we have seen in terms of social networking, search engines,
Web 2.0 etc would not have been possible if the Internet was a
fragmented platform. We therefore believe that vendors should stop
pushing their own standards, which leads to wasteful competition.
Instead, they should collaborate with all stakeholders to create
unified and open, royalty free standards as this delivers the best
outcome for all stakeholders.

India votes NO for OOXML

After a colossal amount of debate and discussion over the last one year, India has finally voted NO for OOXML. Today the committee was asked "Should India change its September 2007 No vote into Yes?"

13 members voted No
5 members (including Microsoft, of course) voted Yes.
1 member abstained
3 did not attend

The government bodies, academic institutions and industry voted against OOXML. The only people who voted for OOXML were the software exporters--TCS, Infosys, Wipro and NASSCOM (National Association of Software Services Companies).

Steve Ballmer was in India?

One of my friends informed me that he saw Steve Ballmer and Microsoft India Chairman, Ravi Venkatesan on the Jet Airways, 9W811 flight from Delhi to Bangalore on 13th March 2008. My friend was on the same flight which was scheduled to leave at 5.50PM but finally took off at 6.10PM. Apparently, he was the last person to get into the flight and the first to deplane. Interestingly, that was the day when BIS met to discuss OOXML. For those who have been following this issue, India's final vote on the subject will be on 20th May 2008. Talk about timing!

It was difficult to believe this at first because Ballmer is known to travel by private Jet. However, our sources at Jet Airways confirmed that it was Ballmer! Strange indeed. If you happen to know anything that confirms or invalidates this, let me know. If he was indeed in India, we would love to know who he met. Mail me or leave a comment on my blog.

US Navy to focus only on open systems

The US Navy is one among a growing list of organizations that are making open technology solutions mandatory. An article in Federal Computer Week quotes Vice Adm. Mark Edwards, deputy chief of naval operations for communications, as saying,

“The days of proprietary technology must come to an end,” he said. “We will no longer accept systems that couple hardware, software and data.”

For customers, there is no alternative to open standards and open technology platforms, unless they are comfortable with (a) being captive to their vendors (b) paying what their vendors dictate and (c) putting up with inferior technology solutions.

What happens when Murphy's Law goes overboard and a customer has to suffer a, b and c together? Red this article, "Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water."

Such a long journey (OOXML, pronounced O O Hex ML)

The Bureau of Indian Standards committee on OOXML will be meeting up on 13th March 2008 to get a debriefing on the Geneva BRM. The BRM attracted a fair share of criticism from participants for the manner in which it was conducted. Malaysia issued a press release expressing their dissatisfaction with the BRM. The press release quoted Puan Fadilah Baharin, Director General of STANDARDS MALAYSIA as saying:

"Malaysia had submitted 23 comments and more than 70% of them were not addressed satisfactorily by Ecma's proposed dispositions. We intended to resolve these technical issues at the BRM, but we could only raise 2 concerns due to the time constraints imposed."

Microsoft's Brian Jones meanwhile announced on his blog that 98% of Ecma responses have been approved and I hear that Microsoft has shot off letters to Indian policy makers spreading this misinformation. I don't know what reality distortion field Microsofties are living in but it looks like they dragged ISO into the morass they live in. Let us go back to the Malaysian press release:

Last year, many countries raised concerns against the appropriateness of the voluminous OOXML draft standard submitted by the Ecma International to ISO for a Fast Track process. To date, our observation to these concerns have yet to be addressed better after the BRM. Malaysia's concern is currently being shared greatly by many other National Bodies from Asia including India, China and Korea; as well as from the US and Canada.

Andy Updegrove has some of the sanest comments on the OOXML BRM. Whatever Microsoft may claim, the fact is that emerging economies like Brazil, China, India, South Africa, Malaysia and others have voted against OOXML. Even the US, which had voted "Approve with Comments" in September 2007 voted "No" at the BRM.

What I predict is that Microsoft will apply heavy pressure on countries like Cyprus, Ecuador, Jamaica, Lebanon, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey , Uruguay, Venezuela, which joined the JTC1 ISO committee reviewing OOXML just before the previous vote in September 2007 to make sure that they vote "Yes." I am sure that Indian policy makers are also under heavy pressure but many of them are smart enough to know a fraudulent standard when they see one. In the rest of the countries, Microsoft may have burnt another bridge and left themselves more isolated among policy makers.

Here is what others said about the BRM.

U.S. National Body Head Frank Farance

"Eighty percent of the changes were not discussed . . .It's a big problem .
. I've never seen anything like this, and I've been doing this for 25
years."

Canadian National Body Delegate Tim Bray

"The process was complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit. I'm not an ISO
expert, but whatever their 'Fast Track' process was designed for, it sure
wasn't this. You just can't revise six thousand pages of deeply complex
specification-ware in the time that was provided for the process."

Brazil National Body Delegate Jomar Silva

"Here are the facts: 1) If [Microsoft] finds that the process functioned,
is because [they] really did not see the process! 2) Anyone who says that
we made rigorous revisions, his nose will grow 10 cm, and anyone that says
the countries had resolved only some important points, his nose will only
grow half as much (chalk it up to a wood shortage). I am even more
irritated when I see that people who had not been there, had not
participated at all, saying whatever they want."

Greek National Body Delegate Antonis Christofides

". . . the BRM was essentially confined to making changes that only
scratched the surface of the problems. . . I and my reviewers found 13
additional errors in the original specification. However, national bodies
were not allowed to submit new comments . . . Therefore, there was no way
to submit and correct them. . . the Ecma responses make the text slightly
better, but though slightly better it is still abysmal . . we did not have
the time to study one thousand responses . . . In fact, even the 80
responses that Greece studied, we did not study at the level of scrutiny
that is required when you inspect a standard. There was no time for that.
What we did was glance through, and make fast decisions based on what seems
right at a quick glance."

The last one year has been such a huge learning experience for me in how standards are created and how some are hijacked!

Microsoft "persuades" NGOs to support OOXML

Our friends at Linux Delhi have put up a copy of the form letters that Microsoft has been sending NGOs on the OOXML issue. Apparently, these NGOs have been sending copies of these letters to the Ministry of IT and Bureau of Indian standards.

Raj Mathur of Linux Delhi asks makes some pertinent points which are quoted below:

There is a possibility that some, if not all of these NGOs are beneficiaries of cash inputs from their (MS') Corporate Social Railroading ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Responsibility arm. I'd really be interested in answers to these questions, anyone up to asking them?

* How many letters supporting OOXML has the Government of India received from NGOs in the recent past?
* How many of these NGOs have received cash inputs (directly or indirectly) from MS?
* How many of these NGOs can sit across a table and discuss OOXML?
* How many of these NGOs can enumerate the benefits of OOXML over, say, ODF for their own organisations?

The NGOs supporting OOXML are probably as clueless as ASSOCHAM (Associated Chamber of Manufacturing) which told a journalist from the Economic Times that they supported OOXML because "Microsoft is a member." If that's the case, ASSOCHAM should have been honest about the fact that they are supporting a member and not palmed it off "in the national interest."

I feel sorry for these NGOs who probably depend on Microsoft's donations. Do you know of any NGO that has received similar letters? Please bring this to my attention and I will give them a call to find out how much they know about OOXML and ODF :-) Meanwhile, everyone, give a big hand to Microsoft for redefining Corporate Social Responsibility. If their tribe increases, doomsday is not far away!

"Talk is cheap; flouting the rules is expensive"

Microsoft's interoperability announcement has been met with skepticism by the European union, which levied a record $1.3 billion fine on Microsoft. This comes on top of an earlier penalty of $1.17 billion.

Marketwatch reports that:

The European Commission in 2004 found that Microsoft was using its dominant position in operating system software to prevent new competition, and ordered the company to grant rivals access to its technology "protocols" at a reasonable price so they could develop compatible products.


When billion dollar fines do not deter Microsoft, what else will? This is a classic example of the worst excesses of capitalism where companies become so powerful that they are not answerable to any soverign country. The systematic subversion of ISO's processes to "fast-track" a massive 6,000 page "standard" with huge gaping flaws, gaming the ISO system by fixing the ballot in countries like Pakistan and Sweden, getting a whole bunch of countries to join ISO at the last minute to rig the system so that OOXML gets two-thirds majority required to become an ISO standard.... how long will this abuse continue? And how long can India remain a mute bystander to such blatantly unethical practices? We are a soft state and we often pay the price for it.

This is where I admire the European Union for having the guts to investigate the anti-competitive practices of Microsoft. I doubt if any Indian policy maker will ever make the kind of statement that Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for competition policy made. "Talk is cheap; flouting the rules is expensive. Microsoft continued to abuse its powerful market position after the Commission's March 2004 decision requiring it to change its practices."

The EU is also investigating Microsoft's anti-competitive practices around OOXML and I thank god that at least one government has the sense to do something more than stand by and watch like a dumb pole. I hope that one day, Indian policy makers will display the kind of spine that Neelie Kroes and others at EU have shown in taking on Microsoft.

Meanwhile, the eerie radio silence from the OOXML BRM at Geneva is unnerving. More than 120 people discussing such a critical issue and not a peep out of the blogosphere! Such a secretive way of creating globally important standards is a practice that stinks to high heavens!

OOXML BRM in Geneva

By now, day 1 of the OOXML BRM in Geneva must have ended. The outcome is still not known, but whatever the outcome, ISO is going to be in for a lot of questions. How does a shoddy, half digested 6000 page long document (I am being *very* polite in my description) be eligible for a fast track review process. Does anyone believe that a complex standard like OOXML can be reviewed in six months? If that is the objective then why even review it in the first place? ISO's credibility has been permanently dented and, as my friends in the FSF points out, we need to make it clear that ISO standards are not open standards.

I have also been talking to a group of young technologists who are alarmed by what is happening in the standards world. We believe that it is time India took a more active (if not activist role) in creating international standards. This realization is spreading to neighboring countries also because policy makers I spoke to in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and other countries are also alarmed at the blatant manner in which OOXML is being pushed through. It may be time for emerging economies to come together and tame the beast of proprietary standards.

OSFI raises objections to ASSCOHAM's stance on OOXML

The Open Source Foundation of India would like to place on record its objections to ASSCOHAM's stance on OOXML. Neither us nor the Open Document Format Alliance (www.odfalliance.in) nor the Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org.in), which have been leading the fight for open standards were consulted before ASSOCHAM issued its press release. An industry body is expected to listen to all sides of a debate before arriving at a conclusion and we are disappointed that a respected body like ASSOCHAM, which has temendous credibility among policy makers has not followed this process.

We would like to ask ASSOCHAM if it:

A) Has a clear definition of an "open standard" and if it has evaluated OOXML to see if it passed the test. For the record, OOXML has been submitted a few months ago to ISO, so it is not even an international standard nor does it meet the criteria for an open standard. See www.odfalliance.in for more information.

B) Is ASSOCHAM aware that the European Union is examining whether Microsoft Corp. violated antitrust laws during a struggle last year to ratify its Office software file format as an international standard.

C) Is ASSOCHAM aware of the serious allegations of abuse of the ISO processes by the proponents of OOXML. For example, in Pakistan, the 12 member committee reviewing OOXML was stacked with four Microsoft Gold Partners and even the IT Ministry and Pakistan's IT leaders were not aware of the committee's participation at ISO?

It is clear that only a single interested party's opinion is being reflected through this press release. We would like to point out that ASSOCHAM's credibility as an industry organization will be seriously affected if it does not give due consideration to alternate points of view.

Venkatesh Hariharan
Co-Founder,
Open Source Foundation of India
www.osindia.blogspot.com

CNBC Panel Discussion on Open Source, Free & Proprietary Software

Last week, Jon "maddog" Hall, Executive Director of Linux International; Atul Chitnis, Senior Vice President at Geodesic Information Systems and I were on a CNBC panel discussion on "Open Source, Free & Proprietary Softwares" at IIT Bombay's Techfest. I am used to 30-45 minute talks on open source where I happily ramble on with my pet theories on why open source is changing the world. I have also been on panel discussions where the panelists normally gets to make an opening statement before the moderators and the audience start shooting questions. However, TV is very, very different as I discovered last week.

To start with, the CNBC panel was shot in three segments of seven minutes each (a 30 minute show has around 9 minutes of ads telecast during breaks in the show) which meant that all three panelists could speak about 3-4 sentences in each of the seven minute segments. Oh well, hopefully, it will do some good to the world of open source. The audience seemed to be mostly teenagers, which I think is a good thing. If teenagers think something is sexy, it probably is :-)

I was trying to figure out what time the panel will be on TV and the politest thing I can say is that the CNBC TV Schedules suck. Later, I got to catch up with Jon Hall and treat him to coffee at the IIT restaurant. Despite the ferocious nickname, he is a gentle giant of a man and I felt honored to be on the same panel as Jon.

I am still clueless as to when the program will be telecast. If anybody knows, drop me a line :-)

WEF opens with a call for "collaborative innovation."

I am reading Wikinomics so it was no surprise when I came across an online article that spoke about the World Economic Forum's call for "collaborative innovation."

One of the blurbs in the book is by Klaus Scwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, who says, "A deeply profound and hopeful book, Wikinomics provides compelling evidence that the emerging "Creative Commons" can be a boon, not a threat to business. Every CEO should read this book and heed its wise counsel if they want to succeed in an emerging global economy."

We live in exciting times. If we take my previous post on the Science Commons, and this post, we get the clear sense that policy makers at the highest levels are taking note of the phenomenon called free and open source software. Open standards, open source and open access are what make "collaborative innovation" possible and it is nice to see policy makers take a note of this.

Science Commons, Open Source Drug Discovery etc

Last Friday, January 18th, 2008, we (Knowledge Commons, Delhi Science Forum, IIT Delhi, Red Hat and Sun) organized a workshop on science policy for a very select group of 20 policy makers. Participants included members of the Planning Commission, which drafts India's Five Year Plans; the National Knowledge Commission, a high-level advisory body that reports to the Prime Minister of India, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of IIT Delhi and some of the most respected scientists in the country. The objective was to look at the Free and Open Source model of knowledge creation and examine the impact it can have on India. The highlight of the event was the session on Open Source Drug Discovery, a $34 million program to fight diseases that are prevalent in India.

Prabir Purkayastha of the Delhi Science Forum and the brains behind the event, set the ball rolling by giving a brief overview of how the patent system evolved as a trade-off between the inventor and society, with society granting a temporary monopoly to the inventor in return for disclosure of the invention, which ensured that inventors did not take their creations to the grave. He pointed out that the era of the individual inventor is over and most innovations are now done by corporations.

Prabir also pointed out that the myth about patents leading to innovations was not always true and cited the example of James Watt's patent over the steam engine which lead to 30 years of stagnation. It was only after Watt's death that the efficiency of the steam engine improved. Even during this era, collective innovation flourished as can be seen from the invention of the blast furnace and the improvements in the steam engine within the Cornish mines.

He added that science is not purely for profit and the current scenario where patents are seen as a metric of innovation could lead to a situation where sharing is hindered. This could be dangerous in areas like medicine and agriculture. In this context, the Free and Open Source model had emerged as an important paradigm that generated advances that are outside the proprietary domain. Therefore, the question in front of the group was – Can we look at alternate ways of doing research and can these be harnessed for the public good?

Prof. VS Ramamurthy, Chairman of the Board of Governors, Indian institute of Technology, Delhi and one of the veterans of the Indian scientific establishment said that knowledge is important for socio-economic development and today, knowledge has become multi-disciplinary. When multi-disciplinary groups are involved, secrecy will only increase the cost of doing research.

In science, failures are as important as successes but the patenting system encouraged only the recognition of success and not the process by which a particular result was arrived at. He said that we need to look at knowledge management in totality and examine whether answers we have been given in the past are relevant anymore. He concluded by saying that the open source model has enormous relevance for countries like India which have limited resources but unlimited human resources.

Prof. Abhijit Sen, member of the Planning Commission and one of India's leading economists asked a succinct question, “Do patents deliver?”

Prof. Sen pointed out that patents create private property through exclusion, increase the cost of communication and therefore escalate the cost of the production process in science. In areas like climate change, which involved a whole range of technologies, the free flow of knowledge was extremely important.

“Property rights are not an unalloyed virtue if the externalities are very large. If patents do incentivize, do they do so in the right manner?” he asked. Prof. Sen pointed out that two of the world's poorest countries, India and China, are now becoming more important globally and for those managing money, it becomes important to invest in these countries. Therefore, these countries should reexamine patents in light of the new realities of the commons and growing economic clout.

Dr. Samir Bramhachari, Director-General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), unveiled a $34 million plan for Open Source Drug Discovery. CSIR is one of the world’s largest publicly funded R&D organisations 38 laboratories working on a range of subjects from molecular biology to road research to Himalayan bio-resources. The Council has more than 4,000 scientists working for it at these 38 labs.

Dr. Bramhachari noted that there was very little R&D money being spent by MNCs on the typical diseases that afflict Indians because of the relatively low purchasing power in our country. At the same time, MNCs are aggressively scanning Indian academia for research being done by Indian students and adding this knowledge to their database. He also pointed out that collaborative R&D networks like Innocentive had a lot of Indians contributing to it. Therefore, he had proposed to the Indian government the creation of an Open Source Drug Discovery framework which will harness the collective minds of Indian scientists. The OSDD project will kick off by focussing initially on the Tuberculosis bacilli and the web site will be launched once CSIR finalizes the legalities of a “Pharma GPL” share-and-share-alike license.

This workshop demonstrated that there is remarkable understanding of the potential of open source within the highest echelons of the Indian policy making elite. Prof. Ramamurthy summed it up best when he said that in the government system, change is always a very slow process. However, open source is inevitable and will be the norm 10 years from now. What we can do best is to accelerate the change in favor of open source.

Videos and transcripts of this event will be uploaded soon. Thanks to Red Hat India supporting the event and covering the cost of the videos.

Photos of OLPC deployment in Khairat, India

As 2007 was drawing to a close, I got a chance to visit the OLPC deployment in Khairat, India. This deployment is supported by Reliance, one of the largest industrial groups in India. I have uploaded photos from the visit and added a small description to each photo. These are at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/venky7/sets/72157603606772250/

It was wonderful to see the enthusiasm with which the teacher, students and parents had embraced this project. Definitely one of the more fun things that I did in 2007 and something that I look forward to in 2008. Do visit the Flickr page and add your comments, feedback, brickbats etc...

Today's Economic Times poll on Free Software (Please Vote)

Today's Economic Times has an online poll that asks, "Should India support free software to take PC penetration to the next level?"

Please login to www.economictimes.com and scroll down to the voting section on the right hand side of the web page and vote "Yes."

This vote will be on only today, so please vote at the earliest.

Open Source is Democratizing Knowledge

In September 1991, when Linux Torvalds, a student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, released 10,000 lines of code on the Internet, nobody could have believed that it would spark off a revolution. In the fifteen years since then, Linux has grown into an enormously capable operating system that contains more than 100 million lines of code that runs on tiny embedded computers to supercomputers and everything in-between. This has been made possible through the contribution of thousands of volunteers across the world working together over the Internet, in what is perhaps the largest collaborative projects in the history of mankind.

Linux is the leading example of the open source movement that is democratizing knowledge and the tools with which we access knowledge. The open source principles of community, collaboration and the shared ownership of knowledge have lead to a transformation in the way knowledge is created and distributed. This has profound implications for India and other developing countries.

Linux was released under the General Public License created by the Free Software Foundation which gives users four freedoms: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose; the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs, the freedom to redistribute copies and share it with others and the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. A precondition to these four freedoms is that the source code for the software is freely available.

For millions of software developers across the world, this access to source code and the ability to improve it to meet their needs has been enormously empowering. In the area of supercomputing, scientists have coupled together commodity hardware and open source software to build complex systems that have drastically reduced the cost per teraflop for supercomputers. For millions of users across the world, the ability to freely copy the operating system has meant that they can try it out on their computers for free and pay for value added services like support, customization and training, as and when they are ready. Across the world, governments like China, Brazil, Venezuela and others have been embracing open source because it reduces their dependence on monopolistic vendors and their monopoly pricing structures and restrictive licensing practices. In India, Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have declared their intention to use open source software to make IT more widely accessible to their citizens.

Enterprises across India have also been quick to realise the benefits of open source despite the enourmous amounts of FUD (fear, uncertainity and doubt) that proprietary vendors have sought to create. Today, enterprises like LIC, IDBI, IRCTC, IndiaBulls, UTI Bank, Canara Bank, CESC and others use Red Hat Enterprise Linux and other open source software to run their mission critical applications. The SMS voting backbone for highly popular TV shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati and Indian Idol also run on Red Hat Enteprise Linux.

Linux is now well established as a reliable, stable and secure operating system on servers. According to IDC, Linux server sales grew from 4.3 billion in 2004 to 5.3 billion in 2005 as customers deployed it in a wider range of technical and commercial workloads. Over the last few years, Linux has also emerged as a capable desktop operating system with slick desktop user interfaces and an excellent, free office productivity suite in Open Office. Those who have used the Linux desktop have been pleasantly surprised by its capabilities. The Kerala government has decided to move around 12,500 schools to Linux after finding proprietary software to be unaffordable.

It is no surprise that Linux and open source software have caught on rapidly in India. Our traditions of knowledge like yoga and ayurveda have always been free and open to all. We have successfuly built commercial models on top of free knowledge as can be seen from the proliferation of Ayurvedic spas and the fact that yoga is a $30 billion industry in the US. Open source proves that the age old adage that we all grow richer by sharing knowledge still holds true in the Internet era. For decision makers who are implementing IT, it is time to take a long hard look at the long term benefits of open source and evaluate the value it provides on servers and desktops.

Tata supercomputer ranks fourth, runs Linux

I came back from a nice long (and completely unplugged) break trekking around North East India (shameless plug: Check out my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/venky7/). Among the many e-mails that were accumulated in my inbox, the one that made me happiest was the news that India has finally broken into the TOP500 Supercomputer List. The icing on the cake is that it runs Linux!

This feat was achieved by the Pune-based Computational Research Laboratories, incorporated as a fully-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons with a mandate to achieve global leadership in the area of high-performance computing systems.

This is wonderful news for the open source community and the Indian IT fraternity!

Suggestions for the National Policy on ICT in Education

My friends at Digital Learning magazine are coordinating inputs for the "National Policy on ICT in Education" to be sent to the Indian Ministry of Human resources Development (MHRD). Today was their deadline and here is what I have sent them.

Suggested Policy Objectives for the "National Policy on ICT in Education."

ComputeRs have emerged as the Fourth R of education, after Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic. If our future generations have to be a part of the global mainstream society, and build upon India's great success in IT and IT enabled services, we have to equip them to be IT literate. Since IT is becoming an all-pervasive aspect of our lives—from booking train tickets to receiving exam results to managing retail cash counters, IT education will help our students become a member of the global information society. This will also help the country by helping us consolidate our leadership position within the global IT and ITES industry and maintain our lead over competing economies.

We therefore suggest that ICT should be considered an integral part of the educational system and that the government must invest in making all students who are a part of the Indian education system IT literate.

Suggested Guidelines for the "National Policy on ICT in Education."

The challenges in ensuring that all Indian are IT literate are formidable. According to the Ministry of Human Resources Development website, India has 888,000 educational institutions, 179 million students and more than 2.9 million teachers. In many villages and cities across India, millions of children have no access to basic educational facilities. And even as the Indian school system grapples with basic challenges such as the lack of elementary facilities like blackboards, along comes yet another challenge—How do we ensure that the next generation are not just literate but also digitally literate? Open Content and Open Source Software can be freely modified, improved upon and redistributed without paying any royalties or license fees to anyone. A venerable academic institution like MIT is using the open source Creative Commons license to share its knowledge with others at its Open Course Ware (www.ocw.mit.edu) site. MIT's web site says:

“MIT is committed to advancing education and discovery through knowledge open to everyone. OCW shares free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1700 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum.”

The Indian state of Kerala has adopted open source software to make its students IT literate for the freedom it provides in terms of modifying the source code and making improvements and its cost effectiveness. Governments across the world are now using open source software to modernize their education systems. In India, it has been found that the education system indirectly discourages open source software because the syllabus sometimes mandates the use of proprietary software. In light of the benefits of open source software, we recommend the following guidelines:

1.The syllabus/curriculum should emphasize principles and not products. In other words, it should teach wordprocessing, spreadsheets etc and not a specific brand of software. Endorsing a specific brand is illegal under the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act. Also, products may get outdated while principles are eternal. It is therefore in the interests of teachers, students and the education system to rectify this issue at the earliest.
2.Wherever possible, the education system must use open source software. If proprietary software has to be purchased, there has to be adequate justification for such usage of tax payer's money. A wealth of educational software is available freely from web sites like Eduforge (www.eduforge.org) SchoolForge (www.schoolforge.net) and Gcompris (www.gcompris.net) which offer Open Source educational software in for courseware management, school administration and for teaching children in disciplines like mathematics, music, astronomy, languages etc that can be freely downloaded and used by educators. Since the source code is available for modification, educators can customize these software programs to Indian conditions, localize it to Indian languages and make it more appropriate for their students. Open Office (www.openoffice.org) offers students and teachers a high quality office productivity suite which has rapidly become the second most popular office suite.
3.Software developed with taxpayers money should be placed under a suitable open source license. This will allow the larger education community to build on top of existing software rather than reinvent the wheel every time.
4.Content developed by the government using taxpayers money should be placed under a suitable open source license. Licenses like the Creative Commons licenses (www.creativecommons.org) offer alternatives to the restrictive “All Rights Reserved” copyright licenses by offering flexible licensing schemes for authors of content.


These guidelines, if implemented strictly, can save the Indian education system thousands of crores of rupees over the next decade.

Suggested Practices for the "National Policy on ICT in Education."

The Open Source philosophy is catching on in the world of content. For example, Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) has rapidly emerged as one of the largest online dictionaries in the world. In a short span of five years, Wikipedia has attracted five million entries from across the world in several languages and is a fantastic educational resource that we should localize to Indian languages. Because it is released under the open source, “Creative Commons” copyright, Indian educators have the freedom to translate Wikipedia into Indian languages and share it with their students.

The Open Source philosophy has proved to be so popular that other disciplines are embracing the tenets of community, collaboration and shared ownership of intellectual resources with powerful results.

Other web sites like Planet Math (www.planetmath.org)aim at creating communities of educators focused on a specific domain to make knowledge more accessible.

Many educational institutions themselves are now coming together to leverage the economic benefits of participating in Open Source development. For instance, leading universities like the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT and Stanford are investing up to $1 million in staff time to develop producing open source Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) software. Even universities that are not members of the Sakai Project can download the software and interest in the Sakai Educational Partner Program (SEPP) is growing at the rate of 1-2 universities per week.

Thus it is clear that whether it is for creating educational content, managing coursework and learning, teaching a specific discipline or administration of an educational institution, the open source model offers tremendous benefits as a model for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. In a country where 888,000 educational institutions need to be modernized and more than 179 million students educated, the community ownership model of open source can help the country save billions of dollars that would be spent on proprietary operating systems, software and content. Since anything developed under an open source model can be shared freely, it can help in the rapid dissemination of educational materials to India's vast population of students.

From a long-term perspective, it is important that the creation and dissemination of knowledge should be a collaborative, community driven process rather than one that is monopolized by a few individuals or companies. In the Indian, intellectual tradition, knowledge has always been considered as a common good treated as a community resource rather than private property that can be monopolized and enjoyed by a few. The need of the hour is therefore a close collaboration between educationists and technologists. The open source model provides a framework that can lead to an open source renaissance for Indian education.

We therefore recommend that India should adopt the best practices of the open source community for creating educational content and software. We further recommend that a working committee consisting of eminent academics, industry and the open source community be formed to guide this process.

Suggested knowledge tools for the "National Policy on ICT in Education."

The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) philosophy and its accompanying licenses can be powerful tools in the dissemination of knowledge.

For more on Open Source licenses, see www.opensource.org

For more on the Free Software philosophy, see www.fsf.org

A FOSS Foundation for India

Over the last few years, most of us in the community have often discussed setting up a foundation for Free and Open Source Software in India to work on policy, advocacy, promotion and development of FOSS and open standards. I think the time is now ripe to bring industry, government, academia, and the community to gether to create a FOSS consortium. Some initial thoughts on the charter of the foundation and organization structure are given below. I'd love to hear from the community what they think of this.

Charter of the FOSS Foundation

1)Formulate strategies on how India can benefit from deploying FOSS and
implement/monitor implementation of the same.
2)Monitor latest developments in FOSS technologies and ensure global
leadership in key strategic areas like supercomputing, security,
localization, affordable computing, GIS, embedded computing etc.
3)Research and quantify the benefits of using FOSS for India.
4)Work with government, industry, academia and the open source/free
software community to popularize FOSS in India.
5)Leverage FOSS to bridge the digital divide in India through affordable
computing and localization to all the major Indian languages.
6)Encourage research and analysis of FOSS in India through academic
research, market research, white papers, case studies etc.
7)Study the legal implications of free and open source licenses in the context of global patenting and copyright laws and recommending strategies beneficial to India.

Organization Structure

The Org Structure flows from the charter and therefore, dear blog readers, your comments on the above are of paramount importance. There are several org structures that we can consider:

1) W3C, which is one of the widest industry consortia with over 400 members. It also has an inclusive process which allows the public to participate in its debates and discussions.

2) The Linux Foundation

In brief, LF's structure is that each Platinum member can elect a director, subject to an upper limit of ten, Gold members can elect three directors from amongst themselves and Silver members can elect one director. From their web site, I could not figure out what mechanism they have for community participation.

3) NASSCOM

NASSCOM is the most successful industry organization in India. As its web site says, "In 1988, NASSCOM had 38 members, who together contributed close to 65 percent of the revenue of the software industry. Since then, membership of NASSCOM has grown multifold to reach over 1100 members."

We look forward to your inputs on how to create an open, participatory organization that keeps growing along with the FOSS community. Do send me your comments by the end of next week (26th October 2007).