My own little post on Rahul Gandhi

Last week, the papers were full of Rahul Gandhi, and talked about how India's heir-apparent has infused fresh life into the Congress party. When Red Hat chairman, Matthew Szulik was in India in 2005, we had faxed across a meeting request to Rahul's office. The very next day, we got a call confirming the meeting. Javed Tapia, who then headed Red Hat India, Szulik and myself met with Rahul. As an aside, Szulik is a passionate speaker on open source in education and it was one such speech that made me join Red Hat. Szulik updated Rahul on what is happening with open source around the world and tabled a request that the Indian syllabus should stop mandating proprietary software and endorsing brand names.

We spent around 30 minutes with Rahul. During the meeting he spoke very little but listened intently. He agreed with our point that the syllabus should stop endorsing brand names. While he did not speak much, it was clear that he had oodles of charisma, helped along by that famous dimpled smile. The lasting impression was that of someone who is a very pleasant human being, very understated and with absolutely no desire to show off. For that reason alone, I wish him and the new UPA government great success.

PS: In complete contrast was our effort to secure a meeting with the then IT Minister, Dayanidhi Maran. His secretary said that he would grant a meeting only if we promised to invest crores of rupees to set up a development center in Chennai. I conned the secretary into granting us an appointment but the meeting did not add up to anything.

Another one joins the Hall of Shame

I tried to pay my insurance premium online at the HDFC Insurance web site but literally drew a blank. This is the e-mail I sent them.

I am using Firefox 3.0.2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and am not able to enter data into the "Old Password" text field. Please see the attached screen shot. Can you kindly look into this and have it fixed?

Venky

This is the reply that I got from HDFC Insurance.

Dear Mr. Venkatesh,

Greetings from HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. Ltd!

With regard to your e-mail, we would like to inform you that our website works on Internet Explorer version 6.0 or higher version. Hence we request you to kindly login to 'My Account' using Internet Explorer version 6.0. It is not compatible on other browsers

We hope to have addressed your query.

Please write to us for any further clarifications you may require.

We assure you the best of our services always.

Warm regards,

Customer Service Officer

This is what I sent to them on getting the above.

As someone involved with the IT industry for 17 years, I would like to point out that using open standards is one of the key principles for good software development. It seems that your web site has been developed using closed standards that work only on one particular browser. That could cause you to lose customers because Firefox, Safari, Opera and other browsers are becoming more popular.

I do not use Internet Explorer nor do I ever intend to use it. I have insurance policies with LIC and Max New York Life and I have never had a problem using their web sites because their sites conform to open standards like W3C (see www.w3c.org). I also use online banking sites like ICICI with my Firefox browser and have had no problems.

To be blunt, using closed standards is sloppy programming practice and it will benefit HDFC Insurance if this is rectified immediately.

Venky

Let us see how they handle this. By the way, what happened to the Linux-Delhi Hall of Shame? I couldn't find it on the Linux-Delhi web site.

Congress government must increase public access to data

One of the Obama Government's objectives is to increase transparency in government and public access to data. Towards this end, it has set up Data.gov.

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

This is the kind of openness that we need to see more of in India. Once data gets into the steel trap of the government, it can be cussedly difficult to extract it. A good case in point is the Indian Patent Office. Patents are supposed to be a monopoly on an invention granted to an inventor in return for disclosure. This disclosure is supposed to help society to build on existing knowledge and avoid reinventing the wheel. Even USA, which is considered to have the most permissive patenting regime in the world, has a freely accessible database of patents at USPTO.gov. However, extracting patents from the Indian Patent Office is like a root-canal operation. My friends inform me that recently it took them six weeks to obtain copies of patents and required several follow-ups and representation to the higher ups.

This is an intolerable state of affairs. As a citizen, the patent information is yours by right. Yet, you have to pay Rs 4,000 to get a copy of a patent. On top of that, you have to supplicate in front of a officer whose salary is paid out of the money that you pay as a tax payer. At several levels, this is a subversion of the original intent of the patent system, which is to increase access to new inventions and ideas. Also, consider the fact that this travesty is happening within the context of a civilization that believes that knowledge shall set you free! This is just one instance of a system that has been perversely twisted to deny citizens access to data that rightfully belongs to them.

While the BJP did not win the elections, one of the proposals that I really liked within their IT Vision was that of replacing the Right to Information Act with a Duty to Inform Act that puts the onus on the government to share information with its citizens. In the long run, I think this is the way to go and with the technology at our disposal, we no longer have excuses to keep public data out of the reach of Indian citizens.

Business Week names Prof. Phatak among India's 50 most powerful

Business Week recently named Prof. DB Phatak among India's 50 most powerful people. For those who know him well, this is no surprise. The citation reads:

An open-source evangelist, Phatak, head of Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, IIT Bombay, has inspired and helped an entire generation of youngsters morph into thought leaders. One of the most respected teachers, Phatak is always surrounded by his students and has made computer science a much sought-after stream not just at IIT but at other Indian universities as well. To reach out to a larger student universe including rural India, Phatak started Eklavya, an online distance-learning program for the IITs.

As a journalist working for Prof. Phatak, I used to interact often with him because he is one of those rare people loved by journalists for his ability to come up with quotable quotes for any occasion. Later, I worked with him to put together the ekalavya/Red Hat Scholarships program. Prof. Phatak passionately believes that open source can help India as a country and that it offers great benefits for Indian education in particular. It is therefore apt that IIT Bombay is leading a project that aims at Adoption of Open Source Software in Science and Engineering Education under the National Mission on Education through ICT project of the Ministry for Human Resources Development.

Several generations of India's IT leaders have learnt under the tutelage of Prof. Phatak who is a very popular figure in the IIT Bombay campus. Despite his accomplishments, he retains a child-like curiosity and enthusiasm for new ideas and projects. One of the most entrepreneurial professors in India, he has tremendous stamina for work. He is an inspiring speaker and I once heard him address a group of sales and support staff and he was able to captivate them from the word go and talk to each of these groups in their own language.

Once, while he was addressing the Mumbai GNU/Linux User Group I noticed that his belt had a prominent Playboy logo on it. Imagine that, an IIT Bombay professor wearing a Playboy belt. When I pointed this out to him, he nonchalantly replied that the belt belonged to his son who forgot to pack it while leaving. One of his students told me this gem called "Phatak's leaky stack algorithm" and those who have been part of the professor's round table discussions will vouch for its truth. The algorithm goes thus. The first person to enter Prof. Phatak's room gets a slice of his attention. The next person to enter gets another slice and so on and so forth. Since people are always walking in and out of Prof. Phatak's room, the first person (now firmly at the bottom of the stack) finally gets up and leaves.

At the age of 61, Prof. Phatak retains a mischevious glint in his eye, a quality that he shares with another Prof. Isaac, another IIT professor legendary for his absent-mindedness. If you have got tales of Prof. Isaac or Prof. Phatak to share, please post them in the comments. I'd love to hear them.

Prof. Phatak is also an intensely patriotic person. On his web site he says:

Dr. Phatak's dream is to see a resurgent India catching up with the world using Information Technology as the spring board. He hopes to make IT work for the millions of Indians so as to enable them to lead an honorable, comfortable and peaceful life full of love and harmony.

Those who followed the OOXML saga know how upset he was with Microsoft for the extent to which they stooped in their efforts to get India's No vote on OOXML overturned.

Over the last 18 years in the IT industry, it has been my privilige to meet and work with several wonderful human beings and Prof. Phatak is right there at the top of that list.

FOSS for GOI supported project for Power Sector

HS Rai has an excellent post titled, "FOSS for GOI supported project for Power Sector" that I liked very much. I commented on his post and have copied it below.

As a tax payer, I am dismayed so see public money being wasted in reinventing the wheel again and again and again. What we need to build are code repositories for common government applications like treasury, municipal management etc and issue diktats that vendors build their services around these code repositories. In the US, hospitals have been (re)using the VistA (Veterans health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) software developed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The source code for this software is available at www.sourceforge.net/projects/openvista . The new American CTO, Aneesh Chopra “gets” what open source is all about:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10142626-38.html

The commonwealth of Virginia is undertaking a variety of
initiatives to improve aspects of governance in areas like health care
and education, said Aneesh Chopra, Virginia’s secretary of technology.

On February 23, the commonwealth will debut the Virginia physics
“flexbook,” Chopra said–Web-based instructional materials that cover
areas of physics in which Virginia’s traditional curriculum is lacking.

The commonwealth partnered with the nonprofit CK-12 Foundation to
provide an open-source platform on which new content can be quickly
published. Virginia officials solicited contributions to the text from
around the country. The contributions were subject to a series of
academic reviews.

“Virginia will have its first physics flexbook for teachers to rip,
mix, and burn and to incorporate into their educational coursework,”
Chopra said.

He said the process was faster than the traditional means of
changing coursework, and it was one example of how a robust information
technology infrastructure was helping the government better serve people.

“You can make information more accessible, collaborate more, and
people can do more to hold their elected officials more accountable,”
Chopra said.

Why are we using old, ancient, pathetically fragmented, hideously expensive proprietary software development models when far superior models exist? I agree that it is time to start a serious campaign and get governments to use the open source development model based on Collaborative Innovation and not just use open source software. My article on Collaborative Innovation is at:

www.osindia.blogspot.com/2009/02/collaborative-innovation-video.html

Thanks for this nice post. If the Indian government takes your advice, it will save thousands of crores of rupees!

Andy Grove: Patents Are Like Mortgage Backed Securities

In one of my previous posts, I had talked about how patents (particularly software patents) are another bubble ready to burst. I also talked about how global patent trolls are now coming to India. Now, Techdirt has an article that quotes Andy Grove, former chairman of Intel and author of the book, Only the paranoid survive, comparing how patents have become like the mortgage-backed securities that caused the current financial meltdown.

The true value of an invention is its usefulness to the public. Patents themselves have become products. They're instruments of investment traded on a separate market, often by speculators motivated by the highest financial return on their investment....

The patent product brings financial derivatives to mind. Derivatives have a complex relationship with an underlying asset. While there's nothing wrong with them in principle, their unfettered use has damaged the financial services industry and possibly the entire economy.

Do these patent instruments put us on a similar road? I fear our patent system increasingly serves those who invest in the patent products... It may be time to use Jefferson's principle as a test and ask if we meet it.

When Andy Grove becomes paranoid about something, you and I better watch out!

Reaping the benefits of open source

This article written by me appeared in Network Computing's India edition. Please feel free to translate this and get it published in other geographies. There is no need to credit me as the author, but do use this to spread the message of open source and drop me a line of acknowledgment when it is sent to a publication or gets published in print/online. And if you prefer the term "free software" that's also OK with me.

Venky
=====

Reaping the Benefits of Open Source

Open Source Software is moving from the edge of the enterprise into its very heart. CIOs can benefit from this development

Recently, in a Gartner report, 'The State of Open Source 2008', it was mentioned that, "By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises will use Open Source in direct or embedded forms." The report goes on to add that, "Open Source is a phenomenon with a broad impact. Chances are, if you do not think you use it, then you use it; and if you think you do use it, then you use lots more of it than you know.”

Why is Open Source becoming so pervasive? The reason is that we are now entering an era of Collaborative Innovation. Open Source Software (OSS) is the leading example of this trend, but the Open Source development model based on collaboration, community and the shared ownership of knowledge is rapidly expanding to other areas like content (Wikipedia), medicine (Open Source Drug Discovery), scientific publishing (Public Library of Science) and other areas of society. With 1.2 billion people on-line, the Internet, which is the largest collaborative platform that mankind has ever seen, has enabled OSS like Linux, Apache, Mozilla Firefox, Open Office and others to flourish. In the next couple of years another 600 million people will join the Internet. Thus the trend towards increasing collaboration is only set to grow and this is reflected in the explosive growth of Open Source projects across the world.

A few years back, OSS could be found on the edge of enterprise, running workloads like mail servers and web servers. However, the growing maturity of the OSS ecosystem means that it is now moving into the very heart of the enterprise, running mission critical servers, desktop computers and even application areas like CRM, ERP, Document Management, collaborative wikis, Content Management Systems and many others.

In these recessionary times, OSS also offers a major advantage in that users can often freely download and try out the software and pay only for value-added services like support. The growing interest in OSS has thrown up a number of software startups that specialize in supporting OSS. For CIOs, this development provides an alternative because the cost of buying support for OSS is usually far less than the cost of purchasing licenses for proprietary software.

For instance, download and check out OpenOffice.org, the full-fledged, Open Source office productivity suite. Many organizations have made OpenOffice.org, the default choice on their desktops and have generated significant cost savings when compared to proprietary office suites. A leading bank, known for its technological savvyness, has almost 70 percent of its staff working on OpenOffice.org. A few years ago, they looked at the increasing cost and hardware requirements of proprietary software and decided to switch to OpenOffice.org. Initially, users had to adjust to the new software, but a four-member helpdesk enabled them quickly become comfortable with OpenOffice.org. The cost of the help desk was far lower than the licensing fees and the increased hardware costs that would have been incurred on proprietary software, which has been restricted to a small group of financial analysts within the company.

Similarly, a study done by IIM Ahmedabad found that the Government of Delhi has saved almost 80 percent by switching to OpenOffice.org. One important reason for switching to OpenOffice.org was its support for the Open Document Format, an open standard for office documents, that ensured that needless upgrades of office suites and its underlying hardware would not be forced upon them. The usage of open standards also helped the Government of Delhi avoid vendor lock-in, which invariably reduces negotiation capabilities of the customer and increases cost.

In many ways, Open Source is becoming the baseline for software development. Within the past couple of years, venture capitalists have started investing several billion dollars in Open Source startups and have reaped handsome returns. The open and inclusive development model; and the freedom to modify the source code and improve the software attracts the best minds from across the world. When compared to the closed development models of proprietary software, which depends on internal skills, the open source model proves to be superior. Eric Raymond, author of the landmark book on OSS, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” expresses it succinctly by saying that, “Many eyes make bugs shallow.” The reliability, robustness and low number of defects per thousand lines of code in open source software like Linux and Apache bear this aphorism out.

Of course, CIOs of enterprises need enterprise-class support. The growing adoption of Open Source in enterprises like LIC, Axis Bank, Central Bank of India, Bharti (Airtel), mission critical portals like Naukri.com, Yatra.com etc. point to the growing support infrastructure for OSS. As users test and deploy OSS, the demand for support is growing immensely.

Finally, while Open Source is not a panacea for every recessionary ill, in these tough times, it makes sense to evaluate OSS instead of spending precious money on expensive proprietary software. Open Source is a long-term trend that is here to stay and those CIOs who judiciously adopt this new paradigm of software development and deployment will benefit from it.

The "computer programme per se" conundrum

In a previous blog entry, I had mentioned how the Draft Patent Manual interprets Section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act in a manner that allows software patents a back-door entry. I had also mentioned in a previous post how the term "per se" in Section 3(k) which says, “A mathematical or business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms are not patentable” leaves a lot of room for mischief. Knowledge Commons has submitted an unambiguous definition for the term "computer programme per se" which would be in tune with the intent of the Indian Parliament, which deleted a proposed amendment to Section 3(k) that said, “a computer programme per se other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware; a mathematical method or a business method or algorithms.” Prabir Purkayastha, Chairman of Knowledge Commons lead the creation of this definition. Prabir is one of the few people I know who can climb the rareified heights of strategy and also roll up his sleeves the next moment and work on nuts-and-bolts issues that need to get done. This definition would just not have been possible without him. Richard Fontana of Red Hat, Mishi Chowdhury of Software Freedom Law Center, Tahir Amin and Jaijit Bhattacharya also provided valuable inputs that went into the final submission to the Indian Patent Office that reads:

Computer programme per se in the relevant clause means (a) any computer programme in the abstract, (b) any computer programme expressed in source code form, including source code recorded on an information storage medium, or (c) any computer programme that can be executed or executes on a general purpose computer, including computer programme object code designed for execution on a general purpose computer that is recorded on an information storage medium. An information storage medium means any disc, tape, perforated media or other information storage device, which, if fed into or located in a computer or computer based equipment is capable of reproducing any information, other than an information storage medium that itself represents an inventive contribution to the art. A general-purpose computer here means a device capable of running multiple unrelated programs, often simultaneously for different purposes. It will comprise at least of: (1) one or more central processing units, (2) one or more input devices that are not specific to any one program, (3) memory, (4) one or more non volatile mass storage devices, and (5) one or more output devices. However, a general-purpose computer does not include a device that itself represents an inventive contribution to the art.

Under the foregoing definitions, a claim that merely recites software elements without any reference to hardware is per se unpatentable. If a claim recites both software elements and hardware elements, but the hardware elements amount to nothing more than reference to the components of a general purpose computer on which the software is executed, or an information storage medium in which the software is stored, such that the only possibly inventive aspect of the claim resides in the software elements, then the claim is not patentable. If the software/general purpose computer is combined with other hardware, and the inventive contribution resides primarily in the software or in the software in combination either with components of the general-purpose computer or in an information storage medium, then the claim is not patentable. If the claim recites software elements and hardware elements, and the hardware elements themselves are an inventive contribution to the art, then the claim may be patentable, provided that the claim as a whole is such that the pre-requisites of novelty, non-obviousness and utility are met.

New Obama CTO, Aneesh Chopra, gets open source

After months of speculation, Obama has finally appointed Aneesh Chopra as Chief Technology Officer for USA. Tim O'Reilly has a ringing endorsement of Chopra. This CNet report indicates that Chopra "gets" what open source is all about.

The commonwealth of Virginia is undertaking a variety of initiatives to improve aspects of governance in areas like health care and education, said Aneesh Chopra, Virginia's secretary of technology.

On February 23, the commonwealth will debut the Virginia physics "flexbook," Chopra said--Web-based instructional materials that cover areas of physics in which Virginia's traditional curriculum is lacking.

The commonwealth partnered with the nonprofit CK-12 Foundation to provide an open-source platform on which new content can be quickly published. Virginia officials solicited contributions to the text from around the country. The contributions were subject to a series of academic reviews.

"Virginia will have its first physics flexbook for teachers to rip, mix, and burn and to incorporate into their educational coursework," Chopra said.

He said the process was faster than the traditional means of changing coursework, and it was one example of how a robust information technology infrastructure was helping the government better serve people.

"You can make information more accessible, collaborate more, and people can do more to hold their elected officials more accountable," Chopra said.

Digital Sovereignty

In the past, I have mentioned how Digital Sovereignty happens to be the pet theme of my friend, Jaijit Bhattacharya of Sun Microsystems. He has finally written a small op-ed piece on this subject for Business Standard. Jaijit has done a huge amount of research on how standards are being colonized and why India must avoid the trap of standards with IPR issues if we are to preserve our digital sovereignity. He quotes the example of DVD manufacturers in China:

A very good example of the devastating effect of the current IPR regime is the case of the DVD manufacturers in China who have to pay royalty charges on each DVD player manufactured that is to the tune of 33 per cent of the retail price of the DVD player, for a video format standard that is used ($20 royalty on a player of $60). China was helpless in preventing such an unfair cess being put on its domestic industry, demonstrating its lack of digital sovereignty at that point in time.

During the OOXML debate, I had the pleasure of watching Jaijit at work inside the LITD15 committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards, which reviewed and finally voted against OOXML. Despite the massive amount of muscle power that Microsoft had invested to push OOXML down India's throat, Jaijit refused to be overawed. Using his computer science background to great advantage, he was constantly exposing the key flaws in Microsoft's proposed OOXML standard. One memory that lingers from the numerous BIS meetings is that of Jaijit, in full professorial flow, using marker pens and the whiteboard to demolish some of the key arguments in support of OOXML.

If Jaijit was all fire and brimstone, there was one person who was icy cool throughout the 18 long months and endless, argumentative meetings on OOXML. Ashish Gautam of IBM contributed immensely to the discussions with his thorough understanding of the arcane rules of ISO, that most of us were grappling with for the first time in our lives. His ability to stay focused and highlight the right point at the right time went a long way in ensuring that the loopholes in ISO's processes were not exploited by the proponents of OOXML.

Apart from Jaijit and Ashish, there were countless bureaucrats and policy makers who deserve enormous credit for ensuring that Microsoft did not ride roughshod over India's policy making bodies, but that will have to wait for another day when I have the time to write a lengthy post on how the OOXML battle was won. the time being, let me end by agreeing with Jaijit's statement that,

It is imperative for India to ensure that it is a serious player in formulating digital standards in order to ensure security of its IT industry and to maintain its digital sovereignty.

Jai ho!

BJP's IT Vision supports open source and open standards

The BJP, the largest opposition  in India has released an IT Vision document that endorses open source and open standards. Many of the points mentioned in the FOSS Manifesto for India that we put up online last week have been incorporated in this document.

This document was unveiled by none other than Shri. LK Advani, the BJP's candidate for Prime Minister. I did a quick read of the 40 page document and am impressed with how thorough and comprehensive it is. As a long time supporter of free and open source software, I am delighted to see a major Indian political party endorse it. However, I am even more delighted to see that this endorsement is rooted in a comprehensive vision for India's development. A big chunk of the credit for this document should go to Shri. Sudheendra Kulkarni (an alumnus of IIT Bombay) and Shri Prodyut Bora (an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad). Shri Kulkarni was advisor to Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee when Vajpayee was prime Minister of India and Shri Bora is Head of the IT Cell of the BJP.

I was happy to see that the Digital Colonization theme that my friend, Jaijit Bhattacharya of Sun talks about has been incorporated in this document. Apart from the FOSS Manifesto, some of my key passions on open standards (that we don't pay for standards like weights and measures in the physical world, so why should we pay for standards in the digital world?) have been reflected. Also, as a co-founder of IndLinux.org which we started in 2000 in an attempt to bridge the digital divide, I am happy to see that the BJP has promised to create a National Mission for Indian Language Computing.
The CPI(M), another national party in India has always been a strong supporter of our stand on open source, open standards and our fight against software patents. We are hopeful that other political parties will also take cognizance of the FOSS Manifesto and incorporate the same
into their IT plans for India.

With the country schedule to go to polls next month, we now have a broad consensus emerging around the use of open source and open standards. This is great news for all of us who believe in free and open source software!

Microsoft-Novell, Once Hot and Heavy, Cooling Down

Channel Web has this article on how the Microsoft-Novell deal is cooling off. Microsoft's multi-million dollar deal to resell Suse Linux subscriptions was like Coke selling Pepsi, an unreal deal between two competitors. When I first read about the deal, my sense was that it would fizzle out in a couple of years. As a journalist, during the dot-com boom, one has been witness to countless dog-and-pony shows but none of these short-term tamashas can substitute for a robust business model.

In some ways, this is a real pity because if any company could have provided some competition to Red Hat in the enterprise Linux space, it was Novell. When Novell purchased Suse, I was asked by a journalist for my opinion. My take was that Novell has established channels and a large support team in India for Novell NetWare and if they successfully transition this team to Suse, Red Hat would have a tough competitor on their hands. That transition never happened. If Novell had succeeded, it would have expanded the overall Linux market and that would have been great for open source.

A year after the deal, I joined Red Hat and one of the first things I came across was our chairman Matthew Szulik's famous quip, "It's a marathon, not a sprint." It seems so easy to set up an enterprise Linux business. Download the source code, build a distribution, hire a bunch of smartly dressed salespeople and voila! you have an enterprise Linux business. But, as even mighty Oracle found out, it ain't that easy.

Building a distro may be the easy part, but the really hard (and unglamorous) part is ensuring that thousands of underlying hardware configurations and thousands of software programs that run on top of the distro are certified and supported. This is truly a marathon and not a sprint. The day somebody is seriously ready for the marathon, Red Hat will have competitors.

A request to sign the FOSS Manifesto

The FOSS Manifesto (see previous post) has finally been put up as an online petition. It upon political parties to make FOSS usage and promotion a central part of the IT, e-government and education plans in their election manifestos. I request all FOSS supporters to sign the same at the earliest. Thanks to Vinay and IT For Change for hosting this and to Arun of FSF Kerala for egging me to write this and to all those who provided their feedback!

A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties

With elections approaching in April 2009, it was time to create a draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties. This is a first draft and I have written this keeping in mind that most Indian politicians would not be familiar with FOSS. hence, the usage of simple language that anyone can understand. If you feel that any section here needs improvement, please let me know. Comments/suggestions welcome.

A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties

The Free and Open Source Software community in India calls upon political parties to make FOSS usage and promotion a central part of the IT, e-government and education plans in their election manifestos. FOSS is software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. The open, inclusive and participatory nature of FOSS is a natural fit for the vibrant traditions of Indian democracy. Since software is the foundation of the knowledge economy, India's IT infrastructure should be built on FOSS and not on closed, proprietary software systems.

We believe that encouragement of FOSS will result in:

• Development of the domestic IT industry
• Creation of jobs
• Encouragement of skills development and upgradation
• Enable localization of software to Indian languages
• Reduction of India's dependence on monopolistic proprietary software vendors
• Encourage the usage of open standards
• Bridging the digital divide
• Rapid modernization and computerization of India's education system
• Technology upgradation of India's Small and Medium Enterprises
• Efficient usage of budget outlays for e-government
• Faster technology development through Collaborative Innovation
  

We call upon political parties in India to support the Indian FOSS community by:

1. Encouraging the use of FOSS in Indian education system. This will inculcate the virtues of collaboration, sharing and participation in children from a very young age and make computerization of schools affordable.
2. Eliminating proprietary software from the education syllabus and making the syllabus vendor-neutral, thus giving teachers and students the choice of software that suits their budgets and needs.
3. Using FOSS in e-government to the maximum possible extent and ensuring that government tenders are open and do not favor proprietary software vendors. All software developed with tax-payers money should be released under a FOSS license to encourage collaboration; and the sharing of code and best practices.
4. Mandating the usage of open standards that are free from royalties and vendor lock-in so that the interaction between the government and citizens happens in a free and open manner befitting a democracy.
5. Encouraging freely shareable, FOSS based knowledge repositories like Wikipedia in Indian languages.
6. Encouraging the usage of the collaborative model of FOSS in scientific research. Science thrives on collaboration and the sharing of knowledge. The current trend of privatizing knowledge leads to secrecy in science and reduces collaboration. We must use the FOSS model based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of knowledge to spark a renaissance of knowledge in India.
7. Eliminating software and business method patents that have lead to huge amounts of litigation in developed countries. Indian traditions have held that knowledge grows by sharing and diminishes when hoarded. Patents on software and business methods grant undue monopolies on ideas and prevent independent invention and the sharing of knowledge.

India has one of the most youthful populations in the world and it is important that they have access to the tools with which the information society is built. The freedom to modify the source code, the ability to share knowledge and build communities make Free and Open Source Software the best, long-term model for India's development. We therefore urge all political parties to encourage the usage of FOSS for India's development.

Collaborative Innovation Video

Biztech2 recently uploaded a small five-minute interview of mine around the subject of Collaborative Innovation. Towards the end of the video, I mentioned that one of the biggest impact that open source can have on India is the usage of Wikipedia-like tools for education.

Happily, it looks like the folks in the Ministry of Human Resources Development have understood the value of open source. In the recently launched, National Mission on Education through ICT, they say that, "The peer group assisted content development would utilise the Wikipedia type of collaborative platform under the supervision of a content advisory committee responsible for vetting the content." This is a great day for the Open Access community!

Making the CBSE syllabus vendor-neutral

My friend, Jaijit and others are working on making the CBSE syllabus vendor-neutral. The CBSE syllabus touches the lives of around 201 million students and the current syllabus mandates specific brand names and is not vendor-neutral. We believe that this benefits monopoly software vendors and leads to a technology dependence that is not healthy for our country in the long run.

All we are asking for is that brand names should not be mandated because:

A) The education system must teach *principles* and not *products.* For example, we should teach "word processing" and not XYZ brand of word processor.

B) This deprives students and teachers of the ability to use products that suit their needs and their budgets.

The CBSE Syllabus can be examined at:

1) Secondary Curriculum 2010,INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY(CODE No. 165)

Unit 2-IT TOOLS mandates Windows GUI basics while Unit-3 mandates MSOffice and its practicals.

RECOMMENDATION: This should be changed to "User Interfaces" and "Office Productivity Applications."

2) Senior School Curriculum 2009,Informatics Practices (Code 065)


Unit -I Computer System And Business Applications:Windows,Unit 2 Introduction to Programming:Visual Basic,UNIT 3 RDBMS:ORACLE XII:Unit 2:Visual Basic,Unit 3 RDBMS:PL/SQL

RECOMMENDATION: This should be changed to "Operating Systems" and the mention of specific brand names in "Introduction to Programming" and "RDBMS" should be dropped.

Shyam, Anivar and others helped put together the Syllabus Review Wiki from where this information was culled. Thanks folks!

If you (or someone you know) can help in making the CBSE syllabus vendor-neutral, please do pitch in and help.

Another bubble ready to burst!

New York Times has an article on how India avoided the credit crisis. In a companion blog, author, Joe Nocera talks of the reactions he got from the Indians he interviewed.

“We used to think that America was the teacher and we were the students,” one businessman told me over breakfast this morning. “We always thought you knew so much more than us. That notion has been shattered.”

Another bubble ready to burst is this flawed notion called "Intellectual Property." I am not saying that all patents, trademarks etc should be banned but that the notion that intellect can be reduced to property is a false one. As a kid, one of the first things I learn is a hymn to Saraswati, the Goddess of Knowledge, which says that:

Wonderful is your gift of knowledge
the more we share, the more it grows
the more we hoard it, the more it diminishes

The current model of trying to "propertize," "privatize" and "commoditize" knowledge comes from a very mercantile, reductionist model of treating knowledge. That may be OK for other countries, which have "intellectual propertized" their knowledge and hold the balance of power in IP Rights, but not for India which has had a long, rich tradition of free knowledge cultures like yoga, ayurveda, mathematics and many other disciplines.

We have not "propertized" these traditions of knowledge and therefore yoga, ayurveda etc can be freely used by all. When we go to use "their" "intellectual property" (allopathic medicine, software and business method patents etc) we are told, "pay up or else...." talk about an unequal exchange!

The contrast is best illustrated by what happened with Bikram Yoga taught by celebrity yoga teacher, Bikram Chowdhury who makes a fortune teaching yoga to Americans. Bikram copyrighted a series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises practiced in a room heated upto 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Note that Yoga is a body of knowledge which has been free from copyrights, patents and "intellectual property" for more than 2000 years. When asked why, Bikram said that he sought legal protection because "it's the American way."

Each society evolves systems that suit its own needs. Most of India's traditions of knowledge spring forth from a spiritual base whereas America's treatment of knowledge has a mercantile bias. This is not to pass a value judgment on either. The problem arises when, in a globalizing society the two systems clash and are unable to harmonize with each other.

Sadly most of our thinking around legal protection of knowledge has been "derivative" in nature, a shoddy cut and paste job from the "mature IP systems" of the West. However, as the Bilski case shows, even these "mature IP systems" are having second thoughts on how they treat knowledge, or in this specific case, software patents. As I have argued in my previous blog entry, "The Practical Problem with Software Patents," the litigation-ridden path followed by US in granting software and business method patents is something we must avoid at all costs.

I could go on and on, but let me just end with one small piece of evidence. As I mentioned earlier, I have grown up in an Indian tradition that believes that knowledge grows by sharing. Does this wisdom hold true in the Internet era?

In September 2001, Linus Torvalds released 10,000 lines of code for building an operating system, under the General Public License. The GPL license encouraged people to take this 10,000 lines of code, modify it and share the resulting improvements with the rest of the world. A recent study by the Linux Foundation estimated that the code base for the Fedora 9 Linux distribution is now 204 million lines of code!

This is one of the finest examples of Collaborative Innovation that has been made possible by the growth of the Internet. With 1.4 billion people connected to the Internet and another 600 million set to join up in the next two years, the Internet is the greatest collaborative platform in the history of mankind. The attempt to "propertize" knowledge in the Internet era is doomed to fail. Instead, we will see knowledge returning to its rightful place in the commons and the open source principles of collaboration, community and the shared ownership of knowledge being applied to thousands of disciplines. As the commercial distributions of Linux demonstrate, even when knowledge lives in the commons, it is possible to build profitable business models around it.

When we look back on our times, we may find that the term, "Intellectual Property" has taken its place along side another archaic term, "Horseless Carriage." Both were attempts to impose metaphors of the past on the future.

Make magazine has a great article on open source gift ideas for the season.

There are hundreds of gift guides this holiday season filled with junk you can buy, but a lot of times you actually don't own it, you can't improve upon it, you can't share it or make it better, and you certainly can't post the plans, schematics, and source code either. We want to change that. We've put together our picks of interesting open source hardware projects, open source software, services, and things that have the maker spirit of open source. Some are kits, some are open software projects that you'll need to build hardware for before gifting, and some are just support for the projects/groups that do open source. Included in this guide are things you can get from the MAKE store too (we try and have as many open source goods as possible).

I had heard about the "gift economy" of open source but never realized that we have so many gift ideas! Way to go, open source!

Laziest person in the world award

I normally don't blog about non-open source stuff but this one takes the cake. This is a mail from a student who reads my blog. Notice the nice attempt at flattery in the first sentence followed by an utterly spineless request. If this is the quality of our students, god help us!

I read your article, its nice and informative about the practical problems of open source. Well, I am new with open source and trying to learn. I have to do a project for my university. Could you please send me any practical code for open source that I can include in my project. I will be very thankful for the help and support.

Proprietary software and "Lipstick on a pig"

Mark Taylor of Sirius Corporation has written a very interesting article that explains in economic terms why proprietary software is doomed.

Is proprietary software simply a pig skilfully dressed up to make the unwitting think it has intrinsic value?

The answer is 'yes', and here's why.

In any free market, the price of a commodity, over time, falls close to that of its marginal cost of production. A number of things can interfere with this process, the most damaging being the existence of a monopoly, but in the absence of market distortion this rule always holds true.