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.
Showing posts with label Collaborative Innovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Collaborative Innovation. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
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!
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!
Monday, December 22, 2008
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.
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:
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.
“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.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
The practical problem with software patents
Note: An edited version of this article recently appeared in Economic Times.
The Bilski case judgment has reversed the trend of granting patents to abstract ideas in the US, and is good for software developers, says Venkatesh Hariharan
In their book, “Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk,” Boston University professors, James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer, show that Murphy's Law (“If anything can go wrong, it will”) has been working overtime in the area of software. The authors dedicate an entire chapter to software and business method patents, which are particularly problematic because they account for almost 38 percent of all patent litigation.
The authors find that in the United States, software patents are twice as likely to be litigated as other patents while business method patents (which act as a proxy for software patents) are seven times as likely to be litigated. The authors say, “Our reading of the case law convinces us that patent law tolerates too many software claims untethered to any real invention or structure; in such a world clear boundaries are unattainable.” The authors point out that patent on abstract ideas are often subject to multiple interpretations and are therefore more ambiguous. An example of this ambiguity is the E-Data patent on "point of sale location." In the IT industry, this term is jargon for the cash register or location where the customer pays the cashier. When the US Federal Circuit interpreted this claim, they decided that it referred to any location where an e-commerce transaction might take place. Thus, a patent filed 17 years ago when e-commerce did not exist, ended up causing several lawsuits.
The lack of clear boundaries in software means that even law-abiding software developers who intend not to violate another's patent have no clear means of avoiding it. The authors point out that there are around 4000 patents on e-commerce and around 11,000 patents on online shopping. Add to this the fact that getting legal opinion on each software patent can cost around USD 5,000 and we have a vexatious, if not impossible, task at hand. For most software developers, doing a patent search in connection with their work is simply not economically feasible. Even leaving aside the cost of a search, the results are seldom conclusive. Thus it really is not possible to eliminate the risk of a patent infringement lawsuit.
It is well known that the U.S. has the most permissive patent system in the world. However, even in the US, there are signs that the pendulum may be swinging the other way. In the recent Bilski case, which dealt with a method of hedging risks in commodities, the US courts ruled that abstract ideas which are not tethered to a device cannot be patented. The decision reversed the 1998 State Street decision that opened the floodgates for software patents.
In the European union, a move to patent, “computer implemented inventions” was thrown out in 2005. In India, section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act says that, “A mathematical or business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms are not patentable.” In the discussions around India's Draft Patent Manual, the interpretation of the term, “computer programme per se” has been the most contentious one. Given the lessons of history and considering the amount of litigation that software patents have created in the US, India must avoid going down the same path.
A patent is a state-granted monopoly on an invention, in return for disclosure of the idea. The original intent of the patent system was to encourage disclosure by the inventor in exchange for exclusive rights for a limited period of time to the invention. This ensured that inventors did not take their inventions to the grave and that society could build on existing knowledge rather than re-invent the wheel. The regime of software patents began its major expansion in the 1980s in the US. Since then, software developers have been consistently arguing that that software is better protected through copyrights rather than patents.
Under copyright law, if software developers write code that is similar to that of another, they can defend themselves on the grounds of independent invention because copyright protects the expression of an idea. However, the same defense is not possible under a software patent regime because a patent is a monopoly on the idea itself. Thus, even if software developers independently create a program, they may be liable for infringement of one of the more than 200,000 software patents in existence in the U.S. Even end-users who use software for routine, everyday activities may be liable for infringement. For example, McDonalds and 400 other entities were served notices for violating DataCard's patent on “Method for processing debit purchase transactions using a counter-top terminal system.” In another case, a company (ironically) called Beneficial Innovations, sued the New York Times, You Tube and many other media organizations for allegedly violating its patent on “Method and system for playing games on a network.” Therefore the problem of software patents is not one that is confined to the software development industry alone and ends up increasing the cost of software for society as a whole.
The problem is compounded by the fact that litigation is an expensive process. Dan Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation points out that for a patent holder to send a cease-and-desist letter, all it takes is a post card. However, that inexpensive post card sets off an expensive chain of events for the defendant who will typically pay a lawyer USD 40,000 to get a legal opinion, around USD 2-4 million in attorney’s fees if the case goes to court and many millions more if the defendant loses the case in court and is required to pay damages.
The argument in favor of software patents is that patents promote innovation. The social contract between an inventor and society was that the inventor disclosed details of the invention in return for the patent, and this disclosure would lead to future inventions. However, the history of the software industry shows that innovation flourished long before software patents came into force during the 1980s. Some of the fundamental inventions of the computer age—the Internet, compilers, spreadsheets etc--were created despite the lack of patent protection. It is therefore clear that patent protection is not necessary for innovation in the software industry.
As with any other monopoly, a patent must be treated with great discretion, especially since this particular monopoly is bestowed by the state itself. The act of granting a 20 year exclusive right to profit from an idea to a private entity needs to be weighed against the cost that it imposes on society. Since software and business method patents prevent independent invention, do not function well as a system of property and lead to increased litigation, India must comprehensively reject it.
Update: Micheal Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative and my colleague at Red Hat has some generous praise for this article and why Indians should heed its message.
The Bilski case judgment has reversed the trend of granting patents to abstract ideas in the US, and is good for software developers, says Venkatesh Hariharan
In their book, “Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk,” Boston University professors, James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer, show that Murphy's Law (“If anything can go wrong, it will”) has been working overtime in the area of software. The authors dedicate an entire chapter to software and business method patents, which are particularly problematic because they account for almost 38 percent of all patent litigation.
The authors find that in the United States, software patents are twice as likely to be litigated as other patents while business method patents (which act as a proxy for software patents) are seven times as likely to be litigated. The authors say, “Our reading of the case law convinces us that patent law tolerates too many software claims untethered to any real invention or structure; in such a world clear boundaries are unattainable.” The authors point out that patent on abstract ideas are often subject to multiple interpretations and are therefore more ambiguous. An example of this ambiguity is the E-Data patent on "point of sale location." In the IT industry, this term is jargon for the cash register or location where the customer pays the cashier. When the US Federal Circuit interpreted this claim, they decided that it referred to any location where an e-commerce transaction might take place. Thus, a patent filed 17 years ago when e-commerce did not exist, ended up causing several lawsuits.
The lack of clear boundaries in software means that even law-abiding software developers who intend not to violate another's patent have no clear means of avoiding it. The authors point out that there are around 4000 patents on e-commerce and around 11,000 patents on online shopping. Add to this the fact that getting legal opinion on each software patent can cost around USD 5,000 and we have a vexatious, if not impossible, task at hand. For most software developers, doing a patent search in connection with their work is simply not economically feasible. Even leaving aside the cost of a search, the results are seldom conclusive. Thus it really is not possible to eliminate the risk of a patent infringement lawsuit.
It is well known that the U.S. has the most permissive patent system in the world. However, even in the US, there are signs that the pendulum may be swinging the other way. In the recent Bilski case, which dealt with a method of hedging risks in commodities, the US courts ruled that abstract ideas which are not tethered to a device cannot be patented. The decision reversed the 1998 State Street decision that opened the floodgates for software patents.
In the European union, a move to patent, “computer implemented inventions” was thrown out in 2005. In India, section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act says that, “A mathematical or business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms are not patentable.” In the discussions around India's Draft Patent Manual, the interpretation of the term, “computer programme per se” has been the most contentious one. Given the lessons of history and considering the amount of litigation that software patents have created in the US, India must avoid going down the same path.
A patent is a state-granted monopoly on an invention, in return for disclosure of the idea. The original intent of the patent system was to encourage disclosure by the inventor in exchange for exclusive rights for a limited period of time to the invention. This ensured that inventors did not take their inventions to the grave and that society could build on existing knowledge rather than re-invent the wheel. The regime of software patents began its major expansion in the 1980s in the US. Since then, software developers have been consistently arguing that that software is better protected through copyrights rather than patents.
Under copyright law, if software developers write code that is similar to that of another, they can defend themselves on the grounds of independent invention because copyright protects the expression of an idea. However, the same defense is not possible under a software patent regime because a patent is a monopoly on the idea itself. Thus, even if software developers independently create a program, they may be liable for infringement of one of the more than 200,000 software patents in existence in the U.S. Even end-users who use software for routine, everyday activities may be liable for infringement. For example, McDonalds and 400 other entities were served notices for violating DataCard's patent on “Method for processing debit purchase transactions using a counter-top terminal system.” In another case, a company (ironically) called Beneficial Innovations, sued the New York Times, You Tube and many other media organizations for allegedly violating its patent on “Method and system for playing games on a network.” Therefore the problem of software patents is not one that is confined to the software development industry alone and ends up increasing the cost of software for society as a whole.
The problem is compounded by the fact that litigation is an expensive process. Dan Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation points out that for a patent holder to send a cease-and-desist letter, all it takes is a post card. However, that inexpensive post card sets off an expensive chain of events for the defendant who will typically pay a lawyer USD 40,000 to get a legal opinion, around USD 2-4 million in attorney’s fees if the case goes to court and many millions more if the defendant loses the case in court and is required to pay damages.
The argument in favor of software patents is that patents promote innovation. The social contract between an inventor and society was that the inventor disclosed details of the invention in return for the patent, and this disclosure would lead to future inventions. However, the history of the software industry shows that innovation flourished long before software patents came into force during the 1980s. Some of the fundamental inventions of the computer age—the Internet, compilers, spreadsheets etc--were created despite the lack of patent protection. It is therefore clear that patent protection is not necessary for innovation in the software industry.
As with any other monopoly, a patent must be treated with great discretion, especially since this particular monopoly is bestowed by the state itself. The act of granting a 20 year exclusive right to profit from an idea to a private entity needs to be weighed against the cost that it imposes on society. Since software and business method patents prevent independent invention, do not function well as a system of property and lead to increased litigation, India must comprehensively reject it.
Update: Micheal Tiemann, president of the Open Source Initiative and my colleague at Red Hat has some generous praise for this article and why Indians should heed its message.
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