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Free Software and Open Source Software

Over the past decade open source software has become popular withtechnology users in the world. The benefits of open source - affordability,availability of source code and freedom of choice - have made open source apreferred platform for many innovative organizations and individuals who wantto harness the power of high quality software which can be freely adapted totheir own requirements.

Like the situation in India, they have a diverse range of interest groupspromoting the adoption of open source software. Major motivators for thesegroups include politics and special interests, government programs,outsourcing service requirements, and education as well as skills training.

Global issues such as software patents vs. freedom of knowledge and adoptionof open standards have also become pivots around which local organizationsand activists promote free and open source software.

An example where the national government has acted as a key motivatoris its initiative to setup a National Resource Centre for Free and Open SourceSoftware (NRCFOSS) in April 2005. NRCFOSS is a joint venture between anuniversity-based research lab (AU-KBC Centre) and the Centre for Developmentof Advanced Computing (C-DAC). This step recognizes the fact that free andopen source software is here to stay and it represents a paradigm shift incomputing that is poised to change the Indian IT industry.

Another example of government initiative is the formation in 2007 of theInstitute for Open Technologies and Applications (IOTA) as a joint venturebetween the state of West Bengal, Jadavpur University and open sourceindustry players (Sun Microsystems and Red Hat). IOTAs mandate is topromote open source software in government and academia. IOTA providesinformation on open source software and open standards to organizationslooking to understand how open source can fit into their IT infrastructure.IOTA also offers training on Linux and Open Office.

DynamicsInformation Technology has provided Indias economy with an

unprecedented boom by creating jobs, expanding purchasing power andbringing in a wave of financial independence to the middle class. According to aNASSCOM report, the Indian software industry grossed about US$52 billion inexports in 2007-2008. With wealth accumulated over the past several decadesfrom outsourced and off-shored projects, Indias IT companies have built large

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shops with deep expertise about the software they need to support - fromCOBOL during Y2K to SAP, Oracle and Microsoft products today.

Increasingly, international projects demand expertise in open sourcetechnologies as well. Project requirements include Linux, MySQL, Apache and

many other open technology stacks. Such requirements have driven thesegroups to create and train thousands of engineers with, for example, in-depthLAMP expertise. Wipro, a representative large-scale outsourcing firm, claimsLinux as a strong focus area with its teams contributing to various Linuxforums through 64-bit enhancements and kernel bug-fixes. Wipro hasdeveloped sophisticated embedded Linux expertise through many projects. Anexample is porting an embedded digital set-top-box reference platform toembedded Linux to support development of digital set-top boxes and personalvideo recorders.

Government organizations, at the national and state levels, have been

using open source software to produce internal applications. Recently, e-government procurements have begun to allow open source software to be partof vendor provided solutions. This in turn has fueled multinationals, such asIBM, HP, Novell and Red Hat, to bid open source software on large e-government projects in order to meet requirements for affordability, localizationand freedom from vendor lock-in.

In response, academia has started training in LAMP technologies toprovide skilled labor for outsourcers and multinationals.

Another important dynamic in driving open source adoption in India

involves the efforts of free software groups, open source community membersand special interest groups. These groups engage in advocacy as well as offertraining and support at the grassroots level to small and medium businessesand to students and new users.

Indias IT landscape is influenced by special interest groups where somegroups are pro- and some are anti- open source. Government agenciesfrequently play both sides and hence most decisions are taken on a project byproject basis and not as part of a national agenda promoting open source. TheIT industry has acquired high quality open source engineering experience butits expertise is applied mostly to for-hire software export projects.

Contributing to Open Source

Active open source communities in India includeIndLinux(localization),Anjuta(IDE), OpenOffice (localization and features) and Fedora (localization). GooglesSummer of Code has also spurred active participation in dozens of projectssuch as BlueZ, Boost C++, CodeHaus, CCAN, CopperMine, Drupal, Etherboot,

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Fedora, FFmpeg, FreeBSD, Geeklog, Gentoo, GNOME, GNU Hurd, Joomla,KDE, OpenPrinting, Mono, Mozilla, MySQL, NUIG, OAR, OLPC, OpenAFS,OpenMoko, OpenMRS, OpenStreetMap, OpenSUSE, OSGeo, Perl, Python, Zopeetc. In 2008, India was second to the US in number of students participating inthe program.

Nonetheless, the number of contributions is still relatively low from India. Withthousands of engineers and users from outsourcing companies, governmentagencies, localization groups, multinationals and universities working on opensource applications and projects, contributions including bug fixes, patches,localized software, plug-ins, add-ons do get submitted upstream to the globalprojects. However contributions are often made anonymously since Indianoutsourcers are usually under client agreements which inhibitacknowledgement or ownership of any software developed under contract.

Conclusion

Open source is becoming more mainstream in the world economy. Avariety of interests on the part of government, industry and academy areencouraging adoption of open source software. Demand for open source hasfollowed the increase in demand for information technologies in all sectors.Liberalization in procurement policy has also contributed to the demand foropen source solutions. Industry, academy and community groups are providingtraining for open source software skills. All of these trends indicate that theworld is poised to begin to leverage open source software in a bigger way.

While most open source software is still used internally in someorganizations, the potential for significant contributions back to global opensource projects is increasing. Growth in contributions may accelerate when theneed to scratch an itch (or many itches) to support local needs grows. Asscalable and affordable automation using open technologies becomesembedded in the processes of managing and supporting the needs of more thana billion people, useful and significant contributions will begin to pour into theglobal commons of open source software.