India lays down 'open' challenge

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4764565.stm
Last Updated: Friday, 12 May 2006, 11:32 GMT 12:32 UK
India lays down 'open' challenge

After his first trip to India, regular columnist Bill
Thompson looks
forward to the end of western domination of the free
software community

Indian computer programmer
India's programmers are writing code to meet their own
needs
The five of us bounced out of the restaurant at around
10, after a great
meal, some beers and the usual arguments about
preferred programming
languages, the future of free and open source software
and the merits of
Terry Pratchett's later works.

It was a warm night so we crossed the street to get
something to cool us
down - not ice cream, but the best kulfi in the
Defence Colony, one of
the hippest areas in downtown New Delhi.

It was my last night in India after four days making
Digital Planet
specials with the World Service.

My new friends from the Delhi Linux User Group had
dragged me out of my
luxurious business hotel into the real city for a
meal.

The sizzling paneer and noodles were excellent. The
beer was cold. And
the kulfi was as good as Raj had promised.

But even better was the chance to make a connection
with a group of
people outside the US and Europe who are working with
the Linux
operating system.

Indian problems

I'd come to India with the sense that, like Brazil and
other countries
outside the West that are taking free software
seriously, India is
moving into a new phase in its use of free and open
source software.

These guys - and it was a boy's night out, though
there are women
members of the group too - are using the freedom which
the Linux
distribution licence gives them to build tools and
technologies for
themselves.

They don't have to wait for a far-distant company to
decide whether
their market is big enough or commercially viable. If
they need code
that meets their specific needs, they can just write
it themselves.

They are certainly going beyond the point where they
take code from the
US and Europe and spend their effort "localising" it
by adding support
for local languages.

[Bill Thompson: Free software provides a bridge
between the affluence of
the West and the poverty of most of the world's
population.]

But according to Raj and Mary, both Linux experts,
Indian coders are
still isolated from each other, and although they
contribute to many
projects there is no real focus on solving Indian
problems.

The website of the Free Software Foundation of India
lists a few dozen
India-based projects, but there is apparently a long
way to go before a
real free software community emerges.

And while Government support for free software is
genuine, government
computer departments do not contribute to other
projects and do not make
their work available for others to build on. The
government just sees
free software as a way to save on licenses.

This is a shame, as there is a political dimension to
the use of free
software which will be very important for India and
other developing
countries.

Liberal Origins

Until now free and open source software has been one
of the ways in
which the US spread its values around the world, the
soft guy approach
that seems to oppose, but in fact is symbiotic with
hard-edged
capitalism on the Microsoft and Intel model.

Both are firmly embedded in US cultural values, and
the free market is
as important to Linux as it is to Microsoft.

Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds: creator of Linux

If we consider its origins within the post-hippy
hacker culture of MIT
then we can see that free software is as parasitic on
the larger
computer industry and its capitalist ethos as the
early hippies were on
their wealthy middle-class parents and their
Protestant work ethic.

All that nice code won't run unless Intel and AMD,
neither of whom is
particularly noted for being soft and cuddly, continue
to make the
processors and Dell and Sony continue to squeeze
component suppliers and
ship the systems.

In 1999 Richard Stallman the originator of free
software, wrote that he
saw 'no social imperative for free hardware designs
like the imperative
for free software', so the situation clearly does not
bother him.

Yet, as often happens when the US tries to impose a
particular point of
view on the world, the results can be the opposite of
what was intended.

Just as the continued boycott of Cuba after the Soviet
Union collapsed
forced Castro into alliances with other Latin American
countries and has
helped promote new left-leaning governments across the
continent, so the
desire to spread US liberal values through free
software may have
unexpected consequences.

Cultural shift

Stallman, Linus Torvalds and Eric Raymond, the three
big thinkers behind
free/libre/open source software - and one should
always be suspicious of
any movement that so fails to reconcile its divisions
that it needs
three names - may have unleashed a monster that will
consume them.

Because until now the developed world could take the
code provided so
generously by Western developers but their ability to
modify it was
limited. There were too few skilled programmers and
too few companies
interested in supporting that sort of work.

Now the programmers are out there. And while the
Indian Linux community
is currently fragmented, as Raj says, this could
change very quickly.
Much of the work on internationalisation, pushed by
people like Gora
Mohanty at Srijan Technologies, is complete, and new
ideas are emerging.

I visited one company, Om Logistics, who simply cannot
pay what
Microsoft want to charge for licences when one of
their bureaux might
make a few thousand rupees profit in a month.

They use Linux on both servers and desktops, and the
result is that they
have an affordable and reliable system. Soon it wlll
be even more suited
to their needs, because Indian developers will be
deciding how it should
develop.

These programmers will take today's Linux code and
make it far more
useful to the people of India and other developing
countries than
today's predominantly Western developer community ever
could. And when
that happens, the centre of free software development
will soon begin to
move from the US and Europe.

Free software provides a bridge between the affluence
of the West and
the poverty of most of the world's population, and
amounts to a massive
flow of intellectual capital into the developing
world. And as they
reshape it to meet their needs it will stop being just
another US import
and become a resource that can be used in brand new
ways.

Once the people on the receiving end make it their own
they will change
the world. The fun is just beginning.
Bill Thompson is a regular commentator on the BBC
World Service
programme Digital Planet

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