:: Free Software Model and the Indian Perspective

Free Software Model and the Indian LUG Perspective

by Avijit Patra

When we talk about the GNU/Linux and Free Software we often face the dilemma of choosing the right path to go ahead. Most of our friends who grew within the proprietary model, fills like being part of the proprietary system. They will always develop s/w for these proprietary systems and will like to keep the source closed to earn money for themselves. Some of them who intend to support the unique free s/w model, have their own choice as a developer. Their model is very much interesting.

Their possible models of free software are :

1. integration of various s/w and selling the efforts for integration

2. selling support/services for software

3. selling thru advertisements

4. donations

And a person who likes to develop s/w would prefer to develop open source and then sell services for it; therefore they will prefer (2) and only (2).

Here I must mention two interesting facts that must reside in this model

* You don't have to ask or pay for permission
* You should also have the freedom to make modification and use them privately in your own work, without even mentioning they exist.

    Popularizing GNU/Linux and/or free s/w has been prime goal to the various user groups in India. But they face many problems. They have observed that

1. People who intend to use free s/w don't know where to get them free.
             and if they manage to get it,
2. There is no proper and vast training to popularize these.

    Even government and educational institutions are not contributing to this by promoting curriculum on so called popular proprietary s/w.
    I must mention Government of Thailand who has done exceptional job by starting a project to educate their people in computing by providing subsidized h/w and GNU/Linux as base OS. Result is that now Thai people find windows tough to handle.

    Most branded PC vendors promote proprietary s/w by bundling windows with them.
    I must appreciate recently launched bengali branded PC "Aamar PC"( My PC), www.aamarpc.com , who bundles only GNU/Linux with their h/w.

User groups have mentioned their targets :

1.Generel home users
2.General Students.
3.Students off IT and Computer Science.
4.Business Houses.

The user groups should focus on (1) first. They are around us in great numbers. Rest of the mentioned others are only specialization of this class. Charity begins at home, isn't it !!

The goal scenarios should be quite obvious. The volunteers of this organization try to achieve funds to spread awareness of free/open source s/w. Even training programs need a premises and basic hardware to spread knowledge of GNU/Linux. To spend some, they have to earn some.

But they never want to see "creating source of revenue for organization" ,getting bigger than the "promotion of free s/w movement". But they need to spend some thing to achieve something. Even "Eye donation" advertisements are not produce free of charge by ad agencies. It demands some spending to spread awareness.

One of our good friend in this movement must be appreciated when he gave his observation on Microsoft's unique policy of popularizing their products. They created a community of programmers who tend to use tools developed for these proprietary s/w. They write programs for these platforms to earn more for themselves. Thus more and more people become addicted to these proprietary OS. Thus ultimately popularizing these s/w.

"Making s/w that other people use to make other s/w is one of the biggest way of promoting"

But the necessity of educating the beginners to learn GNU/ Linux will always remain. A person will learn to use the computer first and then only, if he finds computer interesting; he can learn to create application (programming) for computation. A student need primary education first then he should go for higher education. Isn't it! Bur of course, encouraging people to write creative tools to create for these free OS is the best long term goals to achieve. As for now all user groups focus should be, to achieve short term goals of educating more and more people to learn GNU/Linux and/or Free s/w.

Their is another model of dual licensing followed by MySQL. If a general programmer follows this scheme, he may face a strange scenario. As far dual licensing goes, it is only visible to programmer, because he will never mention in his end user license/agreement (to the corporate) that there is also a free version of the same s/w available on so and so server on the net to download freely, which I am demanding money from you.
Is it really possible!!
But if he still manage to distribute two versions, there is a huge chance that the one that is kept really open will get richer and richer. More talented minds will contribute to it, whereas his own corporate version maintained by him only, will lag behind.