THE formation of the Free Software Movement of India, a national coalition of organisations and individuals interested in promoting free software and its ideology, was a key announcement made at the third National Free Software Conference held in Bangalore.
The coalition has 16 free software regional and sectoral movements and stakeholders on board. It will promote not only the use of GNU/Linux-based software but also its larger philosophy, which includes free knowledge, science and digital societies.
Free software groups are not new to India. With scores of active Linux User Groups, several non-governmental organisations, and a few other similar groups, one may ask what this newly formed coalition hopes to achieve. Kiran Chandra, general secretary of this new coalition, told Frontline that the coalition stood for a bottom-up approach to building the movement. In a country where the entire IT sector is services-oriented, mostly non-domestic at that, the Free Software Movement provides an alternative that looks at things from the community perspective. Unlike in developed countries, where the ratio of software developers (or programmers) to users is substantially higher, in India a lot needs to be done to make the free software developmental model adaptable to Indian conditions. We aim to build a community that will cater to the requirements of our nation, Chandra explained.
To promote free software actively, one needs to build a large developer base. Where do we build this resource pool? We need to build this in students passing out of colleges degree colleges, engineering colleges and so on. These students need to be aware of free software and Linux. The response from students in Bangalore was reassuring, a positive sign.
Chandra believes that not much can be achieved by being an elite coffee shop geek group which can handle cool software. Participation of students, teachers, advocacy groups, industry professionals and policymakers is critical to the movement, he says. In short, we need to be a movement and we need to mean business. That is what could be different about this coalition. We are a diverse, countrywide group that attempts to take the movement to the grass roots.
The organisations include State-level free software movements such as Swecha (Andhra Pradesh), FSMK (Karnataka), Democratic Alliance Knowledge Forum (DAKF), Free Software Foundation of Tamil Nadu, FSMWB (West Bengal) and sectoral movements such as Knowledge Commons, Academics Initiative, and National Consultative Committee of Computer Teachers (NCCCTA).
Deepa Kurup
