Open Source India

Even slaves were considered property: South African Minister

2009-10-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

I re-read the address given by Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi (video), Former South African Minister for Public Service and Administration, at the third Idlelo Conference. This part, especially, gave me goose pimples.

We cannot be in Dakar without being painfully aware of the tragic history of the slave trade. For three hundred years, the Maison des Esclaves (Slave House) on Gorée Island, was a hub in the system of forceful transportation of Africans as slaves to the plantations of the West Indies and the southern states of America. Over the same period people were being brought as slaves from the Malay Archipelago and elsewhere to South Africa. The institution of slavery played such a fundamental role in the early development of our current global economy, that by the end of the 18th century, the slave trade was a dominant factor in the globalised system of trade of the day.

As we find ourselves today in this new era of the globalised Knowledge Economy there are lessons we can and must draw from that earlier era. That a crime against humanity of such monstrous proportions was justified by the need to uphold the property rights of slave owners and traders should certainly make us more than a little cautious about what should and should not be considered suitable for protection as property.

It is good to remember this at a time when organizations aim to justify the privatization of knowledge and ideas under the guise that this is essential for promoting innovation.

In the area of software patents, this is nothing but a land grab, a conversion of was in the commons into a private enclosure.

FOSSCOMM Meeting this Sunday (11th October, 2009)

2009-10-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

FOSSCOMM (FOSS Community of India) will hold its third meeting in Mumbai at the Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Mankhurd (Near BARC/Anushakti Nagar).

The first meeting held in Bangalore started to process of getting the FOSS Community of India working together. After the second meeting held in Delhi in July 09, FOSSCOMM started making interventions in areas like open standards, school education etc. I hope that the Mumbai meeting will lead to the creation of working groups that will provide leadership to FOSSCOMM's efforts to accelerate the growth of Free and Open Source Software movement in India.

Those interested  working with the community are invited to attend the upcoming FOSSCOMM Meeting on 11th October, 2009.

Dilbert on Patent Trolling

2009-09-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

You know that patent trolling has become big business when Dilbert runs a comic strip!

Patent Woes: Speechless about the Word judgment

2009-08-12T03:35:00.000-07:00

This is one of the times when you rub your eyes in disbelief, speechlessly gape at the screen and read the same e-mail over and over again. Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society forwarded an article titled, "Judge: Microsoft can't sell Word anymore." The article says,

Judge Leonard Davis, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ordered a permanent injunction that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML," according to an announcement by the plaintiff, Toronto-based i4i Inc.

Judge Davis ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages. The abstract of the i4i patent reads,

A system and method for the separate manipulation of the architecture
and content of a document, particularly for data representation and
transformations. The system, for use by computer software developers,
removes dependency on document encoding technology. A map of metacodes found in the document is produced and provided and stored separately from the document. The map indicates the location and addresses of metacodes in the document. The system allows of multiple views of the same content, the ability to work solely on structure and solely on content, storage efficiency of multiple versions and efficiency of
operation.

While I am not a big fan of Microsoft, even I have to admit that this is crazy. But wait a minute! Didn't Microsoft get a patent last week for "Word-processing document stored in a single XML file that may be manipulated by applications that understand XML."

The abstract of the Microsoft patent reads,

A word processor including a native XML file format is provided. The well formed XML file fully represents the word-processor document, and fully supports 100% of word-processor's rich formatting. There are no feature losses when saving the word-processor documents as XML. A published XSD file defines all the rules behind the word-processor's XML file format. Hints may be provided within the XML associated files providing applications that understand XML a shortcut to understanding some of the features provided by the word-processor. The word-processing document is stored in a single XML file. Additionally, manipulation of word-processing documents may be done on computing devices that do not include the word-processor itself.

So, is someone playing tit-for-tat or an-eye-for-an-eye? Mahatma Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." In the weird, wonderful world of digital technology where greedy corporations can convert standards (that should rightfully belong in the commons) into private property, anything can happen.

The Power of Open Source Development

2009-08-07T04:04:00.000-07:00

This article of mine appeared in the August 2009 edition of Network Computing's India edition. Please feel free to translate, rewrite and publish it in your local geo to promote the message of open source. If this gets published elsewhere, kindly send me a copy/the link so that I get some sense of how useful this is.

The Power of Open Source Development

Using open source development methodologies, John O'Hara, of JPMorgan developed a standards-based alternative to expensive proprietary middle ware

By Venkatesh Hariharan

Most literature around open source focus on using open source software. While the benefits of OSS are gaining increased recognition, some smart organizations are going a step further and applying the Open Source Development Model (OSDM) to solve problems that proved to be otherwise intractable. OSDM is based on collaboration, community and the shared ownership of knowledge and Linux is one of the best examples of how this model works.

In September 1991, Linus Torvalds released 10,000 lines of source code for Linux and licensed it under the liberal General Public License that gave anyone permission to copy, modify and redistribute the code. The only condition was that anyone making improvements to the software and redistributing the changes had to share the improvements with the rest of the community. This liberal license attracted thousand of contributors over the years who contributed their bit to improving the code base of Linux. A Linux Foundation study found that Fedora, a community Linux distribution has now grown to contain almost 204 million lines of code.

There are two reasons why Linux and other open source software have demonstrated such explosive growth. One is the growth of the Internet, which is the largest collaborative platform in the history of mankind, connecting 1.4 billion people across the world. The other is the open, participative, distributed development model of open source where users are actually encourage to contribute to the development of the software. This is in sharp contrast to proprietary software that allows very limited rights to users.

Some of the most savvy technology users are embracing the participative nature of open source software to build technologies that suit their needs. For example, John O'Hara, senior architect and distinguished engineer at JPMorgan launched AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) as an open source project after being frustrated with developing front- and back-office processing systems at investment banks. “It seemed to me that we were living in integration Groundhog Day - the same problems of connecting systems together would crop up with depressing regularity. Each time the same discussions about which products to use would happen, and each time the architecture of some system would be curtailed to allow for the fact that the chosen middleware was reassuringly expensive,” says O'Hara.

In 2003, O'Hara embarked on a quest to standardize MOM (message-oriented middleware) technology, to enable mission critical enterprise applications to send messages to each other in a reliable and scalable manner. He decided to break from the past by using OSDM to start the AMQP project and sought Red Hat's expertise in governing open source projects. “Red Hat took the lead in establishing the legal framework for the standard; it, too, understood the issues in managing open intellectual property. The key part of doing this is to ensure that everyone contributing has the authority to do so and that there is a paper trail from every potential owner of IP through to the group effort, and that the intent to share is clear even in draft revisions of specifications. The result was a contract that clearly committed the members of the working group to promote unrestricted open middleware through AMQP.” For developing the software, O'Hara tapped iMatix, a boutique European development house that had clearly demonstrated a commitment to open source.
The AMQP project is a perfect example of what Prof. Eric Von Hippel, Professor of Innovation at MIT's Sloan School of Management calls, “user-driven innovation.” In his book, Democratizing Innovation, Von Hippel says that open source software projects are exciting examples of complete innovation development and consumption communities run by and for users. Today, users like Credit Suisse, Deutsche Börse Systems, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase Bank Inc, the TWIST consortium and others partner with IT leaders like Cisco, Red Hat, Microsoft and others in the AMQP consortium.

Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. AMQP today has several implementations in open source and proprietary software. Imatix built an open-source implementation called, OpenAMQP. The beta version went live in 2006 and by the following year it was supporting 2,000 users on five continents and processing 300 million messages per day. Today, there are several open source and proprietary implementations of AMQP, including OpenAMQ, the original open source implementation. In a powerfully interconnected world, the open source development model used to build AMQP demonstrates the the power—and value—of collaborative software development.

Delaying tactics from industry associations?

2009-07-21T04:34:00.000-07:00

Update: Last week, NASSCOM invited me to meet them and I am trying to work out a suitable date.

I am told that industry associations have asked for more time to submit the views of their members and therefore Department of IT has postponed the next meeting of the Apex Committee to review the Draft Open Standards Policy. The meeting was to have happened on 15th July, 2009 but will now probably be held in August 2009.

Now here is the interesting bit. The industry associations asked for more time so that they could go back to their members and ask for their opinions. And here, I am trying to break down the doors of NASSCOM to submit Red Hat's opinion and what do I get? Dead silence. I hear that their deadline was June 7th and then extended to June 15th and I don't know if there is a new cut-off date. But I do know that despite writing to NASSCOM, I haven't heard back from them.

Is this one more ploy to delay a policy that has already been long delayed?

A (non) conversation with NASSCOM

2009-07-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

I wrote to NASSCOM asking for a copy of their submission to DIT on Open Standards. This is their reply and my reply to them. For the record, my reply asking for details was sent yesterday around 4PM. No reply yet on how they submitted an "industry view" without consulting some of us forgotten souls in the industry.

Dear Mr. Hariharan,

Thank you for your email sent to Mr. Som Mittal. NASSCOM has yet to
submit its recommendations to the revised National e-Gov Standards
Policy and we will send them our recommendations once we submit it to
DIT.

Regards,

Dear XYZ,

Thanks for the prompt reply. According to the minutes of the second
meeting of the Apex Committee [1], "Mr. Rajdeep of NASSCOM re-iterated
that government should allow multiple standards at any instance."

The minutes adds that, "Secretary DIT and DG (NIC) suggested that
NASSCOM and MAIT should have an industry consultation on the revised
draft Policy and come out with a collective view ensuring that the
objectives of open standards are fully met and achievable. Both the
members i.e. NASSCOM & MAIT have agreed to do so and suggested to come
back to DIT with the industry view by 7-8th July 09."

Based on the above, I have a couple of questions:

1) Will Red Hat's views be taken into consideration when submitting
inputs to the Apex Committee?

2) What was the process that was followed when Mr. Rajdeep submitted the
NASSCOM's views recorded in the minutes of the second meeting of the
Apex Committee?

As a member, we are seriously interested in the above questions since
open standards is a critical issue for the future of e-Governance and
the IT industry.

We look forward to hearing from you at the earliest.

Prodyut Bora's Blog on Open Standards

2009-07-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

Prodyut Bora, Head of the IT Cell of the Bharatiya Janata Party has put up a blog post titled, When Commercial Considerations and National Interests Collide. Bora was one of the main architects of the BJP's IT Vision that supported open source and open standards. Commenting on NASSCOM's push for the inclusion of multiple standards in the Department of IT's Draft Policy on Open Standards for e-governance, Bora says:

[...] the current demand for multiple standards by Nasscom is misplaced. Multiple standards would introduce duplicacy and reduce perfect interoperability between competing products. Whereas a single open standard would remove entry barriers and encourage innovation by small local firms with limited risk appetite, multiple standards would favour market-dominating multinational Goliaths and the Indian software services majors that make money by servicing such Goliaths. Multiple standards would also result in unnecessarily high costs incurred in writing ‘bridge’ code to connect different products, and things like data migration.

It is because of such short-sightedness in the past that we have landed up with a plethora of identity systems—Election ID Card, PAN Card, Ration Card—before finally the wisdom of a unified ID system dawned.

So far, the Government has very wisely thought in terms of an ‘open’ IT ecosystem. But where commercial considerations and national interests have collided, Nasscom very sadly seems to have favoured the former.

I hope that the folks at DIT listen and finalize the policy soon!

Draft on open source standards splits IT industry: Economic Times Report

2009-07-08T03:37:00.000-07:00

Economic Times carried a news report on the Draft IT Policy. For the last two or more years while the policy has been in the works, not a peep was heard out of NASSCOM or MAIT. Last month, when the policy was close to finalization, they argued for including royalty-based standards and the use of multiple standards for the same domain. According to the Economic Times report:
[] NASSCOM, the apex body for software companies, is vehemently opposed to the idea of a single and royalty-free standard. “Ways can be worked out commercially to make a large e-governance project viable. Making everything patent-free may not be a commercial proposition as there might not be good standards available. On the other hand, adopting a single standard may constrict the country to adopt an old standard, if a new and better standard emerges in future. We support multiple standards which ensure interoperability at zero cost,” says Rajdeep Sehrawat, VP, Nasscom.
If the Automobile Association of India took a cue from NASSCOM's stand on multiple standards and argued that cars sold in India should have right hand or left hand drives (the choice being that of the vendor, of course) the number of accidents would go up exponentially. Now, if users also demanded their, ahem, "rights," and said, "We should have a choice of which side of the road we should drive on," accidents will go up another exponential level. The point is that standards are collective choices that are imposed upon society for the better of all. I have no choice in deciding which side of the road I can drive on, but my life is better off for it. How many standards do you wish to use? Do you want two different standards for web pages and the corresponding mess of pages not displaying properly? There is only one single HTML standard because the vision of the creators of the web was to unify people, not divide them. The best standards, like HTML and Unicode are those that are universally supported.

NASSCOM's Mr. Sehrawat says, "On the other hand, adopting a single standard may constrict the country to adopt an old standard, if a new and better standard emerges in future. We support multiple standards which ensure interoperability at zero cost.”

Is India "constricted" because we have adopted "old standards" like HTML and Unicode? The world migrated from ASCII to Unicode and is migrating from HTML to XML-based web pages even as we speak. The "multiple standards which ensure interoperability at zero cost" is a nice Trojan Horse to sneak in proprietary standards.

Finally, will NASSCOM's suggestions benefit India? No, because the vast majority of standards are controlled by entities that lie outside our borders. If accepted, NASSCOM (and MAIT's) suggestions will mean that the country will pay huge royalties to foreign outfits. Does anyone remember what happened to us when the British East India Company came to us with a similar proposal?

Last minute dramas around around Open Standards

2009-07-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Now that India's Draft Policy on Open Standards is close to finalization, the usual last-minute dramas are on. In a new twist, I am told that NASSCOM and MAIT have submitted their recommendations, purportedly on behalf of the industry. If this is indeed the case, my organization, Red Hat was not consulted. I also checked with IBM and they too were not consulted. Since Red Hat and IBM have been key players in this area, this is definitely intriguing. I shot off a letter to both MAIT and NASSCOM and a copy of the letter to NASSCOM is reproduced below. It is self explanatory. The letter to MAIT had minor editorial changes but is essentially the same letter.

To,

Mr. Som Mittal,

President,

NASSCOM,

International Youth Centre,
Teen Murti Marg,
Chanakyapuri,
New Delhi 110 021
Phone: 91-11- 2301 0199

Dear Sir,

We have been informed that NASSCOM has submitted its opinion on the Draft Open Standards Policy for e-governance to the Department of Information Technology, Government of India. We have been informed that NASSCOM's submission supports the inclusion of standards under Reasonable and Non Discriminatory (RAND) terms and also the usage of multiple standards in the same domain.

Red Hat has been actively involved in the standards issue and we would like to place on record that we have not been consulted by NASSCOM before this submission was made. We DO NOT support the above recommendations of NASSCOM for the following reasons.

1) Standards should belong to humanity and not be controlled or owned by anyone. In the physical world, we do not pay for using standards like weights and measures. These are norms of civil society that have evolved over centuries and the digital world should be no exception to these norms.

2) In order to protect India's digital sovereignty, we must ensure that national data is stored in formats that are open and free of all encumbrances like royalties, patent claims etc. The Government is the custodian of data that belongs to the citizens of India. It must therefore ensure that this data is not stored in formats that are owned and controlled by anyone.

3) e-Government data like land records etc remain relevant for hundreds of years. If this data is stored in proprietary formats, it will prove expensive for the country in the long-term. It is also seen that proprietary formats are controlled by monopolistic outfits that (a) drive the adoption of a technology (b) file a thicket of patents around that technology and (c) litigate or threaten litigation if royalties are not paid. India must avoid getting into this trap at all costs.

4) For each application area, there must be only a single standard. The use of multiple standards will lead to tremendous complications in the practice of e-governance. Since data is at the heart of e-governance, the confusion created by using multiple e-government standards in the same domain may bring e-governance to a stand still. For example, if different government departments use different standards for document storage, it could greatly slow down or even thwart the process of exchanging files among government departments.

5) Vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementation. The most popular standards like HTML and Unicode are standards that are supported by a vast number of industry players. Multiple standards in the same domain leads to fragmentation. It also helps vendors who can leverage their marketing muscle to drive users towards their own proprietary standards instead of open standards that are created through collaboration and consensus.

6) The Draft Open Standards Policy for e-governance has been in the works for the last two years and several public consultations have been held on this subject. NASSCOM's presence was not visible at any of these consultations and therefore a comment being made at this late stage, when the policy is close to being finalized is surprising. The two recommendations (RAND terms and multiple standards), if accepted, will lead to nullifying the work of the committee that has toiled for the last two years to create this policy because it will land us back to the current status quo dominated by multiple, proprietary standards.

7) We welcome the acknowledgment of open source in the policy. Both open source and open standards are inclusive movements and are therefore closely related to each other. In India, open source is now an integral part of many mission-mode e-government projects and it mention in this policy recognizes its long-term strategic importance in the e-Government sector.

8) We have reviewed version 1.15 of the Draft Policy and would like to place on record our appreciation of the excellent work done by this committee. The Draft Policy does an great job of protecting India's digital sovereignty and avoiding the clutches of proprietary standards. We therefore request NASSCOM's help and support in ensuring that the policy is approved "as is" without any further dilution.

With warm regards,

Venkatesh Hariharan
Corporate Affairs Director
Red Hat

My own little post on Rahul Gandhi

2009-05-31T00:50:00.000-07:00

Last week, the papers were full of Rahul Gandhi, and talked about how India's heir-apparent has infused fresh life into the Congress party. When Red Hat chairman, Matthew Szulik was in India in 2005, we had faxed across a meeting request to Rahul's office. The very next day, we got a call confirming the meeting. Javed Tapia, who then headed Red Hat India, Szulik and myself met with Rahul. As an aside, Szulik is a passionate speaker on open source in education and it was one such speech that made me join Red Hat. Szulik updated Rahul on what is happening with open source around the world and tabled a request that the Indian syllabus should stop mandating proprietary software and endorsing brand names.

We spent around 30 minutes with Rahul. During the meeting he spoke very little but listened intently. He agreed with our point that the syllabus should stop endorsing brand names. While he did not speak much, it was clear that he had oodles of charisma, helped along by that famous dimpled smile. The lasting impression was that of someone who is a very pleasant human being, very understated and with absolutely no desire to show off. For that reason alone, I wish him and the new UPA government great success.

PS: In complete contrast was our effort to secure a meeting with the then IT Minister, Dayanidhi Maran. His secretary said that he would grant a meeting only if we promised to invest crores of rupees to set up a development center in Chennai. I conned the secretary into granting us an appointment but the meeting did not add up to anything.

Another one joins the Hall of Shame

2009-05-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

I tried to pay my insurance premium online at the HDFC Insurance web site but literally drew a blank. This is the e-mail I sent them.

I am using Firefox 3.0.2 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and am not able to enter data into the "Old Password" text field. Please see the attached screen shot. Can you kindly look into this and have it fixed?

Venky

This is the reply that I got from HDFC Insurance.

Dear Mr. Venkatesh,

Greetings from HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. Ltd!

With regard to your e-mail, we would like to inform you that our website works on Internet Explorer version 6.0 or higher version. Hence we request you to kindly login to 'My Account' using Internet Explorer version 6.0. It is not compatible on other browsers

We hope to have addressed your query.

Please write to us for any further clarifications you may require.

We assure you the best of our services always.

Warm regards,

Customer Service Officer

This is what I sent to them on getting the above.

As someone involved with the IT industry for 17 years, I would like to point out that using open standards is one of the key principles for good software development. It seems that your web site has been developed using closed standards that work only on one particular browser. That could cause you to lose customers because Firefox, Safari, Opera and other browsers are becoming more popular.

I do not use Internet Explorer nor do I ever intend to use it. I have insurance policies with LIC and Max New York Life and I have never had a problem using their web sites because their sites conform to open standards like W3C (see www.w3c.org). I also use online banking sites like ICICI with my Firefox browser and have had no problems.

To be blunt, using closed standards is sloppy programming practice and it will benefit HDFC Insurance if this is rectified immediately.

Venky

Let us see how they handle this. By the way, what happened to the Linux-Delhi Hall of Shame? I couldn't find it on the Linux-Delhi web site.

Congress government must increase public access to data

2009-05-24T08:55:00.000-07:00

One of the Obama Government's objectives is to increase transparency in government and public access to data. Towards this end, it has set up Data.gov.

The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

This is the kind of openness that we need to see more of in India. Once data gets into the steel trap of the government, it can be cussedly difficult to extract it. A good case in point is the Indian Patent Office. Patents are supposed to be a monopoly on an invention granted to an inventor in return for disclosure. This disclosure is supposed to help society to build on existing knowledge and avoid reinventing the wheel. Even USA, which is considered to have the most permissive patenting regime in the world, has a freely accessible database of patents at USPTO.gov. However, extracting patents from the Indian Patent Office is like a root-canal operation. My friends inform me that recently it took them six weeks to obtain copies of patents and required several follow-ups and representation to the higher ups.

This is an intolerable state of affairs. As a citizen, the patent information is yours by right. Yet, you have to pay Rs 4,000 to get a copy of a patent. On top of that, you have to supplicate in front of a officer whose salary is paid out of the money that you pay as a tax payer. At several levels, this is a subversion of the original intent of the patent system, which is to increase access to new inventions and ideas. Also, consider the fact that this travesty is happening within the context of a civilization that believes that knowledge shall set you free! This is just one instance of a system that has been perversely twisted to deny citizens access to data that rightfully belongs to them.

While the BJP did not win the elections, one of the proposals that I really liked within their IT Vision was that of replacing the Right to Information Act with a Duty to Inform Act that puts the onus on the government to share information with its citizens. In the long run, I think this is the way to go and with the technology at our disposal, we no longer have excuses to keep public data out of the reach of Indian citizens.

Business Week names Prof. Phatak among India's 50 most powerful

2009-05-15T07:15:00.000-07:00

Business Week recently named Prof. DB Phatak among India's 50 most powerful people. For those who know him well, this is no surprise. The citation reads:

An open-source evangelist, Phatak, head of Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, IIT Bombay, has inspired and helped an entire generation of youngsters morph into thought leaders. One of the most respected teachers, Phatak is always surrounded by his students and has made computer science a much sought-after stream not just at IIT but at other Indian universities as well. To reach out to a larger student universe including rural India, Phatak started Eklavya, an online distance-learning program for the IITs.

As a journalist working for Prof. Phatak, I used to interact often with him because he is one of those rare people loved by journalists for his ability to come up with quotable quotes for any occasion. Later, I worked with him to put together the ekalavya/Red Hat Scholarships program. Prof. Phatak passionately believes that open source can help India as a country and that it offers great benefits for Indian education in particular. It is therefore apt that IIT Bombay is leading a project that aims at Adoption of Open Source Software in Science and Engineering Education under the National Mission on Education through ICT project of the Ministry for Human Resources Development.

Several generations of India's IT leaders have learnt under the tutelage of Prof. Phatak who is a very popular figure in the IIT Bombay campus. Despite his accomplishments, he retains a child-like curiosity and enthusiasm for new ideas and projects. One of the most entrepreneurial professors in India, he has tremendous stamina for work. He is an inspiring speaker and I once heard him address a group of sales and support staff and he was able to captivate them from the word go and talk to each of these groups in their own language.

Once, while he was addressing the Mumbai GNU/Linux User Group I noticed that his belt had a prominent Playboy logo on it. Imagine that, an IIT Bombay professor wearing a Playboy belt. When I pointed this out to him, he nonchalantly replied that the belt belonged to his son who forgot to pack it while leaving. One of his students told me this gem called "Phatak's leaky stack algorithm" and those who have been part of the professor's round table discussions will vouch for its truth. The algorithm goes thus. The first person to enter Prof. Phatak's room gets a slice of his attention. The next person to enter gets another slice and so on and so forth. Since people are always walking in and out of Prof. Phatak's room, the first person (now firmly at the bottom of the stack) finally gets up and leaves.

At the age of 61, Prof. Phatak retains a mischevious glint in his eye, a quality that he shares with another Prof. Isaac, another IIT professor legendary for his absent-mindedness. If you have got tales of Prof. Isaac or Prof. Phatak to share, please post them in the comments. I'd love to hear them.

Prof. Phatak is also an intensely patriotic person. On his web site he says:

Dr. Phatak's dream is to see a resurgent India catching up with the world using Information Technology as the spring board. He hopes to make IT work for the millions of Indians so as to enable them to lead an honorable, comfortable and peaceful life full of love and harmony.

Those who followed the OOXML saga know how upset he was with Microsoft for the extent to which they stooped in their efforts to get India's No vote on OOXML overturned.

Over the last 18 years in the IT industry, it has been my privilige to meet and work with several wonderful human beings and Prof. Phatak is right there at the top of that list.

FOSS for GOI supported project for Power Sector

2009-05-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

HS Rai has an excellent post titled, "FOSS for GOI supported project for Power Sector" that I liked very much. I commented on his post and have copied it below.

As a tax payer, I am dismayed so see public money being wasted in reinventing the wheel again and again and again. What we need to build are code repositories for common government applications like treasury, municipal management etc and issue diktats that vendors build their services around these code repositories. In the US, hospitals have been (re)using the VistA (Veterans health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) software developed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs. The source code for this software is available at www.sourceforge.net/projects/openvista . The new American CTO, Aneesh Chopra “gets” what open source is all about:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10142626-38.html

The commonwealth of Virginia is undertaking a variety of
initiatives to improve aspects of governance in areas like health care
and education, said Aneesh Chopra, Virginia’s secretary of technology.

On February 23, the commonwealth will debut the Virginia physics
“flexbook,” Chopra said–Web-based instructional materials that cover
areas of physics in which Virginia’s traditional curriculum is lacking.

The commonwealth partnered with the nonprofit CK-12 Foundation to
provide an open-source platform on which new content can be quickly
published. Virginia officials solicited contributions to the text from
around the country. The contributions were subject to a series of
academic reviews.

“Virginia will have its first physics flexbook for teachers to rip,
mix, and burn and to incorporate into their educational coursework,”
Chopra said.

He said the process was faster than the traditional means of
changing coursework, and it was one example of how a robust information
technology infrastructure was helping the government better serve people.

“You can make information more accessible, collaborate more, and
people can do more to hold their elected officials more accountable,”
Chopra said.

Why are we using old, ancient, pathetically fragmented, hideously expensive proprietary software development models when far superior models exist? I agree that it is time to start a serious campaign and get governments to use the open source development model based on Collaborative Innovation and not just use open source software. My article on Collaborative Innovation is at:

www.osindia.blogspot.com/2009/02/collaborative-innovation-video.html

Thanks for this nice post. If the Indian government takes your advice, it will save thousands of crores of rupees!

Andy Grove: Patents Are Like Mortgage Backed Securities

2009-05-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

In one of my previous posts, I had talked about how patents (particularly software patents) are another bubble ready to burst. I also talked about how global patent trolls are now coming to India. Now, Techdirt has an article that quotes Andy Grove, former chairman of Intel and author of the book, Only the paranoid survive, comparing how patents have become like the mortgage-backed securities that caused the current financial meltdown.

The true value of an invention is its usefulness to the public. Patents themselves have become products. They're instruments of investment traded on a separate market, often by speculators motivated by the highest financial return on their investment....

The patent product brings financial derivatives to mind. Derivatives have a complex relationship with an underlying asset. While there's nothing wrong with them in principle, their unfettered use has damaged the financial services industry and possibly the entire economy.

Do these patent instruments put us on a similar road? I fear our patent system increasingly serves those who invest in the patent products... It may be time to use Jefferson's principle as a test and ask if we meet it.

When Andy Grove becomes paranoid about something, you and I better watch out!

Reaping the benefits of open source

2009-04-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

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
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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.

The "computer programme per se" conundrum

2009-04-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

In a previous blog entry, I had mentioned how the Draft Patent Manual interprets Section 3(k) of the Indian Patent Act in a manner that allows software patents a back-door entry. I had also mentioned in a previous post how the term "per se" in Section 3(k) which says, “A mathematical or business method or a computer programme per se or algorithms are not patentable” leaves a lot of room for mischief. Knowledge Commons has submitted an unambiguous definition for the term "computer programme per se" which would be in tune with the intent of the Indian Parliament, which deleted a proposed amendment to Section 3(k) that said, “a computer programme per se other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware; a mathematical method or a business method or algorithms.” Prabir Purkayastha, Chairman of Knowledge Commons lead the creation of this definition. Prabir is one of the few people I know who can climb the rareified heights of strategy and also roll up his sleeves the next moment and work on nuts-and-bolts issues that need to get done. This definition would just not have been possible without him. Richard Fontana of Red Hat, Mishi Chowdhury of Software Freedom Law Center, Tahir Amin and Jaijit Bhattacharya also provided valuable inputs that went into the final submission to the Indian Patent Office that reads:

Computer programme per se in the relevant clause means (a) any computer programme in the abstract, (b) any computer programme expressed in source code form, including source code recorded on an information storage medium, or (c) any computer programme that can be executed or executes on a general purpose computer, including computer programme object code designed for execution on a general purpose computer that is recorded on an information storage medium. An information storage medium means any disc, tape, perforated media or other information storage device, which, if fed into or located in a computer or computer based equipment is capable of reproducing any information, other than an information storage medium that itself represents an inventive contribution to the art. A general-purpose computer here means a device capable of running multiple unrelated programs, often simultaneously for different purposes. It will comprise at least of: (1) one or more central processing units, (2) one or more input devices that are not specific to any one program, (3) memory, (4) one or more non volatile mass storage devices, and (5) one or more output devices. However, a general-purpose computer does not include a device that itself represents an inventive contribution to the art.

Under the foregoing definitions, a claim that merely recites software elements without any reference to hardware is per se unpatentable. If a claim recites both software elements and hardware elements, but the hardware elements amount to nothing more than reference to the components of a general purpose computer on which the software is executed, or an information storage medium in which the software is stored, such that the only possibly inventive aspect of the claim resides in the software elements, then the claim is not patentable. If the software/general purpose computer is combined with other hardware, and the inventive contribution resides primarily in the software or in the software in combination either with components of the general-purpose computer or in an information storage medium, then the claim is not patentable. If the claim recites software elements and hardware elements, and the hardware elements themselves are an inventive contribution to the art, then the claim may be patentable, provided that the claim as a whole is such that the pre-requisites of novelty, non-obviousness and utility are met.

New Obama CTO, Aneesh Chopra, gets open source

2009-04-20T03:38:00.000-07:00

After months of speculation, Obama has finally appointed Aneesh Chopra as Chief Technology Officer for USA. Tim O'Reilly has a ringing endorsement of Chopra. This CNet report indicates that Chopra "gets" what open source is all about.

The commonwealth of Virginia is undertaking a variety of initiatives to improve aspects of governance in areas like health care and education, said Aneesh Chopra, Virginia's secretary of technology.
On February 23, the commonwealth will debut the Virginia physics "flexbook," Chopra said--Web-based instructional materials that cover areas of physics in which Virginia's traditional curriculum is lacking.
The commonwealth partnered with the nonprofit CK-12 Foundation to provide an open-source platform on which new content can be quickly published. Virginia officials solicited contributions to the text from around the country. The contributions were subject to a series of academic reviews.
"Virginia will have its first physics flexbook for teachers to rip, mix, and burn and to incorporate into their educational coursework," Chopra said.
He said the process was faster than the traditional means of changing coursework, and it was one example of how a robust information technology infrastructure was helping the government better serve people.
"You can make information more accessible, collaborate more, and people can do more to hold their elected officials more accountable," Chopra said.

Digital Sovereignty

2009-04-05T02:05:00.000-07:00

In the past, I have mentioned how Digital Sovereignty happens to be the pet theme of my friend, Jaijit Bhattacharya of Sun Microsystems. He has finally written a small op-ed piece on this subject for Business Standard. Jaijit has done a huge amount of research on how standards are being colonized and why India must avoid the trap of standards with IPR issues if we are to preserve our digital sovereignity. He quotes the example of DVD manufacturers in China:

A very good example of the devastating effect of the current IPR regime is the case of the DVD manufacturers in China who have to pay royalty charges on each DVD player manufactured that is to the tune of 33 per cent of the retail price of the DVD player, for a video format standard that is used ($20 royalty on a player of $60). China was helpless in preventing such an unfair cess being put on its domestic industry, demonstrating its lack of digital sovereignty at that point in time.

During the OOXML debate, I had the pleasure of watching Jaijit at work inside the LITD15 committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards, which reviewed and finally voted against OOXML. Despite the massive amount of muscle power that Microsoft had invested to push OOXML down India's throat, Jaijit refused to be overawed. Using his computer science background to great advantage, he was constantly exposing the key flaws in Microsoft's proposed OOXML standard. One memory that lingers from the numerous BIS meetings is that of Jaijit, in full professorial flow, using marker pens and the whiteboard to demolish some of the key arguments in support of OOXML.

If Jaijit was all fire and brimstone, there was one person who was icy cool throughout the 18 long months and endless, argumentative meetings on OOXML. Ashish Gautam of IBM contributed immensely to the discussions with his thorough understanding of the arcane rules of ISO, that most of us were grappling with for the first time in our lives. His ability to stay focused and highlight the right point at the right time went a long way in ensuring that the loopholes in ISO's processes were not exploited by the proponents of OOXML.

Apart from Jaijit and Ashish, there were countless bureaucrats and policy makers who deserve enormous credit for ensuring that Microsoft did not ride roughshod over India's policy making bodies, but that will have to wait for another day when I have the time to write a lengthy post on how the OOXML battle was won. the time being, let me end by agreeing with Jaijit's statement that,

It is imperative for India to ensure that it is a serious player in formulating digital standards in order to ensure security of its IT industry and to maintain its digital sovereignty.

Jai ho!

BJP's IT Vision supports open source and open standards

2009-03-14T02:22:00.000-07:00

The BJP, the largest opposition in India has released an IT Vision document that endorses open source and open standards. Many of the points mentioned in the FOSS Manifesto for India that we put up online last week have been incorporated in this document.

This document was unveiled by none other than Shri. LK Advani, the BJP's candidate for Prime Minister. I did a quick read of the 40 page document and am impressed with how thorough and comprehensive it is. As a long time supporter of free and open source software, I am delighted to see a major Indian political party endorse it. However, I am even more delighted to see that this endorsement is rooted in a comprehensive vision for India's development. A big chunk of the credit for this document should go to Shri. Sudheendra Kulkarni (an alumnus of IIT Bombay) and Shri Prodyut Bora (an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad). Shri Kulkarni was advisor to Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee when Vajpayee was prime Minister of India and Shri Bora is Head of the IT Cell of the BJP.

I was happy to see that the Digital Colonization theme that my friend, Jaijit Bhattacharya of Sun talks about has been incorporated in this document. Apart from the FOSS Manifesto, some of my key passions on open standards (that we don't pay for standards like weights and measures in the physical world, so why should we pay for standards in the digital world?) have been reflected. Also, as a co-founder of IndLinux.org which we started in 2000 in an attempt to bridge the digital divide, I am happy to see that the BJP has promised to create a National Mission for Indian Language Computing.
The CPI(M), another national party in India has always been a strong supporter of our stand on open source, open standards and our fight against software patents. We are hopeful that other political parties will also take cognizance of the FOSS Manifesto and incorporate the same
into their IT plans for India.

With the country schedule to go to polls next month, we now have a broad consensus emerging around the use of open source and open standards. This is great news for all of us who believe in free and open source software!

Microsoft-Novell, Once Hot and Heavy, Cooling Down

2009-03-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

Channel Web has this article on how the Microsoft-Novell deal is cooling off. Microsoft's multi-million dollar deal to resell Suse Linux subscriptions was like Coke selling Pepsi, an unreal deal between two competitors. When I first read about the deal, my sense was that it would fizzle out in a couple of years. As a journalist, during the dot-com boom, one has been witness to countless dog-and-pony shows but none of these short-term tamashas can substitute for a robust business model.

In some ways, this is a real pity because if any company could have provided some competition to Red Hat in the enterprise Linux space, it was Novell. When Novell purchased Suse, I was asked by a journalist for my opinion. My take was that Novell has established channels and a large support team in India for Novell NetWare and if they successfully transition this team to Suse, Red Hat would have a tough competitor on their hands. That transition never happened. If Novell had succeeded, it would have expanded the overall Linux market and that would have been great for open source.

A year after the deal, I joined Red Hat and one of the first things I came across was our chairman Matthew Szulik's famous quip, "It's a marathon, not a sprint." It seems so easy to set up an enterprise Linux business. Download the source code, build a distribution, hire a bunch of smartly dressed salespeople and voila! you have an enterprise Linux business. But, as even mighty Oracle found out, it ain't that easy.

Building a distro may be the easy part, but the really hard (and unglamorous) part is ensuring that thousands of underlying hardware configurations and thousands of software programs that run on top of the distro are certified and supported. This is truly a marathon and not a sprint. The day somebody is seriously ready for the marathon, Red Hat will have competitors.

A request to sign the FOSS Manifesto

2009-03-09T04:51:00.000-07:00

The FOSS Manifesto (see previous post) has finally been put up as an online petition. It upon political parties to make FOSS usage and promotion a central part of the IT, e-government and education plans in their election manifestos. I request all FOSS supporters to sign the same at the earliest. Thanks to Vinay and IT For Change for hosting this and to Arun of FSF Kerala for egging me to write this and to all those who provided their feedback!

A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties

2009-02-05T05:03:00.000-08:00

With elections approaching in April 2009, it was time to create a draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties. This is a first draft and I have written this keeping in mind that most Indian politicians would not be familiar with FOSS. hence, the usage of simple language that anyone can understand. If you feel that any section here needs improvement, please let me know. Comments/suggestions welcome.

A draft FOSS manifesto for Indian political parties

The Free and Open Source Software community in India calls upon political parties to make FOSS usage and promotion a central part of the IT, e-government and education plans in their election manifestos. FOSS is software which is liberally licensed to grant the right of users to study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code. The open, inclusive and participatory nature of FOSS is a natural fit for the vibrant traditions of Indian democracy. Since software is the foundation of the knowledge economy, India's IT infrastructure should be built on FOSS and not on closed, proprietary software systems.

We believe that encouragement of FOSS will result in:

Development of the domestic IT industry
Creation of jobs
Encouragement of skills development and upgradation
Enable localization of software to Indian languages
Reduction of India's dependence on monopolistic proprietary software vendors
Encourage the usage of open standards
Bridging the digital divide
Rapid modernization and computerization of India's education system
Technology upgradation of India's Small and Medium Enterprises
Efficient usage of budget outlays for e-government
Faster technology development through Collaborative Innovation

We call upon political parties in India to support the Indian FOSS community by:

Encouraging the use of FOSS in Indian education system. This will inculcate the virtues of collaboration, sharing and participation in children from a very young age and make computerization of schools affordable.
Eliminating proprietary software from the education syllabus and making the syllabus vendor-neutral, thus giving teachers and students the choice of software that suits their budgets and needs.
Using FOSS in e-government to the maximum possible extent and ensuring that government tenders are open and do not favor proprietary software vendors. All software developed with tax-payers money should be released under a FOSS license to encourage collaboration; and the sharing of code and best practices.
Mandating the usage of open standards that are free from royalties and vendor lock-in so that the interaction between the government and citizens happens in a free and open manner befitting a democracy.
Encouraging freely shareable, FOSS based knowledge repositories like Wikipedia in Indian languages.
Encouraging the usage of the collaborative model of FOSS in scientific research. Science thrives on collaboration and the sharing of knowledge. The current trend of privatizing knowledge leads to secrecy in science and reduces collaboration. We must use the FOSS model based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of knowledge to spark a renaissance of knowledge in India.
Eliminating software and business method patents that have lead to huge amounts of litigation in developed countries. Indian traditions have held that knowledge grows by sharing and diminishes when hoarded. Patents on software and business methods grant undue monopolies on ideas and prevent independent invention and the sharing of knowledge.

India has one of the most youthful populations in the world and it is important that they have access to the tools with which the information society is built. The freedom to modify the source code, the ability to share knowledge and build communities make Free and Open Source Software the best, long-term model for India's development. We therefore urge all political parties to encourage the usage of FOSS for India's development.

Collaborative Innovation Video

2009-02-04T03:01:00.000-08:00

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!