*Free Software Free Knowledge Free Humanity*
*NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FREE SOFTWARE* IN KOCHI. DURING NOVEMBER, 2008. *ORGANISING COMMITTEE FORMATION MEETING* ON 18-09-2008 THURSDAY AT 5 PM. VENUE SEMINAR HALL MARINE SCIENCE CAMPUS FORESHORE ROAD ERNAKULAM. *SPONSORS*. COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. [EMAIL PROTECTED] PROJECT. APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY PROMOTION SOCIETY. OPEN SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS (INDUSTRIAL CO-OP SOCIETY *Your presence* *(Individual/Institution/Organisation)** * *in the organising committee is sincerely solicited and invited to attend the meeting on 18-09-2008.* Joseph Thomas For and on behalf of the preparatory committee. (amra 36, Automobile Road, Palarivattom, 682025) Phone 9447738369. 11-09-2008. Dear sir, The second National Conference on *Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)* is being proposed to be held at Kochi on the 15th & 16th of November, 2008, the first being the one held at Hyderabad in the year 2007. Program includes discussions on various IT , Free Software and Free knowledge related issues and Exhibition of GPL based packages and services. *THE 2007 NATIONAL CONFERENCE* The 2007 conference was hosted jointly by *FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION (FSF), INDIA*, the India chapter of the premier international voluntary organisation spearheading the free software movement and ensuring software freedom through General Public Licence regime, *SWECHA*, a voluntary organisation instituted and working for localisation of Free Software in Telugu and *THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF HYDERABAD*. A galaxy of eminent personalities participated. The Free Software supremo Mr. Richard Stallman, Ministers, Govt Departmental officers, Public Sector representatives etc were among them. The event drew appreciation for its organising and the content as well. A gist of alternatives were discussed in the domain of free software in demanding areas like *e-governance, school education, technical education, higher education and research avenues, geo-spatial data analysis and free software business models*. There were sessions which went beyond the software domain. These included *free knowledge and open access, localisation, media and activist interaction.*Social and legal issues related to FOSS were subject to elaborate discussions particularly related to the *use of* *IT in social domains and software patents.* * **850* *delegates* attended. *9 states* were represented. Students of engineering colleges were the largest set of participants. The program was appreciated by all and was prompted to be conducted every year. Hence, this second event. *THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE* The importance of Information Technology (IT) and its component Software needs no elaboration. IT is revolutionising the way people communicate with each other and the way institutions run their affairs including business. Internet has revolutionised the life of various communities and has provided yet another space, the cyber space, facilitating the people around globe to organise themselves in newer forms. While it has opened the possibility of communities of people in different parts of the world working together for a better future, it has also lead to increased reach of global corporations. IT has helped capital to become even more fluid and become free of local and national control. IT has enabled the industries to reduce its cost of production and marketing in movement of raw materials and produced goods by organising distributed production centres based on the availability of raw materials and markets and manage the entire process efficiently with the use of integrated data communication networks. The tools of IT, the software and the hardware have become tools in the hands of IT corporates to establish its hegemony, increasing the IT implementation cost, making it feasible for the large corporates alone, giving them an upper hand in the market against small and medium enterprises. Thus it has become a means of severe exploitation of the developing and under developed nations in the hands of the monopoly houses. India and Indian small and medium industries are no exception in this respect. Software, remaining in public domain till nineteen eighties, has become a tool for unprecedented exploitation with IPR made applicable for it too. The software professionals, witnessing the snatching away of their knowledge tool from them before their own eyes, have responded with the Free Software Movement and the General Public License (GPL) regime to prevent further private appropriation of the knowledge wealth. GPL may have application in many other areas as well. The importance of software is increasing day by day with the expansion of data communication networks, increased use of software and software functions replacing hardware functions. The convergence of voice-graph-script, the three different means of communication systems, till recently, into an integrated data communication system, has far reaching effect on every aspect of human activity, by way of integration of every thing that is related to information interchange. Days of compartmentalisation brought in by the departments of state as well as corporate governance has ended. All the resources of the organisation linked to well designed and structured Relational Data Bases updated through each operation taking place in the system with the help of an Integrated communication network provide the best ever tool for a comprehensive governance in every field. Ownership of Software, it being a form of knowledge, cannot be denied to the society at large or allowed to be appropriated by corporate houses and kept secret to perpetuate their hegemony. Withholding knowledge from the society results in preventing the development of society itself. This issue of software freedom is being debated world over. The freedom of knowledge established by the SWATHANTHRA SOFTWARE movement is used by the backward communities to fulfill their democratic aspirations and by the corporate houses for maximising their profits. Software platforms and tools that are free and accessible to the community have excelled the proprietary ones in quality of performance and network and data security features. Small and Medium enterprises, providing bulk of the employment, existence of which are being threatened at the hands of corporates in these days of globalisation, shall be empowered with these viable and empowering tools, for which development of HR in this area is critical. *THE ORGANISERS.* It is proposed that the IT Industrial units around Kochi shall join the team playing host to the second FOSS National Conference, the others being *COCHIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>*, [EMAIL PROTECTED] project of Govt of Kerala, APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY PROMOTION SOCIETY (ATPS), Kochi & OPEN SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS ICS LIMITED (OSSICS), Kochi. IPR in the realm of IT and software limits the market for IT services restricting the business for small and medium IT players on the one hand. On the other hand, a sizeable portion of the hard earned surplus of small and medium IT service providers are appropriated by IT corporates in the name of license fee, repeatedly charged on every version updation. *While, in a GPL regime the hard earned profit could be retained by the service providers themselves, improving their earnings and reducing the charges thereby expanding the market and business.* Aiming at empowering the small and medium players and reducing the cost of ownership, Govt of Kerala has already taken the policy decision to switch over its applications to GPL platforms and to promote the concept of Free Software and Free Knowledge. It is also proposed that the PSUs and small and medium enterprises, which provides bulk of the employment, in and around Kochi shall also join the team playing host to the Conference. PSUs and small and medium enterprises, still, confining themselves to the conventional file based manual operations and heavily dependent on conventional communication systems within and outside the organisation. They are finding it difficult to face the stiff competition from corporate houses carrying out their operations and communications online using modern IT tools, with uncomparable speed of operations and at reduced cost. Ofcourse, this is happening in the background of the on going drive for establishing the hegemony of global finance capital the world over. The prohibitively high cost of technology especially modern IT based systems due to the IPR driven monopoly existing in the IT service sector prevents the PSUs and small and medium enterprises, most of them already in the red, from opting for such modernisation. The need for keeping down the cost of technology demands indigenous development of technology and use of SWATHANTHRA SOFTWARE and other free knowledge based technologies. Academic institutions in and around Kochi are also invited to be part of the organisers as they are the ones groom the HR required for the entire areas of economic activities of the nation. The High Schools, both Govt and Aided, have already shifted to SWATHANTHRA SOFTWARE, with the [EMAIL PROTECTED] But schools under the other managements are still depending on proprietary platforms, increasing their cost as well as denying their wards of the enlightenment available with the generic terms and tools rather than proprietory ones. So also, the higher education sector denies the follow up required for the students coming out of High Schools. Those who are groomed in generic tools can manage any proprietary ones and not vice versa. Moreover, with the onslaught of proprietary systems, guided and provided by a since or few corporate houses, generic knowledge hitherto available in the social domain are lost and forgotten. The 2nd National Conference on SWATHANTHRA Software will deliberate all these issues and arrive at programs for promotion and popularisation of GPL concept, not only in Kerala, but in the entire Nation. Detailed schedule of conferences, seminars, workshops, discussions and exhibitions will be drafted by the organising committee during the coming days. You are requested to kindly attend or depute your representative to the organising committee formation meeting and be part of the organising committee being formed on 18-09-2008 at 5 pm in the Seminar Hall of Marine Science Campus of CUSAT off Foreshore Road, Ernakulam. Thanking you Yours Sincerely, Joseph Thomas For and on behalf of the preparatory committee. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
