Hello All,
This is with reference to the earlier discussions on OSS philosophy and
I have started a new thread for an idea to promote OSS production in
India. For the discussion, free OSS here will be refered to as free (as
in freedom) software.
Free software is generally looked upon as a conmmunity effort with
little monetory gains for the programmer himself. Those who install and
setup systems make money on the installation but the programmer may
generally get little. Most of the training institutes too train
students on the commercial closed source platforms as thats where they
make most money. Free software creation is still not very popular in
India due to lesser econimic gains for the programmer.
IMHO, free software can commercially sustain itself only if its creation
is sponsored in a way thats equivalent to what commercial software
creation gets. This sponsorship can come directly from corporates and
every other imaginable commercial establishments that make use of
computers. Now the question that comes up is why will they sponsor free
software creation? What do they get or benefit in return for their huge
donations? As an incentive, the donors can be provided free tech support
right from installation to maintainence in a limitted way and relative
to the amount of donation. The incentives can also include free writing
of drivers for special needs.
The programmers are paid market rates for
writing the softwares and the industry and commerce benefits by getting
free ( as in beer and freedom ) software thats stable, secure and
robust. This software can be posted on websites for anyone and everyone
to freely download and use. No one will ever have to use commercial or
pirated software and once the platform gains popularity, even institutes
will offer courses on oss platform. The commercial software makers too
will be forced to create software for open free data formats. Device
makers too will have to provide drivers for the oss platform.
As a heavily populated country, our industry is huge and very diverse
and even a few thousand rupees from the majority can be enough to
sustain foss growth. In return, they cut down their heavy software
expenditure. The FSF India or such organisations can set
guidelines for creating and running this model so that there are minimum
trouble areas and the system runs smoothly.
Regards,
Rony.
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