Responses to Guru's clarifying note have been very thorough and rich.
Let me try to engage with some elements of these responses.
As made clear in the referred note, public software is *not* a term
arising from categorisation of software based on licensing models.
(That is one of the basic elements of this concept.) Therefore it may
not be very meaningful to argue that this term is confused vis a vis
copyright licenses related issues. It is not intended to be 'public
domain software', as meaning irrevocable surrender of all forms of
copyrights vis a vis any software. We understand what is public domain
software, and that is not what is meant by public software. There is no
confusion in this regard.
As mentioned in the note, 'public software' is a term arising out of
categorizing software on basis of its uses, and relatedly, on the basis
of the nature and intentions of its users. Like there is this term
'business software' or even 'social software' both of which terms have
nothing to do with license conditions of the concerned software.
If 'public sector practices' and 'procedures' are meaningful terms, so
can public software also be, since software is really a set of digital
processes, like are paper based practices and procedures (I can also see
the difference but the point here is to look at the commonality) . We
consider the public sector as the larger 'public goods producing sector'
which is much more than just the governments. (This point in itself will
make for an interesting discussion, which we indeed should do.) We also
think that digital practices in the public sector (in this wider
meaning) should have very different starting points and logical basis
than that of commercial or business processes. It has always been so, in
the pre-digital and pre-neoliberal times. However, and this is the
unfortunate situation we consider very dangerous and want to confront,
digital technologies and processes have had this neoliberalising
influence on public/ social sector processes, procedures and general
thinking, whereby market/ commercial values and systems are considered
'natural' for the public / social sector as well. We at ITfC consider
this larger socio-political propensity of erosion of public values and
systems, vis a vis market/commercial values and systems, at least as
problematic as dangers to software related freedoms. (In my
understanding, this is *the* key issue on which many of us may differ.
And this difference largely underlies the present debate.)
The concept of 'public software' arose from this specific context and
problematique, and we consider the struggle represented by the concept
of 'public software' at least as important as that being done under the
FOSS banner. (One can easily see that the two struggles even if
overlapping may also in some important ways be different). We do
understand that different people here may rate and espouse the two
struggles differently. We also agree that there may, on the margins,
even be some trade offs involved between the two struggles, in being
more concerned with one of these struggles than the other. In this
regard, different people here will see these trade-offs differently.
Therefore, we neither think we will be able to, nor do we particularly
aim to, convince all with whom we work in the FOSS area that the use of
the term 'public software' in the way, and for the purpose, we are
trying to do, may be useful for the larger social goals we mostly share.
We are only hoping to make our context and intentions understood by our
partners in the FOSS community.
Lets say, a set of actors involved with the area of democratic
governance practices - from within governments and outside, and for
sure, there is a large civil society contingent active in the area of
democratic governance practices - get together and 'decide' that as
there are some generic characteristic that should inform processes of
democratic governance, some such characteristics should also apply to
all software used in (or as) governance processes, as well as software
used by non government institutions that are responsible and
accountable to the wider public. For instance, as for all offline
governance processes, all software used in the public sector should be
right to information compliant, should have open and transparent
processes to allow community monitoring, should allow public feedback as
built in processes, should be universally accessible including to those
with various disabilities etc etc. They then publish a set of criteria
for such software, and use the term 'public software' for software with
these characteristics, I cannot see how anyone can reasonably step up
and say, hey, you are doing the wrong thing!! (This is what precisely
happened at the two recent workshops on public software - one regional
and one international - which indeed came out with a set public software
principles. )
We want governments to bring out public software policies, which will
inter alia mention that FOSS is the most appropriate software licensing
model. I dont think any government is going to name its overall software
policy as FOSS policy, since no government will make it an absolute law
that only FOSS would ever be used by the governments. However the looser
public software term is something they can work with, because the term
'public' is highly nuanced, and yes, when required, flexible, which is
always required when dealing with real life larger social and political
realms.
On a somewhat different note, I think that the FOSS community needs to
also move its concepts and frameworks along (not at all meaning that
they should follow us in this regard) as the digital realities are fast
changing. It may have not addressed the context of networked digital
reality/ environment as much is needed to, and urgently. While many of
FOSS adherents here may never touch non FOSS software, or so they may
claim, can they say the same thing about the networked environment, I
mean over the Internet. What about google, facebook, twitter... do they
not use it. No I am not being cynical or fatalistic. I dont say we
should therefore surrender our purity. Only that we should also address
the new context and see what is our best bet in the new context. Keep
our eyes on our basic larger objectives, and not that much on what may
really be instrumentalities.
I wonder, when we are so strident vis a vis violations of freedom and
openness in non-networked digital environment, the general manner in
which the term software is used, how this list never discusses what is
happening to the openness and freedoms on the Internet. How Google sold
alway the principle of network neutrality (NN) just last month, because
it saw itself losing out in the mobile Internet environment. How
facebook is free (of data download charges) on Airtel , and the rest of
the Internet needs to be paid for, which is NN violation, how DoCoMo is
giving a boutique of a few select services on the Internet for Rs 50,
which again is a gross NN violation. With cloud computing taking over,
in which directions do our FOSS struggles go?
To me, tentatively, it appears that the term 'public' - public software,
public Internet, public search engines, public social networking sites
etc - may be quite useful, often, or at least at times, more than the
term 'open and free'. (The term public is here meant in the larger,
public goods and public interest, sense.) Our responses to the dangers
of a closed/ excluding/ non-egalitarian networked digital environment
would call for much larger partnerships than what have been successful
in the area of standalone software. There is this reference to
public-public partnerships in the mentioned ITfC note. It refers to
partnerships between public spirited actors outside and within
governments. Again, tentatively, I think that there has not been such a
clear response to the new dangers to the openness of, and freedoms vis a
vis, the Internet by FOSS community, because this new struggle clearly
requires figuring out ways to work along with governments and
regulators, and this perhaps requires a conceptual leap, or a leap of
faith :), many in FOSS community are not too ready to make.
Raymond, one of the pioneers of the open source movement, said /"If you
want to change the world, you have to co-opt the people who write the
big checks."/
Maybe, if only to set the balance right, now 'if you want to change the
world in the context of corporate dominated networked digital
environment, you may have to co-opt the people who work in (democratic/
welfarist) governments' (but without giving in to them).
Parminder
On Saturday 04 September 2010 02:52 PM, jtd wrote:
On Friday 03 September 2010 21:36:11 Guru गुरु wrote:
Dear friends,
A detailed note on public software, its rationale, convergence and
divergence with FOSS and its imperative is provided in this mail. A
PDF version is available on
http://public-software.in/sites/default/files/Note%20on%20public%20
software%20for%20FOSSCOMM%20-%20September%202010_0.pdf
regards
Guru
*Response on 'What is Public Software'*
*IT for Change*
The key issues raised in the mails
<http://lists.fosscom.in/pipermail/network-fosscom.in/2010-Septembe
r/002830.html> are: the term /Public Software /is a distortion of
/FOSS /and takes away the key principle of freedom implied in
/FOSS/; and that using these terms in a somewhat overlapping
manners causes confusion and introduces a new agenda which is
harmful to the FOSS movement and its goals.
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