http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/article956890.ece
The concept of Free Software, wherein knowledge is created by the
community for the community, without being driven by commercial
interests, must be extended to research to solve problems in health
care, agriculture, energy and safe drinking water, the former President
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, said.
He was speaking at the inauguration of the three-day National Convention
for Academics and Research on ‘Computing freedom for technology,
education and research,' organised by the Free Software Movement of
India (FSMI), a national coalition of regional free software movements,
on the Mahindra Satyam campus here on Thursday.
Mr. Kalam implored scientists, researchers and academics to embrace the
‘open source philosophy' in their respective fields, and work towards
building ‘open source networks' that can help pool talent, research and
know-how from around the world. Such a platform can help evolve
scientific solutions to problems, particularly those relevant to
developing countries.
“Why don't Free Software movements come together to create a network of
experts to work on providing free drinking water,” he asked the audience.
A valuable open source movement initiated in the Indian health care
sector is the Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD), a consortium led by the
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.
In the wake of the failure of market forces in this sector, the OSDD is
exploring new models of drug discovery and looking at innovative patent
regimes, Mr. Kalam said.
“Market forces discourage research-based pharmaceutical companies from
developing drugs for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis or malaria
that predominantly affect the developing world. It would be naive to
expect drug discovery for infectious diseases to become a lucrative
standard business model,” he explained.
So where the existing patent-driven models have failed, the OSDD
provides an alternative way of looking at Intellectual Property as a
tool of research.
“It is currently working on optimising a patented molecule as a drug.
OSDD plans to use this patent to ensure the drugs are affordable in the
market, by ensuring non-exclusive licensing. This is an innovative way
of using patents to the benefit of poor patients,” Mr. Kalam said.
He also alluded to the success of Android, the open mobile operating
system that has revolutionised mobile communication.
*Freedom in research*
West Bengal Minister for Information Technology Debesh Das emphasised on
the importance of freedom and independence in research. K. Gopinath of
the Indian Institute of Science spoke about why free code is critical in
science, citing examples of Free Software such as Muscle and Hammer used
in genetic science that have made a huge difference by allowing for
collaborative research.
The convention, which has over 500 professors, academics and researchers
participating, hosts workshops and tutorials offering training in FOSS
technologies in scientific and technological domains. It aims at
creating awareness on GNU/Linux software tools used in research.
Keywords: free software
<http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/article956890.ece#>, A.P.J.
Abdul Kalam
<http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/article956890.ece#>, FSMI
<http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/article956890.ece#>, open
source software
<http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/article956890.ece#>
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