Memorandum requesting Freedom of Knowledge and usage of Free Software
at CSIR
"Our scientists should become civic scientists and contribute towards
societal transformation. Civic means concerning or affecting the
community or the people. In the new capacity, scientists step beyond
their campuses, laboratories, ministries and institutes and move into
the center of their communities to engage in active dialogue and
action with their fellow citizens. They should ask themselves a
question, how their knowledge can make an impact on the common man's
life. Our civil servants and others in the service sector should
become fearlessly people-friendly, have a positive attitude, and
provide responsive, proactive, transparent and unbiased administration
and service to the billion people."
- from the Address to the Nation by the President of India
Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on the eve of the 55th Republic Day, 2004
The CSIR does valuable research, and its works are of direct use to
our industries, academic community and research scholars. This
memorandum is to request CSIR to adopt using free software, and its
philosophy, enabling more freedom in accessing the research works of
CSIR to enrich and ensure greater profits for our country.
I. Freedom of Knowledge
The current policy at CSIR centers around profiting directly by
managing and licensing patents and its other research publications and
findings. This memorandum seeks to reverse this policy, to enable free
access to the research generated through CSIR, for the following
reasons:
1) The CSIR is funded by the Government, and therefore, its research
findings and publications ought to be made freely and openly available
to the public, for free access by all citizens, including industries
and the academic community.
2) Duplication of research would be greatly avoided when the research
findings are made public and open, and further, advancement of science
is possible only when the academic community has free access to the
research publications.
4) Sharing of knowledge and wealth is inherent in our culture and
traditions as is evident from the evolution of vedic wisdom,
mathematics, grammar, epistemology, and knowledge touching every part
of our lives that became possible because of active debates on the
freely accessible texts and works of scholars. Copyrights and patents
put brakes on the growth of our veritable base of knowledge and
wisdom, and easing access to research resources would spur development
to greater heights. In the free software community, tools evolve
through debates, and bad ideas are rejected, leaving behind solid and
robust code. Our own rich traditions, and the success of the free
software movement prove and establish the scientific superiority of
freely sharing information. As long as the patent regime exists,
traditional Indian wisdom may be protected from abuse but ought to
remain free as ever for all to know, share, use and develop.
5) The contribution to our country of profits earned by CSIR by
managing and licensing its research outcome, would pale in comparison
to the profits earned by our entrepreneurs by using the knowledge
discovered and techniques perfected. If the knowledge relating to
making better pots or water filters is released into the public
domain, hundreds of artisans would benefit and the public at large
would enjoy the fruits of research by CSIR in a direct way. Moreover,
since everyone would have a level playing ground as far as knowledge
is concerned, the quality of products would improve since it would
become difficult to promote sub standard products through mere
gimmicks. The gains for society would be much beyond what CSIR earns
in terms of royalties.
6) Unlike scarce conserved resources like land or other material
wealth, software and all kinds of knowledge can be freely shared
without restrictions. Artificial bounds on knowledge only pamper the
greed of a few individuals at the cost of the majority. Making the
publications free (in the sense of freedom) would hardly eat into the
turnover in the form of subscriptions since most people who read the
journals regularly would anyway prefer to read a hard copy. On the
other hand, this would permit people who are not regular readers of
a particular journal to get access to specific papers in that journal
that they may be interested in. Though this may reduce the income
of CSIR through subscriptions or licensing fees, the society as a
whole would benefit and more than compensate for the loss of revenue
of the CSIR.
7) Opening up a free access to science and research activities at CSIR
would strengthen our roots and help us grow stronger. Our knowledge
of science needs to be constantly updated and made available to all,
to infuse scientific attitude and aptitude in all. Dr. Digumarti
Bhaskara Rao has observed:
"The study of science imparts training in scientific method and
develops scientific attitude and scientific aptitude in the learners.
These qualities, viz., scientific attitude, scientific aptitude are
the major aspects to qualify an individual to live as truly efficient
citizen in the present day scientific society." (Ref. 1)
Therefore, please ensure that all have the freedom to freely access
and use the valuable research output from CSIR, which is required to
ensure a free society based on science and knowledge.
II. Using Free Software
Free software is software that comes with source code and the freedoms
to use, to study, to modify and to distribute (Ref. 2). Free software
empowers people while proprietary software keeps people divided and
helpless. A wide range of kernels, shells, compilers, database
servers, web servers, mail servers, scripting tools and other programs
are available as free software which is also technically superior to
proprietary software. Please note that free software has several
strengths (Ref. 3), and its adoption would aid CSIR in many ways, as
follows:
1) Freedom: Free software gives the utmost freedom in using high
quality software, with more than twenty years of development efforts
behind it, by the best minds and hearts resulting in sturdy code that
has withstood the test of time and usage by millions of people around
the globe for commercial and non-commercial use. Availability of
source code, along with the freedom to modify, study and redistribute
the software are important features that the scientific community
would ask for, and which are provided only by the free software
movement. Using free software is not only scientific but would also
save costs for CSIR.
2) Public Standards: Free software predominantly uses internationally
accepted free standards such as XML and LaTeX that are public and not
owned by any private entities. Currently, at CSIR, research
submissions are to be made only in Microsoft Word document format,
which is a proprietary format. This forces contributors to purchase
and use the proprietary software, thus restricting the freedom to use
the software of their choice. Besides, this unfortunately can be
seen as unintentionally promoting a particular company's products and
formats.
3) Security: Free software is robust and secure, because the system
configuration and software can be modified only by users authorised by
the administrator and not anyone else. Applications do not execute
programs that are received through email without conscious user
invocation, which makes viruses virtually non-existent in the free
software world.
4) Stability: Free software is inherently very stable, and system
crashes are virtually unheard of. The web servers that have set
records for longest continuous runs without rebooting are generally
based on Free Software. This stability means lower lost working hours
and more working comfort, which translates into greater productivity.
Therefore, using free software and its philosophy at CSIR would pave
way for stronger scientific research and development and substantial
progress for all of us. We hence request you to research our claims
and take appropriate action to adopt free software and its philosophy
at the earliest.
We therefore request that:
(1) CSIR place all the knowledge they research and develop in the
public domain, by publishing their research publications and findings
on the Internet for free access and download by those who desire,
giving freedom to access, know, use and share the wealth of scientific
knowledge to enrich all citizens, including industries and academic
researchers.
(2) All software developed at CSIR should be designed for use in a
free operating system like GNU/Linux and should be released under the
GNU General Public License, or a similar free software license, so
that the benefits from the software are available to everyone.
(3) CSIR move all its computers from proprietary operating systems to
a free operating system like GNU/Linux in a specified time frame.
(4) All CSIR publications should accept and publish material in
non-proprietary open formats like XML and LaTeX.
The Free Software Foundation will always be glad and happy to offer
assistance to the CSIR in using free software, and its philosophy.
References:
(1) Digumarti Bhaskara Rao, in Prof. Marlow Ediger, Editor,
Scientific Attitude vis-a-vis Scientific Aptitude, 1996,
Discovery Publishing House, New Delhi-110002, p.8
(2) "Free as in Freedom"
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy
(3) "Why Free Software?"
http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/Data/Objects/freeSW
