European Union Researches the Benefits of Open Source Software -------------------------------------------------------------- [Desi angle to an international study...]

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/09/16/platform.html

European Union Researches the Benefits of Open Source Software by Andy Oram 09/16/2002

Editor's Note: Andy Oram reports on the possible implications of a recent study that explored the reasons behind the widespread use of, and support for, free and open source software.

A major research project under the name Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and Study, or FLOSS, recently explored reasons behind the widespread use of, and support for, free and open source software. This is, to my knowledge, the first large-scale, rigorous study concerning any aspect of free software. It involves interviews with thousands of developers and hundreds of businesses, with carefully-chosen questions and a correlation of results.

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FN's comments:

Don't miss this.

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, chief writer of the FLOSS study, rishab@dxm.org has been in the Netherlands for just two years. Before that he was based in Delhi, and closely involved in the Indian internet/telecom scene, though he stopped writing for PCQ/DQ/Asianage in 1996. Rishab had his own newsletter, Indian Techonomist, going out to people like Reed Hundt and Vint Cerf, and he wrote various consultation papers on the opening up Internet policy (especially to small providers) on the request of telecom secretaries such as Takkar and Gokak. Googling "Indian Telecom" still shows up his site as two of the top four hits, even though "it's heavily cobwebbed", as Rishab says! He's keen to find out the number of active LUG members in India too. Is that somehow possible?