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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