Books

Open Sources 2.0

Open Sources 2.0 (ISBN-10: 0596008023) is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today’s technology leaders. These essays explore open source’s impact on the software industry and reveal how open source concepts are infiltrating other areas of commerce and society.

Alolita Sharma and Robert Adkins of Technetra co-authored the chapter on “OSS in India”. This chapter takes a look at the current state of open source adoption in India - in business, government, education and the challenges it faces in a developing economy like India.

Here is an excerpt from the chapter….

“In modern times, India has accomplished miracles through the power of collaboration. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has the potential to accomplish yet another set of miracles in automating government and industry, and producing affordable education for all.

Three earlier revolutions using collaboration have dramatically improved the basic infrastructure within the country. The first revolution was called the “Green Revolution”, which started in the 1970s and took India from being a grain deficit to a grain surplus country. The second revolution, in the 1980s, was the “White Revolution”, which used the power of dairy cooperatives to enable large-scale milk production. Not only could India’s own population be satisfied, India also became an exporter of dairy products. The third revolution, in the 1990s, was the “Gray Revolution”, which used India’s plethora of English-speaking engineers and scientists to capture a significant share of the world’s outsourcing business in software and pharmaceuticals.

Open Source Software (OSS) is poised to become the next revolution—perhaps named the “Gold Revolution”. OSS promises to build India’s local infrastructure and create new wealth based on information services.

OSS is a boon for the Indian export market. However, automation of any sort is only beginning in the domestic market. Hence the local market languishes in the adoption of all automation tools, whether proprietary or open.

The localization and adaptation of computer-based solutions to move the local economy in India from pre-automation to automation continues to be a very slow march. Business processes remain predominantly manual. For example, it is reported that most doctors in India are practicing the same way they did 75 years ago—with pencils and pieces of paper. Ideally, OSS can promote the cost-effective adoption of automation, especially when legacy constraints are minimal. However, ground realities often discourage adoption of OSS.”