Formation of Free Software Movement of India – fully in accordance with democratic norms

This clarification has become necessary as widespread campaign is unleashed by a section of the free software community and media that the Free Software Movement of India (FSMI in short) is formed by dividing the free software community. FSMI was formed in a meeting of the delegates representing various state level/sectoral movements who assembled in Bangalore, to participate in the Conference of Free Software Professionals and users, on 20-21 March, 201. Formation of this network organisation at Bangalore was neither fully pre-planned nor fully accidental. FSMI was the output of collective discussion that took place in the delegates session, both formal and informal, in the joint forum as also constituent organisation-wise meetings held in the conference premises, based on the experience of joint activities spread over last four years. The elected office bearers are entrusted with the task of preparing the bye-law and charter of the organisation. The delegate session has adopted only a document guiding the office bearers to facilitate their task.

In the past, the first conference of the type was held in Hyderabad organised jointly by Swecha, an organisation formed for Telegu localisation of Free Software, History Department of University of Hyderabad and FSF India on the initiative taken and active role played by Swecha on March 3-4, 2007. Swecha has invited all Free Software Communities from other states, known to them. Sri. Ignatius Kunjumon, Mrs. Vasundhara, S/Sri. Anvar Sadath, Arun M, Joseph Mathew etc from Kerala participated in the conference. Many couldnot participate due to various reasons. That conference was attended by around 700 people. The second conference in Kerala was suggested by Swecha. It was in 2008. As an International Conference was announced by FSFI along with SPACE and Kerala State IT Mission to be held at Trivandrum in December, 2008, the venue for National Conference was fixed as Kochi. Cochin University of Sscience And Technology, IT@School, Appropriate Technology Promotion Society and Open Software Solutions Industrial Co-operative Society (IT Professionals using Free Software Only) Ltd No. S. IND E.245 came forward to host the same. The CUSAT was fully mobilised for the conference under the leadership of the Syndicate itself. Conference was a grand success. 1514 participated. 889 were from Ernakulam District. 379 from other districts of Keala. 208 from 9 other states of India. Out of them 336 were from IT industry. 549 were students. 108 from Kerala State Electricity Board. 142 Teachers. 126 CUSAT Faculty. 55 IT@School project personnel. 78 from various PSUs. 75 from Govt Departments. And 45 were from other sectors. 120 speakers, out of them 40 from outside state, 66 CUSAT faculty and 300 volunteers played their role in organisaing the conference. The school and college students and the people of the district who visited the exhibition stalls are not included in the above figures.

When viewed in the background, the one happened at Bangalore was the third conference. It witnessed increased participation. Around 1800 participated. Around 1000 were students from colleges in and around Bangalore. 286 delegates from 16 organisations spread over 11 states also participated.The vicious attack unleashed through a section of media, spreading canards, is the proof of the fact that the efficacy of dissemination of Free Software and the ideals it enshrines to the vast sections of the people ensured by the mammoth conferences provoked not only the proponents of patented software regime but also all vested interests. But, it is interesting to note that at least a small section of those aligned with Free Software Community has become instrumental to such vicious attack on the newly born organisation. Their objectives, motivation, masterminds behind it, the forces whom they serve etc are yet to be revealed. Had they been committed to Free Software, they wouldnot have done it. Because, despite all the deficiencies that are attributable to these conferences and the FSMI, they were enlisting the support of vast and new sections of the people for the Free Software. In the normal course, this would have made the free software community happy.

Financial support from 'Novell' by way of sponsorship was availed for an event which was part of the conference during which the new congregation was formed is the only allegation that carries some sense. Novell is considered a black-sheep among the Free Software communities. They defamed the free software movement by entering into a contract with the Microsoft for the purpose of providing certain services for corporate bodies, in the past. Novell's tie-up with Microsoft is not not acceptable to the organisations coming under FSMI too. They too, in fact, condemn that tie-up. But, the fact that Novell still provide many services using Free Software alone shall not go unnoticed. During Kochi conference, it was just four days prior to the event, when the receipts so far were not enough to meet the barest minimum expenses, that on the suggestion from some of those in the organising committee started efforts to get sponsorship from Novell. The same was confirmed only on the day previous to the event. Same day the amount was received too. There were no hidden strings behind this sponsorship. The only conditions were that of publicity for Novell's participation. The stand of most of the Free Software communities is that it is not fair to give stage for Novell. But, that fails the need of the Free Software movement to amass maximum strength to fight out the proprietary regime, which is all powerful with the support of most of the states and the capitalist word as a whole. The free software communities shall ponder over this as to whom this stand helps. FSF gets support from Novell. It was with RMS knowledge that the Bangalore conference organisors took financial support from Novell. The arguement that FSMI has ditched the free software communities is unfair.

Another criticism raised against the new organisation is that it is formed at the instance of CPI(M). CPI(M) leaders and members are active in FSMI as also some of its constituents is a reality. Their participation and support is necessary for an organisation like this. FSMI donot consider it wise to drive them away and decline their support and patronage as it will shrink its strength to that extend. Supporters and activists of most of the other political parties have also participated in the conference and active in the constituent organisations. Moreover, FSMI requires support and patronage from all the political parties. FSMI requests the support and patronage from all, not only all the political parties but also all social organisations as well. FSMI will approach them all for their support and patronage.

Yet another allegation is that formation of the new organisation devides the free software movement. There is no meaning in this arguement. Because, any organisation comes into being as a congregation of those align with it and for others it is alien. That doesnot mean what is alien is against anybody. Often it shall be helpful too. Whether it is favourable or harmful is dependent on the ideals the new organisation upholds and the activities it is engaged in. When somebody take initiative to form an organisation, it is humanly not be possible to inform all. When all are not invited a division is automatic. That doesnot mean that the division is deliberate. That is what has happened here in the instant case. If any body feels that they want to contribute and participate they are alway welcome. Any body can join the FSMI without compromising their ideas and activities in other sectors or areas. The only condition is that they shall stand for free software promotion and bridging the digital devide and participate in the activities of the FSMI with respect to full fill those objectives. It is declared in unequivocal terms that FSMI stands for free software promotion. Therefore, the existing organisations, whether FSFI, GLUGs, FSUGs, ILUGs or with any other name neednot worry about their existence. In addition to that, FSMI doesnot take away the rights of any constituent organisation to have recourse to its declared objectives. Each of the constituent organisation joined this network organisation with the specific objectives of free software promotion and bridging the digital devide. Why then, the other organisations, especially those pledging itself to free software promotion view the formation of FSMI with apprehension ? In fact all those who are pledged to free software promotion shall be happy and jubilant over the formation of new organisation that brings in new sections of people hitherto out of the ambit of free software movement.

Yet another allegation is that those joined the FSMI do not belong to any of the free software developer community. They mean to say that to be named as free software movement, it shall have software developers ! For arguement sake, let us assume that nobody from free software community has joined FSMI. What is the attitude of the developer community members who raise these allegations towards the users? What shall be their attitude ? Is it that users without developers within their fold shall not use free software ? Is it that those who has not started developing Free Software, so far, shall not start developing hereafter ? There is something wrong with such arguements. It cannot go unnoticed. Such arguements will not be advanced even by the proponents of proprietary software ! Are the critics exhibiting monopolisation traits than even the proprietary software monopolies ? Or is it petty prejudices ? Or childishness ? In any case, if there are no free software developers within FSMI, those attracted to Free Software, through their activities, will be dependent on the critics who claim to be free software developers. Even under such a situation, shouldn't FSMI be considered an outfit working for the benefits of free software developers ? Should them be ridiculed ?

FSMI views free software movement with much more respect than the critics of FSMI. Free Software and the legal frame work of General Public Licence (GPL) established the models revealing advantages of social ownership. In initiating this movement (1985) and establishing the legal frame work thereof, Mr. Richard Mathew Stallman and his colleagues contributed immensely to the social cause. The son of a worker from Finland, Mr Linus Torvald proved the effectiveness of this movement by creating the kernel of Linux, which is clone to Unix. Foundation for the success of Free Software was laid. Gnu Foundation lead the movement to heights of success. The concept of social ownership is being spread to other areas of knowledge. Open Hardware, Open Standards, Open Access Journals, Creative Commons etc are at different stages of advancement.

What has been defeated by the Free Software Movement is the appropriation of socially owned software just as socially owned land has been appropriated and medieval craftsmen were ripped off the tools they possessed. This crushing defeat inflicted on the capitalism has also contributed to the agravations of the crisis it faces. World capitalist system is facing a very serious crisis. It is on the verge of a collapse. It reveals that a transition to a system based on social ownership of means of production is possible as also imminent.

FSMI views free software not only as an emotional issue involving ethics of freedom but also as one of the streams of concrete means of emancipation from all forms of exploitation. Historically, knowledge has been free. Privatisation and monopolisation of knowledge started with division of society into classes. The struggle for democratisation and freeing of knowledge also started with it. Democratisation of knowledge takes place side by side with democratic expansion. But, even in the present day society though pledged to democracy, knowledge has not disseminated down to all the strata because democracy is not allowed to be rooted deep. Even with that limitation, the dissemination and spread of conventional knowledge tools down to the people cause unimaginable trouble to the exploiting classes.

It is then, that the new information communication tools became handy for them. A new division based on ownership of capital has become possible. The limitations of conventional means of knowledge handling in its repeated use also could be overcome by the new tools. The capability of new tools in repeated use of knowledge gave rise to information explosion. That raised the acceptability of the new tools sky high. The new division of society happened to be between those who own or has access to the new tools and those do not. As in the case of denial of conventional knowledge in the past, proprietisation of new tools became handy to sustain the division and possibility for exploitation. Around the same period, in the final lap of 20th centurry, new commodities were identified through search for new markets. Services were transformed into commodity. New ownership forms were required to establish monopoly over them. That has lead to Intellectual Proprty Right (IPR) regime and monopolisation of software.

These new tools were, by and large, mostly used by the capitalists. They utilised it to reduce production cost including labour and wages. Comprehensive and dynamic information network increased the mobility of capital. Capital was liberated from all forms of local as well as national limitations. It helped the industrial capitalists to increase their profit rate through making the management, production, marketing, movement of raw materials and produced goods dynamic and less expensive. It enabled the industrial capitalists to increase their profits through organising production at sources of raw materials or where wages are less or near to the market whichever is more profitable, reducing stock holding and thereby investment by producing only what is being sold achieved through integrating all process including that of production and market access by the communication network, organising distributed production centres as against the large manufacturing centres in the classical industrial era, often outsourcing the work, avoiding permanent labour, engaging contract or homestead labour at reduced wages instead, and through all these reducing the organised strength and avoiding them opportunity to organise, reducing wages, increasing working hours. The new communication network helped them to reduce the wage bill by substituting the skilled labourers with unkilled labour. It also helped to convert vast majority of workers into contract labourers and thus weaken the organised strength of the labour.

Information technology has application every where information is used. But this field is dominated by multinational monopoly houses. Indian companies are providing software service by giving patent fee to the multinationals. Wealth is flowing from other sectors to software sector and from underdeveloped, developing and other developed nations to to the US. Software has become a tool of imperialist exploitation. The ill effects of software monopoly is evident in all sectors. All these factors increases the importance of software iIn the present day competitive world

But, software monopolisation was directly affected by the software professionals who were working on them. It is quite natural that their response was sharp when they saw that their tools are being snatched away from them. They created software as a public asset against those in proprietary regime. Proprietary software is that appropriated from those under social ownership or those created or upgraded by the limited hired labour in the gaol like sweat rooms of monopoly software houses. Free software is that developed by the globally networked software professionals working for their own lively hood, in turn sharing their knowledge with the society. For them what is important is their intellectual property and not intellectual property right.

Knowledge is taken from the society. New knowledge is generated by using it and adding new value to it. The new value generated and added to the existing ones ensure their livelihood. They share the process knowledge with the society. They do not subject the society to infinite loot as done by proprietary software owners. Hence they get back the support from the society. Bugs are settled by the first who identify or know or gets time. Thus free software gets richer and bugfree fast. No virus threat. High level of data security. High order of net work stability. There is no wonder free software has grown in quality and quantity surpassing those stolen by the proprietary ones and the days of proprietary software is counted. According to a study free software will take half the market share by 2010 and proprietary software will be out of the market by 2017.

Migration to free software avoids the resource drain. It contributes to expansion of Indian market. Business opportunities and income of small and medium enterprises will go up. Profit earned by Indian service providers will increase. SMEs can be empowered with efficient business management system using state of the art information technology infrastructure and make them competitive at par with Multinationals. Such efficient management system is unaccessible to them at present. Free Software will help our students to acquire real knowledge on software. Today, while using proprietary softwares, they only view its exterior features and are learning only the operational procedure without access to its source code. Students of other disciplines are unable to have the required software tools to learn their subjects due to prohibitive costs. Migration to Free Software solves these problems too. The migration of even corporate bodies to free software is the proof for its technical superiority.
FSMI doesnot claim the monopoly of Software Movement in the country. FSMI approaches the Indian movement realistically. Free software groups started functioning at various centre by the second half of the 1990's. Sri. Gopinath of IISc Bangalore was one among the fore runner. IHRD model Engineer College Computer Lab at Ernakulam was fully migrated to Linux at the initiative of Sri. Jyothi John, head of the Department. Sri. Ignatius Kunjumon started using Linux for the server at CUSAT and was penalised for the same at the instance of the supplier of the system. There existed a group at University College Trivandrum. Practical application was tried in a District Panchayath Project of Ernakulam for setting up e-governance system for four Grama Panchayaths. The team organised with the technical support of Sri. K V Anilkuar of Keltron Controls Aroor for that project was later on registered themselves as the Open Software Solutions Industrial Co-operative society in July 2000. In 2001 FSF India was instituted at Trivandrum in a meeting attended by Sri. Richard M Stallman. He also delivered the EMS memorial speach at the Kerala University during his visit that time. Swecha was established for Telugu localisation of Free Software. Swathanthra Malayalam Computing an online work group was established and contributed to Malayalam Localisation of Free Software. Free Software Movement Karnataka was established in Bangalore. Such other initiatives were recorded in Maharashtra, West Bengal, Delhi, Rajasthan etc. Linux users groups became active in major cities. Free Software Movement is thus advancing with a distributed organisation form. A power centre is not required for them. Interaction and co-operation among them exists over internet. Many internet groups are in the process of forming larger congregations.

But, most of them are limiting its activities either as local community or over internet. They are unable to acquire the much required capability of spreading the message of software freedom and the possibilities of Free Software use over to the vast expanse of the country. Even today despite passage of over two decades from the first Linux kernel was succesfully developed, Govt of India and most of the State Governments are yet to identify its advantages. It is only Kerala with its IT@School project, ORUMA of KSEB, Insight of Space, Malayalam Computing, Malayalam projects and CATFOSS of CdiT etc and Tamilnadu with its Elcot has advanced with the use of FS. it@school project started in 2003 using proprietary software was migrated to Free Software over a threat of agitation by the teaches union KSTA. ORUMA of KSEB was initiated by an internal team on the initiative of the workers and officers associations there. There exists the threat of monopoly software companies through central government funding and consulting agencies to such local initiatives. Such threats are not against free software projects but equally applicable to projects using proprietary platforms like IKM. IT projects of Municipal Corporations, though covered by IKM, is one by one handed over to the IT corporates using proprietary platforms and taking monopoly profit by retaining all knowhow secret, under JNURM, a centrally sponsored scheme. What is required for sustained local empowerment is migration of IKM, Akshaya, SPARK etc to Free Software, establishing them as successful local level alternatives. Use of Free Software alone shall generate and build up the necessary compulsion for allowing local alternatives.

The major advantage offered by Free Software is the opportunity for local and national empowerment. If that is not utilised, on some or the other arguments and excuses, the hold of the monopoly capital will be tightened. Globally, Google, Amazone etc are using Free Softare. But, they are Transnational Corporations. They are treading on a course more dangerous than that of the Novell who brought shame to the free software movement by its Microsoft tie-up. They are building a business model, named cloud computing, by giving total end user services, monopolising hardware, networking, platforms and such other infrastructure etc along with application software. Users neednot worry about any thing other than a browser to run on the terminal. Such services are known as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) etc. Such services are said to be provided by sharing various resources, which will, hence, reduce the cost considerably. This is qualified as the best example of co-operation among corporates. Sharing and co-operation reduces the expenditure. Reduced price of commodities has always been the best tool for monopolising any market. The low cost of cloud services will definitely enable the corporates to take over any IT service market. The result is that the freedom successfully returned and ensured by even the free software movement is being denied to not only local communities but to nationalities even. This is the single major threat posed by the free software movement as also the society.

In order to overcome the challenge from the present stage of monopolisation through clouds, the path set by Free Software Movement can be resorted to. But this challenge cannot be met by individuals or even small groups alone, as was possible in the case of software. Intervention of society with consolidation of sizable strength and resources is required. As Free software against proprietary software, public clouds (owned by society) shall have to be set up against private clouds. Local self government institutions, state governments departments, public sector undertakings, universities, engineering colleges, co-operatives and such other socially owned organisations and local business community wedded to local empowerment can share this responsibility. Such public clouds set up locally can play a decisive role in further democratic advance of the society as a whole, side by side with empowerment of backward communities of all hues and thus step by step, at the same time, faster development of the society. That means, inorder to defend the software freedom established by the free software movement, it has to consolidate its strength and to mobilise maximum resources. That cannot be achieved by a movement of communities insisting on distributed architecture alone. The answer is network of organisations. There is no limit as to the number of net works. What is important is that they shall be networked. Peer to Peer. Network to Network.

This is the idea put forward by Democratic Alliance for Knowledge Freedom in Kerala and the Free Software Movement of India, nationwide. Both are congregation of communities. Every community joining these networks can work for their own objectives while unitedly working for defending and expanding software freedom and bridging digital devide. Each of the community can retain its identity. The central organisation will not act as a monopoly power. It will only lead the massive activities that are required at any particular period of time by consolidating the strengths of communities for well defined objectives agreed to all as above. These networks are not against any other networks. The new networks will not make any other active network redundant, either. FSMI as also DAKF shall always be ready for joint action with any other network for defending software freedom and bridging digital devide.
Joseph Thomas, President, FSMI, 27-03-2010