Free Software Movement of India Instituted.

Free Software Movement of India (FSMI), a network of state-wide and sectoral organisations, pledged for Free Software promotion and bridging the digital divide is formed in a meeting of 286 delegates from 16 organisations spread over 12 states at Bangalore on 20-03-2010 at the venue of 3rd National Conference on Free Software. Free software movement was started with the formation of Free Software Foundation in 1985 by Mr. Richard Mathew Stallman and his team in the US. The movement was established itself with the development of Linux kernel by Mr. Linus Torvald, a finnish student who couldnot buy a copy of Unix for his college studies due to prohibitive cost. These were the response of the software professionals against the proprietisation drive initiated by the monopoly capital. Today Gnu/Linux happens to be the widely used operating system both for stand alone PCs as also Networking them.

Historically, knowledge has been free. So also Software. 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 the exploiting class. A new division based on ownership of capital has become possible. The limitations of conventional means of knowledge-processing also could be overcome with the new tools. The capability of new tools enabling repeated retrieval and use of digitally stored information 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 proprietisation of software.

These new Information Technology (IT) 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 bindings. It helped the industrial capital to increase the profit rate through making the management, production, marketing, movement of raw materials and produced goods dynamic and less expensive. It enabled production to be organised 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. This was 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 of the labour 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, the headquarters of which are in the US. Indian software service providers are sharing their profit with multinationals by way of giving patent fee for using proprietary software platforms, tools and packages. Wealth is flowing from other sectors to software sector and from underdeveloped, developing and other developed nations 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, those directly affected by software proprietisation was the software professionals who were hitherto using 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 by the software professionals developing free software. 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 fixed 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 owners 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, other conditions remaining the same.

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, with its source code available free, 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 centres 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 free software user 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 has later on registered themselves as the Open Software Solutions Industrial Co-operative society (OSS ICS) 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 (SMC), an online work group 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 structure. 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 as cyber community. 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 and Malayalam Computing of SPACE, an organisation set up by Kerala State IT Mission, 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 teachers' 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 limited to free software projects alone but are 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. Kerala State Electricity Board and Kerala State Water Authority are facing such threats against their local initiatives from the central agencies and centrally sponsored schemes. 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, continued to be ensured over the past two decades and established with the legal frame work of GPL by the free software movement is being made ineffective 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 face the challenge from the present stage of monopolisation of Information Tools through clouds, the very same 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 and Network to Network.

This is the idea put forward by Democratic Alliance for Knowledge Freedom (DAKF) 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 and work for the objectives, realisation of which they are formed, even that are different from the FSMI. 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 by all as above. These networks are not against any other networks with similiar objectives. 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 divide.

Joseph Thomas, President, FSMI, 27-03-2010