The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 1 to 15.
FOSSCON India 2019
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/fosscon-india-2019-1
<b>Bhuvana Meenakshi gave a talk on "The revolution of WebXR" at FOSSCON India 2019 organized by KLS Gogte Institute of Technology in Belgaum from August 29 - 31, 2019, where she discussed about the tools used for development and demos.</b>
<p>The Chief patrons included:</p>
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<li>Dr. A S Deshpande, Registrar, VTU, Belagavi</li>
<li>Dr. Satish Annigeri, Registrar(Evaluation), VTU, Belagavi</li>
<li>Shri M R Kulkarni, Chairman, Karnatak Law Society</li>
<li>Shri U N Kalkundrikar, Chairman , Governing Council, KLS Gogte Institute of Technology, Belagavi.</li>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/fosscon-india-2019-1'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/fosscon-india-2019-1</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessFOSS2019-09-25T22:59:38ZNews ItemEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights in India: Opportunities for Advocacy in Intellectual Property
https://cis-india.org/openness/apc-april-23-2017-sunil-abraham-and-vidushi-marda-economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india
<b>Centre for Internet & Society worked on a three part case study. The first case study on digital protection of traditional knowledge was published by GIS Watch in December 2016. The other two case studies along with the synthesis overview has also been published.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The rights established in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) are socioeconomic rights and are easily mapped onto rights to education, work, science and culture. These rights, however, are not as easily mapped onto intellectual property rights. This three-part case study contemplates the ICESCR through aspects of intellectual property in India, namely, mobile patents, free and open source software (FOSS), and India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. Through these, it demonstrates the potential of these technologies in realising ESCRs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A distinguishing factor of the ICESCR is the emphasis on the progressive realisation of rights within the Covenant, which indicates the necessity of parties to take steps for the realisation of ESCRs to the best of their ability given the resources available, with a view to fully realising these rights in the long term. This is particularly relevant in India, where the large population and scarcity of resources require gradual realisation and sustained planning. This case study advocates for the progressive realisation of the rights outlined below, and sheds light on the current state of progress in India, as well as providing an overview of the framework within which these rights will be realised.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although these three case studies focus on distinct areas – mobile patents, FOSS and open standards, and traditional knowledge – they can also be understood as tied together through the central theme of a mobile phone. The first case study on mobile patents deals with the hardware of the phone, the second deals with the software in discussing open software and standards, and the third case study on traditional knowledge focuses on the person holding the phone who consumes information-embedded products such as traditional foods and medicines.</p>
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<ul>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india">Synthesis Overview</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india-opportunities-for-advocacy-in-intellectual-property-rights-access-to-mobile-technology">Access to Mobile Technology</a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india-opportunities-for-advocacy-in-intellectual-property-rights-the-traditional-knowledge-digital-library">Traditional Knowledge Digital Library</a><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india-foss/"><span class="external-link"></span></a></li>
<li><a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india-foss/">FOSS and Open Standards</a></li>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><i><br />The report on digital protection of traditional knowledge was <a class="external-link" href="https://www.giswatch.org/sites/default/files/Giswatch2016_web.pdf">published by GIS Watch</a> earlier and the rest of the reports have been published by the <a class="external-link" href="https://www.apc.org/en/pubs/economic-social-and-cultural-rights-india-opportun">Association for Progressive Communications</a></i>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/apc-april-23-2017-sunil-abraham-and-vidushi-marda-economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/openness/apc-april-23-2017-sunil-abraham-and-vidushi-marda-economic-social-and-cultural-rights-in-india</a>
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No publisherSunil Abraham and Vidushi MardaOpennessFeaturedFOSSHomepage2017-04-23T05:22:01ZBlog EntryFree and Open Source Software and Standards for Public Health Information Systems in India: “Making them Work” by Bridging the Policy Practice Gap
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/foss-for-public-health-information-systems-in-india
<b>Anubha Sinha spoke at the ORF Health Policy Workshop on the panel: The policy landscape in India with respect FOSS software and standards in the public sector more generally. The event was organized by Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi on February 27 and 28, 2017 in New Delhi.</b>
<ul>
<li>For workshop background note <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/foss-workshop-in-new-delhi-background-note">click here</a></li>
<li>For agenda <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/orf-workshop-draft-agenda.pdf">click here</a></li>
<li>For more info see the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.orfonline.org/research/health-policy-workshop-february-27-28/">Observer Research Foundation website</a>. </li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/foss-for-public-health-information-systems-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/foss-for-public-health-information-systems-in-india</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessFOSS2017-02-27T15:36:25ZNews ItemOpen source in everyday life: How we celebrated the Software Freedom Day in Bengaluru
https://cis-india.org/openness/open-knowledge-international-blog-october-26-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-open-source-in-everyday-life-how-we-celebrated-the-software-freedom-day-in-bengaluru
<b>The free and open source software (FOSS) enthusiasts just celebrated the Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 17 all across the world. This year, a small group of six of us gathered to celebrate SFD in the Indian city of Bengaluru. The group consisted of open source contributors from communities such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, Open Street Map, and users of FOSS solutions. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was originally published by <a class="external-link" href="http://blog.okfn.org/2016/10/26/open-source-in-everyday-life-how-we-celebrated-the-software-freedom-day-in-bengaluru/">Open Knowledge International Blog</a> on October 26, 2016.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Each participant shared their own stories of how they got connected with FOSS and what component it plays in their day-to-day life. From how a father has been trying to introduce about open source to his young son while migrating from proprietary to open source back and forth as his job demands so, to an Open Street Map contributor who truly believes that large-scale contributions to open source can make the software as robust as proprietary ones and even better because of the freedom that lies in it. All of those who gathered agreed with the fact that FOSS has widened their freedom in choosing how they want to use, share and remix the software they use.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>When Software Freedom Day was started in 2004, only 12 teams from different places joined. It grew to a whopping </span><a href="http://fred.dao2.com/?p=273"><span>1000</span></a><span> by 2010 across the world. About the aim of the celebration, SFD’s </span><a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about"><span>official website</span></a><span> says,</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>“Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of using high-quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere! The non-profit organization Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local SFD events to impact their communities.”</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><img alt="sfd_2016_bengaluru_by_nima_lama-cc-by-sa-4-0" class="alignleft wp-image-20774 size-medium" height="199" src="http://i2.wp.com/blog.okfn.org/files/2016/10/SFD_2016_Bengaluru_by_Nima_Lama-CC-BY-SA-4.0.jpg?resize=300%2C199" width="300" />The participants in our group bounced both technical and philosophical questions to each other to gauge the actual usage of FOSS in real life, and we are moving towards adopting openness as a society. And all the participants also agreed that there is a significant disconnect in communicating widely about the work that many Indian FOSS and other free knowledge communities are doing. So they planned to meet more regularly in events organized by any of the FOSS communities and try to connect with more people using social media and chat groups so that these interactions shape into an annual event to bring all open communities under one roof.</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>What are FOSS, Free Software, Open Source, and FLOSS?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Free and open source software (FOSS or F/OSS), and Free/Libre and Open-Source Software (FLOSS) are umbrella terms that are used to include both Free software and open source software. Adopted by well-known software freedom advocate Richard Stallman in 1983, the free software has many names — libre software, freedom-respecting software, and software libre are some of them. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>As defined by the </span><a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-intro.html"><span>Free Software Foundation</span></a><span>, one of the early advocates of software freedom, free software allows users not just to use the software with complete freedom, but to study, modify, and distribute the software and any adapted versions, in both commercial and non-commercial form. The distribution of the software for commercial and non-commercial way, however, depends on the particular license the software is released under. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>The </span><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-types-examples/"><span>Creative Commons</span></a><span> licenses have recommendations for a broad range of </span><a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/freeworks/"><span>free licenses</span></a><span> that one can choose for the software-related documentations and any creative work they create. Similarly, there are </span><a href="https://opensource.com/education/16/8/3-copyright-tips-students-and-educators"><span>several different</span></a><span> open licenses for software and many other works that are related to software development. “</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition"><span>Open Source</span></a><span>” was coined as an alternative to free software in 1998 by educational advocacy organization </span><a href="https://opensource.org/history"><span>Open Source Initiative. </span></a><span>Open source software is created collaboratively, made available with its source code, and it provides the user rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about/sponsors"><span>Supported</span></a><span> by several global organizations like Google, Canonical, Free Software Foundation, Joomla, Creative Commons and Linux Journal, Software Freedom Day draws its inspiration from the philosophy that was grown by people like Richard Stallman who </span><a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about/sponsors"><span>argues</span></a><span> that free software is all about the freedom and not necessarily free of cost but provides the liberty to users from [proprietary software developers’] unjust power. SFD </span><a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/its-software-freedom-day"><span>encourages</span></a><span> everyone to gather in their own cities (</span><a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2015"><span>map</span></a><span> of places where SFD was organized this year), educate people around them about free software, promote on social media (with the hashtag </span><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SFD2016"><span>#SFD2016</span></a><span> this year), even hacking with free software, organizing hackathons, running free software installation camps, and even going creative with</span><a href="http://www.htxt.co.za/2015/09/03/flying-freedom-day-gloriously-combines-drones-and-craft-beer/"><span> flying a drone running free software</span></a><span>! </span></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; "><img alt="southasia-quote" class="size-large wp-image-20776 aligncenter" height="300" src="http://i0.wp.com/blog.okfn.org/files/2016/10/SouthAsia-quote.png?resize=600%2C300" width="600" /></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>From South Asia, there were </span><a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/India"><span>13 celebratory events in India</span></a><span>, </span><a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Nepal?highlight=%28/bCategoryCountry2016/b%29"><span>8 in Nepal</span></a><span>, </span><a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Bangladesh?highlight=%28/bCategoryCountry2016/b%29"><span>1 in Bangladesh</span></a><span> and </span><a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Sri%20Lanka?highlight=%28/bCategoryCountry2016/b%29"><span>4 in Sri Lanka</span></a><span>. South Asian countries have seen the adoption of both free software and open source software, in both individual and organizational level and by the government. The </span><a href="http://www.fsmi.in/about"><span>Free Software Movement of India</span></a><span> was founded in Bengaluru, India in 2010 to act as a national coalition of several regional chapters working for promoting and growing the free software movement in India. The Indian government has </span><a href="https://data.gov.in/about-us"><span>launched</span></a><span> an open data portal at </span><a href="http://data.gov.in/"><span>data.gov.in</span></a><span> portal for, initiated a </span><a href="http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf"><span>new policy</span></a><span> to adopt open source software, and </span><a href="https://opensource.com/government/15/6/indian-government-includes-open-source-rfps"><span>asked</span></a><span> vendors to include open source software applications while making Requests for proposals. Similarly, several free and open source communities and organizations like </span><a href="http://mozillaindia.org/"><span>Mozilla India</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India"><span>Wikimedia India</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CISA2K"><span>Centre for Internet and Society, </span></a><a href="http://in.okfn.org/about/"><span>Open Knowledge India</span></a><span> in India, </span><a href="http://mozillabd.org/"><span>Mozilla Bangladesh</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh"><span>Wikimedia Bangladesh,</span></a> <a href="http://www.bdosn.org/about-bdosn"><span>Bangladesh Open Source Network</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://okfn.org/network/bangladesh/"><span>Open Knowledge Bangladesh </span></a><span>in Bangladesh, </span><a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Nepal"><span>Mozilla Nepal</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nepal"><span>Wikimedians of Nepal </span></a><span>and </span><a href="http://np.okfn.org/about/"><span>Open Knowledge Nepal</span></a><span> in Nepal, </span><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Pakistan"><span>Wikimedia Community User Group Pakistan</span></a><span> in Pakistan, </span><a href="http://www.opensource.lk/"><span>Lanka Software Foundation</span></a><span> in Sri Lanka, that are operating from the subcontinent also promote free and open source software.</span></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; "><b><i>We promote open source and open Web technologies in the country. We are open to associate/work with existing open source or other community-run, public benefit organizations.</i></b><b><i><br /> </i></b><b><i>“Internet By The People, Internet For The People” (from </i></b><a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/India#Objectives"><b><i>Mozilla India wiki</i></b></a><b><i>) </i></b></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Mohammad Jahangir Alam, a lecturer from Southern University Bangladesh argues in a </span><a href="http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume42/number18/pxc3878099.pdf"><span>research paper</span></a><span> that the use of open source software can help the government save enormous amount of money that are spent in purchasing proprietary software, </span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>“A large sum of money of government can be saved if the government uses open source software in different IT sectors of government offices and others sectors, Because the government is providing computers to all educational institute from school to university level and they are using proprietary software. For this reason, the government is to expend a significant amount of many for buying proprietary software to run the computers. Another one is government paying a significant amount of money to the different vendors for buying different types of software to implement e-Governance project. So, the Government can use open source software for implanting projects to minimize the cost of the projects.”</span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Check </span><a href="https://opensource.com/life/15/9/how-will-you-celebrate-software-freedom-day"><span>more ideas</span></a><span> for celebrating Software Freedom Day, and a few more </span><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/240188/seven_ways_to_celebrate_software_freedom_day.html"><span>here</span></a><span> while planning for next year’s Software Freedom Day in your city.</span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/open-knowledge-international-blog-october-26-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-open-source-in-everyday-life-how-we-celebrated-the-software-freedom-day-in-bengaluru'>https://cis-india.org/openness/open-knowledge-international-blog-october-26-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-open-source-in-everyday-life-how-we-celebrated-the-software-freedom-day-in-bengaluru</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessFOSSOpen Source2016-10-27T01:07:06ZBlog EntryHow we celebrated Software Freedom Day
https://cis-india.org/openness/subhashish-panigrahi-mozilla-open-mic-october-6-2016-how-we-celebrated-software-freedom-day
<b>A small group of 6 FOSS contributors from communities such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, Open Street Map and users of FOSS solutions gathered in Bengaluru to celebrate Software Freedom Day. Subhashish Panigrahi who was a part of the event, reports the developments. </b>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">What are FOSS, Free Software, Open Source, and FLOSS?</h3>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--p graf" id="f423" style="text-align: justify; ">Adopted by noted software freedom advocate Richard Stallman in 1983, free software has many names — free and open source software (FOSS or F/OSS), and Free/Libre and Open-Source Software (FLOSS) are umbrella terms that are used to include both free software and open source software. As defined by the<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-intro.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Free Software Foundation</a> — one of the early advocates of software freedom — free software allows users to not only use the software with complete freedom, but also study, modify, and distribute the software and any adapted versions, in both commercial and noncommercial form. The distribution of the software for commercial and noncommercial form however depends on the particular license the software is released under. The<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-types-examples/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Creative Commons</a> licenses have recommendations for a wide array of<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/freeworks/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> free licenses</a> that one can choose for the software-related documentations and any creative work they create. Similarly, there are<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://opensource.com/education/16/8/3-copyright-tips-students-and-educators" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> several different</a> open licenses for software and many other works that are related to software development. “<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Open Source</a>” was coined as an alternative to free software in 1998 by an educational-advocacy organization<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://opensource.org/history" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Open Source Initiative.</a> Open source software is generally created collaboratively, made available with its source code, and it provides the user rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.</p>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--p graf" id="09ca" style="text-align: justify; "><a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about/sponsors" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Supported</a> by several global organizations like Google, Canonical, Free Software Foundation, Joomla, Creative Commons and Linux Journal, Software Freedom Day draws its inspiration from the philosophy that was grown by people like Richard Stallman who<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about/sponsors" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> argues</a> that free software is all about the freedom and not necessarily free of cost but provides the liberty to users from [proprietary software developers’] unjust power. SFD<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/its-software-freedom-day" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> encouraged</a> everyone to gather in their own cities (<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2015" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">map</a> of places where SFD was organized this year) to: educate people around them about free software, promote it on social media (with the hashtag<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SFD2016" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> #SFD2016</a> this year), hacking with free software, organizing hackathons, running free software installation camps, and even going creative with<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://www.htxt.co.za/2015/09/03/flying-freedom-day-gloriously-combines-drones-and-craft-beer/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> flying a drone running free software</a>!</p>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--p graf" id="ed8d" style="text-align: justify; ">In South Asia, there were<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/India" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> 13 celebratory events in India</a>,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Nepal?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> 8 in Nepal</a>,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Bangladesh?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> 1 in Bangladesh</a> and<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/SriLanka?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> 4 in Sri Lanka</a>.</p>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--p graf" id="f183" style="text-align: justify; ">South Asian countries have seen adoption of both free software and open source software, in both individual and organizational level and by the government. The<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://www.fsmi.in/about" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Free Software Movement of India</a> was founded in Bengaluru, India in 2010 to act as a national coalition of several regional chapters working for promoting and growing the free software movement in India. The Indian government has<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://data.gov.in/about-us" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> launched</a> the open data portal at<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://data.gov.in/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> data.gov.in</a>, initiated a<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> new policy</a> to adopt open source software, and<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://opensource.com/government/15/6/indian-government-includes-open-source-rfps" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> asked</a> vendors to include open source software applications while making requests for proposals. Similarly, there are many free and open source communities and organizations that are operating from the subcontinent also promote free and open source software like<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://mozillaindia.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Mozilla India</a>,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Wikimedia India</a>,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CISA2K" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Centre for Internet and Society,</a><a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://in.okfn.org/about/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Open Knowledge India</a> in India,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://mozillabd.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Mozilla Bangladesh</a>,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Wikimedia Bangladesh,</a><a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://www.bdosn.org/about-bdosn" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Bangladesh Open Source Network</a>,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://okfn.org/network/bangladesh/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Open Knowledge Bangladesh</a> in Bangladesh,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Nepal" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Mozilla Nepal</a>,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nepal" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Wikimedians of Nepal</a> and<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://np.okfn.org/about/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Open Knowledge Nepal</a> in Nepal,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Pakistan" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Wikimedia Community User Group Pakistan</a> in Pakistan,<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://www.opensource.lk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Lanka Software Foundation</a> in Sri Lanka.</p>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--p graf" id="920a" style="text-align: justify; ">We promote open source and open web technologies in the country. We are open to associate/work with existing open source or other community-run, public benefit organizations.</p>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote graf--p graf" id="54aa" style="text-align: justify; ">“Internet By The People, Internet For The People” (from<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/India#Objectives" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Mozilla India wiki</a>)</p>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--p graf" id="5c8d" style="text-align: justify; ">Mohammad Jahangir Alam, a lecturer from Southern University Bangladesh argues in a<a class="markup--p-anchor markup--anchor" href="http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume42/number18/pxc3878099.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> research paper</a> that the use of open source software can help the government save enormous amount of money that are spent in purchasing proprietary software,</p>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--p graf" id="a9f7" style="text-align: justify; ">A Large amount of money of government can be saved if the government uses open source software in different IT sectors of government offices and others sectors, Because government is providing computer to all educational institute from school to university level and they are using proprietary software. For this reason government is to expend a large amount of many* for buying proprietary software to run the computers. Another one is government paying significant amount of money to the different vendors for buying different types of software to implement e-Governance project. So, the Government can use open source software for implanting projects to minimize cost of the projects.</p>
<p class="graf-after--p graf--p graf" id="9577" style="text-align: justify; ">This year, a small group of six of us gathered to celebrate SFD in Bengaluru. The group consisted of FOSS contributors from communities such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, Open Street Map (OSM), and users of FOSS solutions. Each participant shared their own stories of how they got connected with FOSS and what component it plays in their day-to-day life — from how a father tries to introduce his son to open source software while migrating from proprietary to open source back and forth as his job demands so, to an OSM contributor who truly believes that large scale contributions to open source can make the software as robust as proprietary ones and even better because of the freedom that lie in it. The participants bounced both technical and philosophical questions to each other to gauge the actual usage of FOSS in real life, and how as a society we are moving towards adopting openness. There is a great disconnect in communicating widely about the work that many Indian FOSS and other free knowledge communities are doing, agreed all the participants. So they planned to meet more regularly and try to connect more people using social media and chat groups so that these interactions shape into an annual event to bring all open communities under one roof.</p>
<hr />
<p>The blog post which was originally published by Mozilla Open Mic on October 6 can be <a class="external-link" href="https://medium.com/mozilla-open-mic/how-we-celebrated-software-freedom-day-cae98c2cce06#.47ejlrf8x">accessed here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/subhashish-panigrahi-mozilla-open-mic-october-6-2016-how-we-celebrated-software-freedom-day'>https://cis-india.org/openness/subhashish-panigrahi-mozilla-open-mic-october-6-2016-how-we-celebrated-software-freedom-day</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpen StandardsOpennessFOSS2016-10-07T02:02:18ZBlog EntrySoftware Freedom Day: The Importance of Free and Open Source Software
https://cis-india.org/openness/dna-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-software-freedom-day-importance-of-free-and-open-source-software
<b>Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 17 celebrates the liberty that free and open software and the philosophy of freedom brings into people’s lives. When SFD was started in 2004, only 12 teams from different places joined. It grew to a whooping 1000 by 2010 across the world. Explaining the aim of the celebration, SFD’s official website says,</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/column-software-freedom-day-the-importance-of-free-and-open-source-software-2256118">published by DNA</a> on September 17, 2016.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere! The non-profit organisation Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organise the local SFD events to impact their own communities</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>What are FOSS, Free Software, Open Source, and FLOSS?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Free and open source software (FOSS or F/OSS), and Free/Libre and Open-Source Software (FLOSS) are umbrella terms that are used to include both Free software and open source software. Adopted by noted software freedom advocate Richard Stallman in 1983, the free software has many names — libre software, freedom-respecting software and software libre are some of them. As defined by the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-intro.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Free Software Foundation</a>, one of the early advocates of software freedom, free software allows users not just to use the software with complete freedom, but to study, modify, and distribute the software and any adapted versions, in both commercial and noncommercial form. The distribution of the software for commercial and noncommercial form however depends on the particular license the software is released under. The <a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-types-examples/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a> licenses have recommendations for a wide array of <a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/freeworks/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">free licenses</a> that one can choose for software-related documentations and any creative work they create. Similarly, there are <a href="https://opensource.com/education/16/8/3-copyright-tips-students-and-educators" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">several different </a>open licenses for software and many other works that are related to software development. “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Open Source</a>” was coined as an alternative to free software in 1998 by educational-advocacy organisation <a href="https://opensource.org/history" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Open Source Initiative</a>. Open source software is generally created collaboratively, made available with its source code, and it provides the user rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Supported by several global organisations like Google, Canonical, Free Software Foundation, Joomla, Creative Commons and Linux Journal, Software Freedom Day draws its inspiration from the philosophy that was grown by people like Richard Stallman who argues that free software is all about the freedom and not necessarily free of cost, but it provides the liberty to users from [proprietary software developers’] unjust power. SFD encourages everyone to gather in their own cities, educate people around them about free software, promote on social media (with the hashtag <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=%23SFD2016" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">#SFD2016</a> this year), even hacking with free software, organising hackathons, running free software installation camps, and even going creative with flying a drone running free software!</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">From South Asia, there are <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/India" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">13 celebratory events in India</a>, <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Nepal?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">8 in Nepal</a>, <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Bangladesh?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">1 in Bangladesh</a> and <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Sri%20Lanka?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">4 in Sri Lanka</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">South Asian countries have seen adoption of both free software and open source software, in both individual and organisational level and by the government. The <a href="http://www.fsmi.in/about" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Free Software Movement of India</a> was founded in Bengaluru, India in 2010 to act as a national coalition of several regional chapters working for promoting and growing the free software movement in India. The Indian government has launched an open data portal at data.gov.in portal, initiated a new policy to adopt open source software, and <a href="https://opensource.com/government/15/6/indian-government-includes-open-source-rfps" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">asked</a> vendors to include open source software applications while making requests for proposals. Similarly, several free and open source communities and organisations like Mozilla India, Wikimedia India, Centre for Internet and Society, Open Knowledge India in India, Mozilla Bangladesh, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Bangladesh Open Source Network, Open Knowledge Bangladesh in Bangladesh, Mozilla Nepal, Wikimedians of Nepal and Open Knowledge Nepal in Nepal, Wikimedia Community User Group Pakistan in Pakistan, Lanka Software Foundation in Sri Lanka, that are operating from the subcontinent also promote free and open source software.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We promote open source and open Web technologies in the country. We are open to associate/work with existing open source or other community-run, public benefit organisations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Internet By The People, Internet For The People” (from <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/India#Objectives" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mozilla India wiki</a>)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mohammad Jahangir Alam, a lecturer from Southern University Bangladesh argues in a <a href="http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume42/number18/pxc3878099.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">research paper</a> that the use of open source software can help the government save enormous amount of money spent in purchasing proprietary software.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>A large amount of money of the government can be saved if it uses open source software in different IT sectors of government offices and others sectors, because government is providing computers to all educational institutes from school to university level and they are using proprietary software. For this reason government is to expend a large amount of many for buying proprietary software to run the computers. Another one is government paying significant amount of money to the different vendors for buying different types of software to implement e-Governance project. So, the government can use open source software for implanting projects to minimize cost of the projects</i>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/dna-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-software-freedom-day-importance-of-free-and-open-source-software'>https://cis-india.org/openness/dna-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-software-freedom-day-importance-of-free-and-open-source-software</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpen StandardsOpennessFOSSAccess to Knowledge2016-09-18T03:46:29ZBlog EntryIt's September, and That Means It's Time for Software Freedom Day
https://cis-india.org/openness/global-voices-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-it-is-september-and-that-means-it-is-time-for-software-freedom-day
<b>Software Freedom Day (SFD), which celebrates the use of free and open software, is just around the corner on September 17. When the day first started in 2004, only 12 teams from different places joined, but it has since grown to include hundreds registered events around the world, depending on the year.</b>
<p>The article was <a class="external-link" href="https://globalvoices.org/2016/09/17/its-september-and-that-means-its-time-for-software-freedom-day/">published by Global Voices</a> on September 17, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p><a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about/sponsors">Supported</a> by several global organizations like Google, Canonical, Free Software Foundation, Joomla, Creative Commons and Linux Journal, Software Freedom Day draws its inspiration from the philosophy promoted by people like Richard Stallman who <a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about/sponsors">argue</a> that free software is all about the freedom and not necessarily free of cost but provides the liberty to users from proprietary software developers’ power and influence.</p>
<p>SFD <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/its-software-freedom-day">encourages</a> everyone to gather in their own cities (here's a <a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2015">map</a> of places where SFD is organized this year), educate people around them about free software, and promote the cause on social media (with the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SFD2016">#SFD2016</a> this year). There's also hackathons (hacking free software to modify the code and create what one wants to have in it), running free software installation camps, and even going creative with <a href="http://www.htxt.co.za/2015/09/03/flying-freedom-day-gloriously-combines-drones-and-craft-beer/">flying a drone running free software</a>.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><b>What are FOSS, free software, open source, and FLOSS?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Free and open source software (FOSS or F/OSS), and free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) are umbrella terms that are used to include both free software and open source software. Adopted by noted software freedom advocate Richard Stallman in 1983, free software has many names — libre software, freedom-respecting software and software libre are some of them. As defined by the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-intro.html">Free Software Foundation</a>, one of the early advocates of software freedom, free software allows users not just to use the software with complete freedom, but to study, modify, and distribute the software and any adapted versions, in both commercial and noncommercial form.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The distribution of the software for commercial and noncommercial form, however, depends on the particular license the software is released under. “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition">Open source</a>” was coined as an alternative to free software in 1998 by educational-advocacy organization <a href="https://opensource.org/history">Open Source Initiative.</a> Open source software is generally created collaboratively, made available with its source code, and it provides the user rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>From South Asia, there are <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/India">13 celebratory events in India</a>, <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Nepal?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29">eight in Nepal</a>, <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Bangladesh?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29">one in Bangladesh</a> and <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Sri%20Lanka?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29">four in Sri Lanka</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">South Asian countries have seen adoption of both free software and open source software by individuals, organizations and the government. The <a href="http://www.fsmi.in/about">Free Software Movement of India</a> was founded in Bengaluru, India, in 2010 to act as a national coalition of several regional chapters working to promote and grow the free software movement in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian government has <a href="https://data.gov.in/about-us">launched</a> an open data portal at <a href="http://data.gov.in">data.gov.in</a> portal for sharing large datasets like the census data under free licenses. The government's <a href="http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf">new policy</a> emphasizes on adopting open source software. Moreover government's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology <a href="https://opensource.com/government/15/6/indian-government-includes-open-source-rfps">asked</a> vendors to include open source software applications while making requests for proposals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Similarly, there are several free and open source communities and organizations operating from the subcontinent, like <a href="http://mozillaindia.org/">Mozilla India</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India">Wikimedia India</a>, the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CISA2K">Centre for Internet and Society, </a><a href="http://in.okfn.org/about/">Open Knowledge India</a>, <a href="http://mozillabd.org/">Mozilla Bangladesh</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh">Wikimedia Bangladesh,</a> <a href="http://www.bdosn.org/about-bdosn">Bangladesh Open Source Network</a>, <a href="https://okfn.org/network/bangladesh/">Open Knowledge Bangladesh</a>, <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Nepal">Mozilla Nepal</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nepal">Wikimedians of Nepal,</a> <a href="http://np.okfn.org/about/">Open Knowledge Nepal</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Pakistan">Wikimedia Community User Group Pakistan</a>, and the <a href="http://www.opensource.lk/">Lanka Software Foundation</a> in Sri Lanka.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mohammad Jahangir Alam, a lecturer from Southern University Bangladesh, argues in a <a href="http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume42/number18/pxc3878099.pdf">research paper</a> that the use of open source software can help the government save a enormous amount of money that are spent in purchasing proprietary software:</p>
<blockquote class="quoted" style="text-align: justify; ">A Large amount of money of government can be saved if the government uses open source software in different IT sectors of government offices and others sectors, Because government is providing computer to all educational institute from school to university level and they are using proprietary software. For this reason government is to expend a large amount of many for buying proprietary software to run the computers. Another one is government paying significant amount of money to the different vendors for buying different types of software to implement e-Governance project. So, the Government can use open source software for implanting projects to minimize cost of the projects.</blockquote>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/global-voices-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-it-is-september-and-that-means-it-is-time-for-software-freedom-day'>https://cis-india.org/openness/global-voices-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-it-is-september-and-that-means-it-is-time-for-software-freedom-day</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpen StandardsAccess to KnowledgeFLOSSOpennessFOSS2016-09-17T15:42:46ZBlog EntryIP Meetup #02: Prabir Purkayastha on the CRI Guidelines and software patenting in India
https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/ip-meetup-02-prabir-purkayastha-on-the-cri-guidelines-and-software-patenting-in-india
<b></b>
<h3>Prabir Purkayastha will deliver a short talk on what the Guidelines on Computer Related Inventions mean for software patenting, and the way forward, on Sunday, March 20th, 2016 at the CIS Delhi office, at 4 p.m. <br /></h3>
<div id="parent-fieldname-text-90eeae1895bf44d29641567f7fcf5d44">
<p style="text-align: justify;"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We would like to invite you to the second session of a series of IP focused meetups. The meetups are
aimed at bringing folks together working within or interested in IP law,
to discuss recent developments with reference to access to knowledge,
climate change, health, trade, etc.</p>
<p>The talk will be followed by a round of discussion, after which the
floor will be thrown open for other pressing/relevant IP developments.</p>
<p>Please join us for tea and refreshments at 3.30 pm.</p>
<p>Please RSVP by dropping a line at <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:anubha@cis-india.org">anubha@cis-india.org</a>.</p>
<p><strong>CIS Delhi's location on Google Maps: <a href="https://goo.gl/maps/nPKkoQFhRSt">https://goo.gl/maps/nPKkoQFhRSt</a></strong></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/ip-meetup-02-prabir-purkayastha-on-the-cri-guidelines-and-software-patenting-in-india'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/events/ip-meetup-02-prabir-purkayastha-on-the-cri-guidelines-and-software-patenting-in-india</a>
</p>
No publishersinhaOpen SourceAccess to KnowledgeSoftware PatentsIntellectual Property RightsFOSS2016-03-29T17:06:13ZEventNational Koha Conclave
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/national-koha-conclave
<b>Informatics Publishing organized an event at Fortune Park JP Celestial in Bangalore on February 17, 2016. Sunil Abraham delivered the inaugural address on the occasion.</b>
<p>For more info on the event <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/national-koha-enclave.pdf">see this page</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/national-koha-conclave'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/national-koha-conclave</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessFOSS2016-02-19T16:20:23ZNews ItemGuidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions in abeyance
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-in-abeyance
<b>The CRI Guidelines were heavily criticised for their failure to address the ambiguities created by Section 3(k) and for expanding the scope of software patent eligibile subject-matter, inter alia.
Following several representations and submissions by interested stakeholders, the Controller General has moved the Guidelines into abeyance, until discussions with stakeholders are complete and contentious issues are resolved, and is a welcome step.
</b>
<p> </p>
<p>CIS has consistently made submissions
to the Indian Patent Office on the issue of software patenting( <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-the-guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-cris">2015</a>, <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-draft-guidelines-for-computer-related-inventions">2013</a>,
<a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-submission-draft-patent-manual-2010">2010</a>).
The <a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/comments-on-the-guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-cris">latest
submission </a>was made in September 2015, in response to the
<a href="http://www.ipindia.nic.in/iponew/CRI_Guidelines_21August2015.pdf">Guidelines
for Examination of Computer Related Inventions, 2015</a>(“CRI Guidelines/ Guidelines”)
in which we highlighted several concerns and presented solutions, and
also proposed a definition of "computer programme per se".</p>
<p>In view of the representations made to
the Patent Office, on 14th December 2015, the Controller General
issued an order to keep the Guidelines in abeyance. <strong>Till the
issues therein are resolved, the existing provisions on S. 3(k) of
chapter 08.03.05.10 of the Manual of Patent Practice and Procedure
will continue to be applicable.</strong></p>
<p>The primary fault with the Guidelines
lay in the fact that, legally, its scope of was in excess of section
3(k) of the Indian Patent's Act, 1970 (parent statute). The
Controller General's order acknowledging the representations and
submissions made in response to the Guidelines, and consequently
keeping the Guidelines in abeyance is a welcome step.</p>
<p><strong>You may access the order <a href="http://ipindia.nic.in/officeCircular/officeOrder_14December2015.pdf">here</a>.</strong></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-in-abeyance'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guidelines-for-examination-of-computer-related-inventions-in-abeyance</a>
</p>
No publishersinhaIntellectual Property RightsFOSSSoftware PatentsAccess to Knowledge2015-12-23T10:06:53ZBlog EntryFOSS & a Free, Open Internet: Synergies for Development
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/foss-a-free-open-internet-synergies-for-development
<b>Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2015 will be held at Jao Pessoa in Brazil from November 10 to 13, 2015. The theme of IGF 2015 is Evolution of Internet Governance: Empowering Sustainable Development. Civil Society is organizing a workshop on FOSS and a Free, Open Internet. The workshop will be held on November 13, 2015 from 2.00 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash will be speaking at this event.</b>
<p>This was published on the <a class="external-link" href="https://www.intgovforum.org/cms/wks2015/index.php/proposal/view_public/10">IGF website. </a></p>
<hr />
<table style="text-align: justify;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>The workshop will explore links between the Free and Open nature of the Internet and the Free and Open Source Software through a series of experience sharing among the speakers as well as audiences. The speakers have been selected on the basis of their wide exposure and geographical and occupational diversity.</p>
<hr />
<p>As ICTs permeate lives of people around the world, code is fast emerging as an instrument that can change lives. In many parts of the world, the 4Rs of primary education are Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic and pRogramming, indicative of the role that ICTs will play in the future.<br /> <br /> Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is, inter alia, a mechanism whereby code, and consequently the ability to code, is being democratized. In contrast with centralized proprietary models, FOSS allows decentralized creation, distribution and maintenance of code. Such democratization enables grassroots level application of code to solve local problems, leading to more empowered communities. Free flow of code is therefore important to ensure that communities to stay 'plugged in' and current. Code also enables communities to side-step practices such as surveillance, censorship.<br /> <br /> A Free, Open, Unfragmented Internet is of critical importance to FOSS--without a free Internet, the FOSS-based peer-production methodologies for code would be infeasible. Interestingly, the Internet also needs the innovations of FOSS to remain free & open, thus forming a positive mutual dependency.<br /> <br /> Both FOSS and the Internet are at risk from forces that are seeking increasing control over content and fragmentation, challenging its openness. This would be inimical to the rights of present & future generations to use technology to improve their lives.<br /> <br /> The Round-table seeks to highlight perspectives from the participants about the future co-developemnt of FOSS and a free, open Internet; the threats that are emerging; and ways for communities to surmount these.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Name, stakeholder group, and organizational affiliation of workshop proposal co-organizer(s)</p>
<p>Civil Society<br /> Technical Community<br /> Private Sector</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Has the proposer, or any of the co-organizers, organized an IGF workshop before?</p>
<p>yes</p>
<p class="title">The link to the workshop report</p>
<p>http://wsms1.intgovforum.org/content/no80-steady-stepsfoss-and-mdgs</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Subject matter #tags that describe the workshop</p>
<p>#openInternet #foss #codefordev</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Description of the plan to facilitate discussion amongst speakers, audience members and remote participants</p>
<p>Besides specially identified resource persons, the Roundtable will invite IGF participants who are part of FOSS communities around the world (particularly Brazil, which has a vibrant FOSS community). Participation will include real-time remote participation from FOSS communities around the world, as well as Twitter and email-based submission of ideas and thoughts.<br /> <br /> The Round-table format has been chosen for many-to-many interactions so as to generate a wealth of ideas. No speaker shall speak for more than 5 minutes. Two moderators will guide discussions, and a rapporteur will ensure that ideas are captured. The report of the Roundtable would be posted to all participating communities so as to stimulate grassroots-level action.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Names and affiliations (stakeholder group, organization) of the participants in the proposed workshop</p>
<p>Mr.Satish Babu, Technical Community, Director, International Centre for FOSS, Trivandrum, India, who shall provide technical inputs of FOSS and its relevance, particularly to emerging economies, Confirmed<br /> <br /> Ms. Judy Okite, Civil Society, FOSS Foundation for Africa, is an experienced activist who has been promoting the use of FOSS in Africa. Seeking funding at present.<br /> <br /> Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Private Sector, Software Freedom Law Centre, New York, is a lawyer working with FOSS and its legal implications for over two decades. Confirmed<br /> <br /> Mr. Fernando Botelho, Private Sector, heads F123 Systems, Brazil, a FOSS-centric company that provides accessibility solutions to visually impaired people. Confirmed<br /> <br /> Mr. Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, a civil society organization working on Internet and public policy. Confirmed<br /> <br /> Mr. Pranesh Prakash, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, a civil society organization working on Internet and public policy. Confirmed<br /> <br /> Ms. Nnenna Nwakanma- WWW.Foundation, a Civil Society organization working in Africa on a broad range of areas including FOSS. Confirmed<br /> <br /> Mr. Yves MIEZAN EZO, Open Source strategy consultant, Private Sector. Seeking funding for participation. <br /> <br /> Mr. Harish Pillay, Private Sector, RedHat Asia-Pacific. Seeking funding for participation. <br /> <br /> Corinto Meffe, Advisor to the President and Directors, SERPRO, Brazil. Confirmed<br /> <br /> Frank Coelho de Alcantara, Professor, Universidade Positivo, Brazil, Confirmed<br /> <br /> Ms. Caroline Burle, Institutional and International Relations, W3C Brazil Office and Center of Studies on Web Technologies - CeWeb.br (a CGI.br/NIC.br initiative). Confirmed</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Name of in-person Moderator(s)</p>
<p>Satish Babu, Mishi Choudhary</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Name of Remote Moderator(s)</p>
<p>Judy Okite</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Name of Rapporteur(s)</p>
<p>Pranesh Prakash</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="title">Description of the proposer's plans for remote participation</p>
<p>Besides around 30 persons at the IGF, we will be providing wide publicity for the workshop through FOSS communities and networks. Besides live audio/video participation, Twitter shall be a key resource for real-time participation. There shall be a Twitter co-ordinator identified whose role will be to tweet the salient points at the Roundtable periodically for the benefit of documenting and informing interested communities.<br /> <br /> For those that have either technical difficulties or time-zone problems, ideas and comments can be submitted by email before the workshop to the moderators.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/foss-a-free-open-internet-synergies-for-development'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/foss-a-free-open-internet-synergies-for-development</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFOSSOpen SourceInternet GovernanceInternet Governance Forum2016-06-18T17:57:53ZNews ItemHits and Misses With the Draft Encryption Policy
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-wire-26-09-2015-sunil-abraham-hits-and-misses-with-draft-encryption-policy
<b>Most encryption standards are open standards. They are developed by open participation in a publicly scrutable process by industry, academia and governments in standard setting organisations (SSOs) using the principles of “rough consensus” – sometimes established by the number of participants humming in unison – and “running code” – a working implementation of the standard. The open model of standards development is based on the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) philosophy that “many eyes make all bugs shallow”.
</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was <a class="external-link" href="http://thewire.in/2015/09/26/hits-and-misses-with-the-draft-encryption-policy-11708/">published in the Wire</a> on September 26, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This model has largely been a success but as Edward Snowden in his revelations has told us, the US with its large army of mathematicians has managed to compromise some of the standards that have been developed under public and peer scrutiny. Once a standard is developed, its success or failure depends on voluntary adoption by various sections of the market – the private sector, government (since in most markets the scale of public procurement can shape the market) and end-users. This process of voluntary adoption usually results in the best standards rising to the top. Mandates on high quality encryption standards and minimum key-sizes are an excellent idea within the government context to ensure that state, military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies are protected from foreign surveillance and traitors from within. In other words, these mandates are based on a national security imperative.<br /><br />However, similar mandates for corporations and ordinary citizens are based on a diametrically opposite imperative – surveillance. Therefore these mandates usually require the use of standards that governments can compromise usually via a brute force method (wherein supercomputers generate and attempt every possible key) and smaller key-lengths for it is generally the case that the smaller the key-length the quicker it is for the supercomputers to break in. These mandates, unlike the ones for state, military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, interfere with the market-based voluntary adoption of standards and therefore are examples of inappropriate regulation that will undermine the security and stability of information societies.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Plain-text storage requirement</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">First, the draft policy mandates that Business to Business (B2B) users and Consumer to Consumer (C2C) users store equivalent plain text (decrypted versions) of their encrypted communications and storage data for 90 days from the date of transaction. This requirement is impossible to comply with for three reasons. Foremost, encryption for web sessions are based on dynamically generated keys and users are not even aware that their interaction with web servers (including webmail such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail) are encrypted. Next, from a usability perspective, this would require additional manual steps which no one has the time for as part of their daily usage of technologies. Finally, the plain text storage will become a honey pot for attackers. In effect this requirement is as good as saying “don’t use encryption”.<br /><br />Second, the policy mandates that B2C and “service providers located within and outside India, using encryption” shall provide readable plain-text along with the corresponding encrypted information using the same software/hardware used to produce the encrypted information when demanded in line with the provisions of the laws of the country. From the perspective of lawful interception and targeted surveillance, it is indeed important that corporations cooperate with Indian intelligence and law enforcement agencies in a manner that is compliant with international and domestic human rights law. However, there are three circumstances where this is unworkable: 1) when the service providers are FOSS communities like the TOR project which don’t retain any user data and as far as we know don’t cooperate with any government; 2) when the service provider provides consumers with solutions based on end-to-end encryption and therefore do not hold the private keys that are required for decryption; and 3) when the Indian market is too small for a foreign provider to take requests from the Indian government seriously.<br /><br />Where it is technically possible for the service provider to cooperate with Indian law enforcement and intelligence, greater compliance can be ensured by Indian participation in multilateral and multi-stakeholder internet governance policy development to ensure greater harmonisation of substantive and procedural law across jurisdictions. Options here for India include reform of the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) process and standardisation of user data request formats via the Internet Jurisdiction Project.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Regulatory design</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Governments don’t have unlimited regulatory capability or capacity. They have to be conservative when designing regulation so that a high degree of compliance can be ensured. The draft policy mandates that citizens only use “encryption algorithms and key sizes will be prescribed by the government through notification from time to time.” This would be near impossible to enforce given the burgeoning multiplicity of encryption technologies available and the number of citizens that will get online in the coming years. Similarly the mandate that “service providers located within and outside India…must enter into an agreement with the government”, “vendors of encryption products shall register their products with the designated agency of the government” and “vendors shall submit working copies of the encryption software / hardware to the government along with professional quality documentation, test suites and execution platform environments” would be impossible for two reasons: that cloud based providers will not submit their software since they would want to protect their intellectual property from competitors, and that smaller and non-profit service providers may not comply since they can’t be threatened with bans or block orders.<br /><br />This approach to regulation is inspired by license raj thinking where enforcement requires enforcement capability and capacity that we don’t have. It would be more appropriate to have a “harms”-based approach wherein the government targets only those corporations that don’t comply with legitimate law enforcement and intelligence requests for user data and interception of communication.<br /><br />Also, while the “Technical Advisory Committee” is the appropriate mechanism to ensure that policies remain technologically neutral, it does not appear that the annexure of the draft policy, i.e. “Draft Notification on modes and methods of Encryption prescribed under Section 84A of Information Technology Act 2000”, has been properly debated by technical experts. According to my colleague Pranesh Prakash, “of the three symmetric cryptographic primitives that are listed – AES, 3DES, and RC4 – one, RC4, has been shown to be a broken cipher.”<br /><br />The draft policy also doesn’t take into account the security requirements of the IT, ITES, BPO and KPO industries that handle foreign intellectual property and personal information that is protected under European or American data protection law. If clients of these Indian companies feel that the Indian government would be able to access their confidential information, they will take their business to competing countries such as the Philippines.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">And the good news is…</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On the other hand, the second objective of the policy, which encourages “wider usage of digital Signature by all entities including Government for trusted communication, transactions and authentication” is laudable but should have ideally been a mandate for all government officials as this will ensure non-repudiation. Government officials would not be able to deny authorship for their communications or approvals that they grant for various applications and files that they process.<br /><br />Second, the setting up of “testing and evaluation infrastructure for encryption products” is also long overdue. The initiation of “research and development programs … for the development of indigenous algorithms and manufacture of indigenous products” is slightly utopian because it will be a long time before indigenous standards are as good as the global state of the art but also notable as an important start.<br /><br />The more important step for the government is to ensure high quality Indian participation in global SSOs and contributions to global standards. This has to be done through competition and market-based mechanisms wherein at least a billion dollars from the last spectrum auction should be immediately spent on funding existing government organisations, research organisations, independent research scholars and private sector organisations. These decisions should be made by peer-based committees and based on publicly verifiable measures of scientific rigour such as number of publications in peer-reviewed academic journals and acceptance of “running code” by SSOs.<br /><br />Additionally the government needs to start making mathematics a viable career in India by either employing mathematicians directly or funding academic and independent research organisations who employ mathematicians. The basis of all encryptions standards is mathematics and we urgently need the tribe of Indian mathematicians to increase dramatically in this country.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-wire-26-09-2015-sunil-abraham-hits-and-misses-with-draft-encryption-policy'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-wire-26-09-2015-sunil-abraham-hits-and-misses-with-draft-encryption-policy</a>
</p>
No publishersunilOpen StandardsInternet GovernanceSurveillanceFOSSB2B2015-09-26T16:46:53ZBlog EntrySoftware Freedom Pledge
https://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015
<b>On September 19, 2015, celebrated globally as Software Freedom Day, a number of enthusiasts got together and collectively took a pledge.</b>
<br />
<p>We, who have gathered together for <a href="http://softwarefreedomday.org/">Software Freedom Day 2015</a>, believe that software freedom is both a matter of ethical principle as well as a matter of pragmatism, and is necessary for a democratic, open society.</p>
<p>We believe that it is desirable that all people, but especially governments, use, contribute to, and spread open standards, free/libre/open source software, open APIs, openly-licensed content (including open data, open access, and open education resources), leading to a vibrant public domain, and ensure that all of the above are accessible for all, including persons with disabilities and other marginalised sections of society.</p>
<p>Given that, we pledge to:</p>
<ul>
<li>use and spread free software amongst our family, friends, and neighbours, both in person and virtually.</li>
<li>demand that services we use in turn use open standards and open APIs, and thus be available for all using free/libre/open source software, without the payment of any royalties.</li>
<li>raise the issue of software freedom with our democratic representatives, to seek that they in turn respect and promote these principles.</li>
<li>as far as possible, making our own work openly available, and seek to convince our employers, publishers, producers, and other persons who might be in a position to restrict </li>
<li>work against any laws, policies — corporate or governmental — or technical restrictions that seek to prevent people from full exercise of their rights, and which are contrary to the above principles.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<p>Signed by:</p>
<p>Abhaya Agarwal <br />
Ananth Subray <br />
Asutosha Sarangi <br />
Chirag Sarthi J <br />
Prakash Hebballi <br />
Pranesh Prakash <br />
Ralph Andrade <br />
Subhashish Panigrahi <br />
Tito Dutta <br />
Veethika Mishra</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015'>https://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsOpen SourceAccess to KnowledgeFLOSSOpen ContentFOSSEventTechnological Protection Measures2015-09-25T12:26:09ZBlog Entry'We Need to Proactively Ensure that People Can't File Patents Representative of the Creativity of a FOSS Community'
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/we-need-to-proactively-ensure-that-people-cant-file-representatives-of-the-creativity-of-a-foss-community
<b>Rohini Lakshané attended “Open Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Our Digital Culture” in Bangalore on August 13, 2015. Major takeaways from the event are documented in this post.</b>
<p class="Textbody" style="text-align: justify; "><b>Speakers:</b> Prof. Eben Moglen, Keith Bergelt, and Mishi Choudhary; <b>Panel discussion moderator</b>: Venkatesh Hariharan. See the <a class="external-link" href="http://pn.ispirt.in/event/open-innovation-entrepreneurship-and-our-digital-future">event page here</a>. The organizers <a class="external-link" href="http://pn.ispirt.in/open-source-leaders-discuss-innovation-entrepreneurship-and-software-patents">republished Rohini's report on their website</a>.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p class="Textbody" style="text-align: justify; "><b>Prof. Eben Moglen on FOSS and entrepreneurship</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>The culture of business in the 21<sup>st</sup> century needs open source software or free software because there is one Internet governed by one set of rules, protocols and APIs that make it possible for us to interact with each another. The Internet made everybody interdependent on everybody else. Startup culture needs free and open source software (FOSS) because startups are an insurgency, a guerrilla activity in business. The incumbents in a capitalistic world dislikes competition and detests that existing resources, such as FOSS, enable insurgents to circumvent some of the steep curve that they had to climb in order to become incumbents.</li>
<li>Hardware is developing in ways that make the idea of proprietary development of software obsolete. There is no large producer of proprietary software that isn't also dependent on FOSS. Microsoft Cloud is based on deployments that do not use Windows but are based on FOSS. The era of Android as a semi-closed, semi-proprietary form of FOSS is over. Big and small companies around the world are exploiting the open source nature of Android. </li>
<li><b>Free software is a renewable resource not a commodity. </b>Management is needed to avoid over-consumption or destruction of the FOSS ecosystem. Software is to the 21<sup>st</sup> century economic life what coal, steel, and rare earth metals were at the end of the previous century.</li>
<li>FOSS turned out to be about developing human brains. It turned out to be about using human intelligence in software better. Earlier universities, engineering colleges and research institutions were the greatest manufacturers and users of FOSS. Now businesses of all sizes are.</li>
<li>When Richard Stallman and Prof. Eben Moglen set out to make GPL free, they initiated a large public discussion process, the primary goal of which was to ensure that individual developers have as much right to talk and to be heard as loudly as the largest firms in the world. At the end of the negotiation process, 35 or 36 of the largest patent holders in the IT industry accepted the basic agreement to be a part of the commons. --- Incumbents like people to pay for a seat at the table. Paying to have an opinion is a pretty serious part of the landscape of the patent system.</li>
</ul>
<p class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; "><b>Prof. Eben Moglen on Digital India</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><b>Every e-governance project that the Indian government buys should use FOSS.</b> The very nature of the way the citizens and governments interact can come to be mediated by software that people can read, understand, modify, and improve. An enormous ecosystem will come up -- a kind of public–private partnership (PPP) in the improvement of governance and government services, which is far more useful than most other forms of PPP conceptualised in the developed world in the 20<sup>th</sup> century.</li>
<li>Everybody has a stake in the success of this policy. Several corporations are working against this policy as they once stated that they do not need FOSS.</li>
<li>The biggest market for both making and consuming software in the world is in India, because the science done here will dominate global software making, which in turn will define how the Internet works, which in turn will define society. One can't develop the largest society on earth by reinventing the wheel. <b>The government is going to understand that only the sharing of knowledge and the sharing of forms of inventing would enable the largest society in the world to develop itself freely and take its place in the forefront of digital humanity.</b></li>
<li>If every state government's data centre across India is going to be turned into a cloud, one state might have VMWare, another might have AWS, and so on, it would be disastrous. To prevent this, <b>all e-governance activities of every state government and federal agency in India could be conducted in one, big, homogeneous Indian cloud. </b>This would enable utility computing across the country for all citizens, which would also make room for citizen computing to happen. When one moves towards architectures of omnipresent utility computing with large amounts of memory flatly available to everybody, one is going to be describing a national computing environment for a billion people. We can't even begin to model it until we start accomplishing it.</li>
<li>Prof. Eben Moglen's ambition is that there comes a time not very long from now when basic data science is taught in Indian secondary schools. The software is free and all the big data sets are public. A nation of a 100 million data scientists rules the world.</li>
</ul>
<p class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; "><b>Keith Bergelt on the Open Invention Network</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Over the past 10 years, Open Invention Network (OIN) has emerged as the largest patent non-aggression community in the history of technology. It has around 1,700 participants and is adding almost 2 participants every day. In the last quarter, OIN had approximately 200 licensees.</li>
<li>There is now a cultural transformation where companies are recognising that where OIN members collaborate, they shouldn't use patents to stop or slow down progress. Where members compete, they choose to invent while utilising defensive patents publications. What we are doing is a patent collaboration and a technical collaboration that exists in major projects around the world.</li>
<li>OIN has been making a major effort since January 2015 to spend more time in India and China to be able to ensure that the technological might and expertise represented in the two countries can be a part of the global community, and that global projects can start here. <i>“We can expect to leverage the expertise of the community to be able to drive innovation from here [India and China]. It's not about IBM investing a billion dollars a year since 1999 and having some birthright to driving the open source initiatives around the world or about Google or Red Hat or anyone else. You have the ability to impact major changes and we want to be able to support you in the name of freedom of action as participants.”</i></li>
</ul>
<p class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; "><b>Panel Discussion</b></p>
<p class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; "><b>Patent Wars and Innovation</b></p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>In the past 5 to 7 years, patent wars in the handset segment of the information technology (IT) market have wasted tens of billions of dollars on litigation, and on raising the price of patent armaments. This patent litigation was purely an economic loss to the IT industry and it contributed nothing. If the patent system strangles invention, non-profit groups, non-commercial bodies, free software makers, and start-ups cannot invent freely.</li>
<li>Defensive patent publications, such as those made by IBM, lead to the gross underestimation of the inventive power and output of the company. People are struggling to find something to evaluate the productive output of an entity – startup, micro-industry or macro-industry. Patents are being used inappropriately and it's part of the corruption of the patent system. Any venture capitalist (VC) who believes that either the innovative capacities or the potential success factors of a start-up are tied to its patents should know that there are only a minuscule number of cases where patents are the differentiator. The differentiators required in order to sustain business are how smart the people are, how quickly they innovate, and how quickly they are able to adapt to complex situations. We see a trend in the US of not equating patents with innovation. The core-developer and hacker communities are largely anti-patent.</li>
<li>However, the flip side is that if the FOSS communities do not patent defensively, i.e., acquire and publish patents for their inventions in order to prevent others from getting patents in one jurisdiction or another, patent trolls will eventually encroach on the communities' inventive output. The only people making money out of this whole process are lawyers. It is slowing down the uptake of technology by creating fears and doubts in the system.</li>
<li>FOSS communities didn't qualify everything produced in the 23 years of (Linus') Linux, which would have let the service serve as stable prior art, preventing other people from filing patents. We can debate what is patentable subject matter in general or whether software should be patentable, but in the meantime <b>if we can be proactive and file everything that we have in defensive publications and make it accessible to the patent and trademark offices here and around the world, we will have far fewer patents.</b> <b>We need to be activists in making sure that people can't file patents that are representative of the creativity of a community.</b></li>
<li>The Chinese government has instituted a programme designed to produce defensive publications in order to capture all the inventiveness across their industries, to be able to ensure that the quality of what ultimately gets patented is at least as high.</li>
<li>The US has a massive repository called ip.com, which is with every patent examiner of the USPTO.</li>
<li>India does not grant software patents as per section 3(k) of the Indian Patents Act, but that doesn't mean that no software patents are being granted. One of the empirical studies conducted by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) in India shows that 98.3% of the [telecom and computing technology] patents granted till 2013 went to multinational corporations. Almost none of the assignees are Indian.</li>
<li>In the context of the ongoing patent infringement law suits filed in the Delhi High Court by Ericsson [<a href="http://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/compilation-of-mobile-phone-patent-litigation-cases-in-india">link</a>]: The Delhi High Court has had a reputation of being very pro-intellectual property from the beginning.</li>
<li>Also, there is pressure from trade organisations. In August 2015, Ericsson along with ASSOCHAM invited the Director General of the Competition Commission of India to present a paper about why patents are good. It is essential to determine how the rules of conflict of interest apply here. This is exactly what the pharmaceutical industry would do. The only bodies who would object are Doctors Without Borders (MSF) or some local organisations who realise that high priced patented drugs is not what India needs and that we do not need to have the same IP policy as the US or Japan. We only need a different policy.</li>
<li>The Special 301 Report of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) is a big sham, and it suggests that India doesn't have strict enforcement of IP law. India does, unlike China.</li>
<li><b>Accenture has been granted a software patent in India.</b> The patent is about an expert present in a remote location transferring knowledge to somebody who is listening in another location. Universities offering MOOCs, BPOs, and many other services would fall under such a patent. SFLC spent four years trying to fight this patent. The first defence of Accenture's battery of lawyers was that they won't use the patent.</li>
<li><b>Patents of very low quality are being bought at very high prices. </b>The tax system or the subsidy system for innovation regards all patents as equal. This is a pricing failure and that should be corrected by other forms of intervention. The pendulum has already begun to swing the other way. Alice Corp was the third consecutive and unanimous ruling by the US Supreme Court that abstract ideas are not patentable. Patent applications pertaining to business methods and algorithms are increasingly being rejected by the USPTO after the ruling.</li>
</ul>
<p class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; "><b>Prof. Eben Moglen on Facebook:</b></p>
<p class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook is a badly designed technology because there is one Man in the Middle who keeps all the logs. The privacy problem with Facebook is not just about what people post. It's about surveillance and data mining of web reading behaviour. It is a social danger that ought not to exist. I have said since 2010 is that we can't forbid it; let's replace it. It means bringing the web back as a writeable medium for people in an easy way. What I see as next-generation architecture could just as well be described as Tim Burners Lee's previous generation architecture.</p>
<p class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; ">You have to be able to trust the Internet. If you can't, you are going to be living in the shadow of govt surveillance, corporate surveillance, the fear of identity theft, and so on. We need to be able to explain to people what kind of software they can trust and what kind they can't. Distributed social networking will happen; it's not that difficult a problem.</p>
<p class="Standard" style="text-align: justify; ">An example of federated networking is <b>Freedombox</b>, a cheap hardware doing router jobs using free software in ways that encourage privacy. The pilot project for Freedombox has been deployed in little villages in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. These routers don't deliver logs to a thug in a hoodie in Menlo Park.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/we-need-to-proactively-ensure-that-people-cant-file-representatives-of-the-creativity-of-a-foss-community'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/we-need-to-proactively-ensure-that-people-cant-file-representatives-of-the-creativity-of-a-foss-community</a>
</p>
No publisherrohiniOpen SourceAccess to KnowledgeOpen InnovationFOSSPatents2015-09-27T11:51:50ZBlog EntryFOSS for Public Use: Free and Open Source Software for Digital India
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/foss-for-public-use-free-and-open-source-software-for-digital-india
<b>I attended a round-table meeting on May 29, 2015 at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The meeting was organized by SFLC in collaboration with the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software, and the Centre for Internet & Society.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The meeting commenced with welcome address by Ms.Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC.in. She elaborated on the idea of the round table conference and explained how sharing of knowledge and experience of the stakeholders will help and assist the people responsible for framing this policy. She then introduced the various dignitaries who participated in this endeavour.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The first session was on the topic, The Open Source Policy - Enabling Digital India, with Mishi Chaoudhary being the moderator. She explained about the “Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India” that was launched in March 2015 by the Government of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The second session was opened by Satish Babu, who emphasized on the Policy’s stand that the ecosystem is more important than the code and stated that this ecosystem comprises of several stakeholders.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Delegates who spoke at the event included Dr. Nagarjuna G, Cmdr. L. R. Prakash, Dr. Andrew M Lynn, Prof. Arun Mehta, Vikram Vincent, Venkatesh Hariharan,Kishore Bhargava, Prabir Purkayastha, Ashok T. Ukrani, Ganapathy Narayanan, Anivar Aravind, Satish Babu, Srinivasan Ramakrishnan, Rahul De, Mishi Choudhary, and Anubha Sinha.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The meeting of the minutes can be <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/meeting-notes-on-foss-roundtable.pdf" class="external-link">downloaded here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/foss-for-public-use-free-and-open-source-software-for-digital-india'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/foss-for-public-use-free-and-open-source-software-for-digital-india</a>
</p>
No publishersinhaOpennessFOSS2016-06-18T18:20:35ZBlog Entry