The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 1 to 15.
Call for Survey Responses: Security Perceptions of Open Source Software Among Practitioners
https://cis-india.org/openness/call-for-survey-responses-security-perceptions-of-open-source-software-among-practitioners
<b>Most software projects today contain open source components. Some industry estimates put the number at 500+ OSS components per app. Centre for Internet and Society is studying the security impact of the widespread use of these (often under-maintained) projects. </b>
<p>The survey for this study <a class="external-link" href="https://ee.kobotoolbox.org/single/251cdd1e9cebe7f89a03c117d6504d42">here</a></p>
<p><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/OpenSource.png" alt="Open Source" class="image-inline" title="Open Source" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If you use any open source components for your job, your input around how you select components to use would help us understand industry standards around the use of OSS.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even if you’re not a part of the security teams in your organization, please take this survey! It will help us understand how you select OSS components and you may learn ways to vet your own dependencies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The survey should take around 30 minutes to complete. As a token of our gratitude for your time and your survey contributions, we would like to send you an Amazon India Gift Card for Rs. 250. Please be sure to include your email address since it will be used to send the Gift Card at the end of the week.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/call-for-survey-responses-security-perceptions-of-open-source-software-among-practitioners'>https://cis-india.org/openness/call-for-survey-responses-security-perceptions-of-open-source-software-among-practitioners</a>
</p>
No publisherDivyansha SehgalOpennessOpen Source2021-11-30T05:14:46ZPageWikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science-1
<b>An orientation session on Wikimedia projects was held on 6-7 December 2019 at Dr. GR Damodaran College of Science. This talk was part of the “Hour of Code” event, which is an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. This event was supported by Open Knowledge movements like Wikimedia, Mozilla, etc.which would help students to share their knowledge in the form of volunteerships and contributions. The highlights of gender gap research and women based projects such as Women in Red were covered as part of a focussed group discussion.
</b>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Hour of code event</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-873db869-7fff-ba7f-7961-738c71b373c1"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PvdIcLLPTRrWxRng81lxpZayqHoXiQ6C143wz1JGzJMA5waxIbsvn8DBlxdwCLV0GsEDLigyREWiIbKjkKfGi9Xv4Kaspp-OaBkehQd56As3A3i7GviyO0PBBu9QOMQCquLDRqsR" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The “<a class="external-link" href="https://hourofcode.com/in">Hour of Code</a>” is an International event conducted across the globe to commemorate the birthday of <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper">Grace Hopper</a>, a computer scientist. In India 1047 events were officially registered and were conducted region-wise. In Coimbatore, Dr.G.R. Damodaran College of Science initiated the first Hour of Code event in the city. The event was attended by 350 students, where 50% of the participants were identified as women, from various departments and 6 Open Source and Knowledge movements’ community members were invited as speakers. Among them were <a class="external-link" href="https://www.wikimedia.org/">Wikimedia</a>, <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/">Mozilla</a>, <a href="https://developers.google.com/community/gdg">Google Developers Groups</a>, <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/developercircles/">Facebook Devcircles</a>, <a href="https://www.womentechmakers.com/">Women Tech Makers</a> and <a href="https://soai.world/">School of AI</a> where all the community representatives pitched to the student gathering on how to contribute to these groups. The students were enthusiastic to initiate Open source clubs and also nominate a Point Of Contact with the guidance of the faculty members.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-2b0e0b9f-7fff-bebd-e541-6eef9130b86d"><strong>Wiki Orientation</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-8680976f-7fff-f4d6-82f6-fd00faecf88b"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/8P434MuQgXUVy_K2mnVRRgDwy8WfWUQ0oglLrpUj65Vi5iydeXUOZyMdckIO1_AL4tiwFPvyQp_tnRGKGIvyV9blRM_Hq44u0f-SgAv-8MZKUntdU8kIX_-szR6H4u-Z6GPIj6tT" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span style="text-align: start;"><a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-9c4b5c5d-7fff-ae7c-9ca8-d3b45460fd92"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/3-l8ksMxppChRGdeNXlFbKf6Otxe0EkWpTut1HNGUxXhq-T8ogcmlG5HwFW_rDIxa85BNUvLV2BaG4ExbnDaKRJMeApH7RImubvWbejFVKNen4FL0HBUFyroLzqnXRjDUvE4nuQk" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span style="text-align: start;"><a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong><span id="docs-internal-guid-cd49061e-7fff-06e1-303e-0810be036596"></span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">I was invited as a Chief Guest for the event to talk to students about how they may contribute to Wikimedia and its projects. I presented to the students the various forms of Wiki which would be of interest to coders and non-coders. This also included discussions on <a href="http://wikidata.org/">Wikidata</a>, <a href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikisource</a>, <a href="https://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikimedia commons</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program">Wikimedia in Education program</a>. As the participants from the college were mostly from Tamil Nadu, I also emphasised how contribution in Tamil in the Wiki world will be of great help. I discussed with students how contribution to an Open Knowledge movement not only enhances their intellectual stand but also benefits the whole world. Also the founder of Koval labs, Coimbatore was the co-speaker of the day who highlighted about importance of Open source and Computer Science in today's industries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Bridging Gender Gap </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">After the orientation, I invited a few participants to a focussed group discussion about my research on “<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Research/Bridging_gender_gap">Bridging the Gender gap in Indian Wikipedia languages</a>”.A majority of the participants were women, even though the event was open to all. I discussed the research work and the necessity behind this. Apart from this I introduced the students to various women- focussed wiki-based projects such as Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. I also asked the attendees to express t in the open discussion session on what are the major issues faced by women in technology taking examples from their own lives.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"> <img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/zzlhB5fqWC8PGaE2Bqr3mpJUHc8tGhSssRf4G7lb7Dm5pBGrrW1G7Ca0M5oQAXloQTVwS-MapJQIGw1QVR8LNsgQMzFkuoZ0F5k1RycUSZ5s0oX5kRAkIiVcyziIfYwVRJwU28x3" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-489f2d13-7fff-cb65-7e89-a4453fd1c656"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The common and major issues with pursuing a career in technology discussed were the inaccessibility to internet and infrastructure to work at home besides the other household responsibilities. Also the freedom to pursue a career in this field is less and not permissible for longer years in these women's lives.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-bf32409e-7fff-bfe5-9b8a-3d6230a1e080"><br /></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Key observations/ learnings</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-fd8e76ba-7fff-2345-8c3c-a763a49aedf3"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/q3PI3c37BgQRc4ML_XVrLgwIqp9PN_zv1adLFdCtBM-IFJCyBBjkcG59ccpRCo1P_mWlMfKj-5BumFUS04l1u6W8Gc1nLMZOaHh6oDg01z5wFtD930qthGW8DMBV3HfmE7KPMQAO" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a1d57c54-7fff-99af-34c9-f33c7b995d55"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg</a></p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case).</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">The possibilities of initiating a WikiClub at the campus.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Almost 60% was interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Discussed the kinds of projects students can contribute to on Wikipedia. </p>
</li></ul>
<p dir="ltr"><br /><br />Press coverage about the event can be seen at <a href="https://youtu.be/5APh01ScHrM">Desathin Nambikai </a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/QEWl8z0Q07Y">The Covai mail news</a> , <a href="https://youtu.be/BkZbDWmvWdQ">Prime Time Tamil </a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/16mqiY_M3NE">Covai news</a> and <a href="http://bit.ly/2PTC3u6"> Updatenews360.com</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science-1'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science-1</a>
</p>
No publisherbhuvanaWikimedia EducationCIS-A2KOpen SourceAccess to KnowledgeWikipedia Education Programwomen and internetWikipedia gender gapteaching2020-01-18T08:11:03ZBlog EntryWikiorientation at Dr.GR Damodaran College of Science
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science
<b>An orientation session on Wikimedia projects was held on 6-7 December 2019 at Dr. GR Damodaran College of Science. This talk was part of the “Hour of Code” event, which is an International event celebrated across the globe to encourage students to develop their knowledge on Computer Science. This event was supported by Open Knowledge movements like Wikimedia, Mozilla, etc.which would help students to share their knowledge in the form of volunteerships and contributions. The highlights of gender gap research and women based projects such as Women in Red were covered as part of a focussed group discussion.
</b>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-97ab1c14-7fff-85ee-ada3-f2e9409c4480"></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Hour of code event</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-873db869-7fff-ba7f-7961-738c71b373c1"> <img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PvdIcLLPTRrWxRng81lxpZayqHoXiQ6C143wz1JGzJMA5waxIbsvn8DBlxdwCLV0GsEDLigyREWiIbKjkKfGi9Xv4Kaspp-OaBkehQd56As3A3i7GviyO0PBBu9QOMQCquLDRqsR" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The “<a class="external-link" href="https://hourofcode.com/in">Hour of Code</a>” is an International event conducted across the globe to commemorate the birthday of <a class="external-link" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper">Grace Hopper</a>, a computer scientist. In India 1047 events were officially registered and were conducted region-wise. In Coimbatore, Dr.G.R. Damodaran College of Science initiated the first Hour of Code event in the city. The event was attended by 400-500 students, where 50% of the participants were identified as women, from various departments and 6 Open Source and Knowledge movements’ community members were invited as speakers. Among them were <a class="external-link" href="https://www.wikimedia.org/">Wikimedia</a>, <a href="https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/">Mozilla</a>, <a href="https://developers.google.com/community/gdg">Google Developers Groups</a>, <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/developercircles/">Facebook Devcircles</a>, <a href="https://www.womentechmakers.com/">Women Tech Makers</a> and <a href="https://soai.world/">School of AI</a> where all the community representatives pitched to the student gathering on how to contribute to these groups. The students were enthusiastic to initiate Open source clubs and also nominate a Point Of Contact with the guidance of the faculty members.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-2b0e0b9f-7fff-bebd-e541-6eef9130b86d"><strong>Wiki Orientation</strong></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-8680976f-7fff-f4d6-82f6-fd00faecf88b"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/8P434MuQgXUVy_K2mnVRRgDwy8WfWUQ0oglLrpUj65Vi5iydeXUOZyMdckIO1_AL4tiwFPvyQp_tnRGKGIvyV9blRM_Hq44u0f-SgAv-8MZKUntdU8kIX_-szR6H4u-Z6GPIj6tT" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span style="text-align: start;"><a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-6.jpg</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-9c4b5c5d-7fff-ae7c-9ca8-d3b45460fd92"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/3-l8ksMxppChRGdeNXlFbKf6Otxe0EkWpTut1HNGUxXhq-T8ogcmlG5HwFW_rDIxa85BNUvLV2BaG4ExbnDaKRJMeApH7RImubvWbejFVKNen4FL0HBUFyroLzqnXRjDUvE4nuQk" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span style="text-align: start;"><a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-7.jpg</a></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong><span id="docs-internal-guid-cd49061e-7fff-06e1-303e-0810be036596"></span></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">I was invited as a Chief Guest for the event to talk to students about how they may contribute to Wikimedia and its projects. I presented to the students the various forms of Wiki which would be of interest to coders and non-coders. This also included discussions on <a href="http://wikidata.org/">Wikidata</a>, <a href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikisource</a>, <a href="https://www.wikipedia.org/">Wikipedia</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikimedia commons</a> and <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Education_Program">Wikimedia in Education program</a>. As the participants from the college were mostly from Tamil Nadu, I also emphasised how contribution in Tamil in the Wiki world will be of great help. I discussed with students how contribution to an Open Knowledge movement not only enhances their intellectual stand but also benefits the whole world. Also the founder of Koval labs, Coimbatore was the co-speaker of the day who highlighted about importance of Open source and Computer Science in today's industries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"><strong>Bridging Gender Gap </strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">After the orientation, I invited a few participants to a focussed group discussion about my research on “<a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Research/Bridging_gender_gap">Bridging the Gender gap in Indian Wikipedia languages</a>”.A majority of the participants were women, even though the event was open to all. I discussed the research work and the necessity behind this. Apart from this I introduced the students to various women- focussed wiki-based projects such as Women In Red, WikiLoves Women, Wiki Women for Women Well Being (WWWW) etc. I also asked the attendees to express t in the open discussion session on what are the major issues faced by women in technology taking examples from their own lives.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"> <img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/zzlhB5fqWC8PGaE2Bqr3mpJUHc8tGhSssRf4G7lb7Dm5pBGrrW1G7Ca0M5oQAXloQTVwS-MapJQIGw1QVR8LNsgQMzFkuoZ0F5k1RycUSZ5s0oX5kRAkIiVcyziIfYwVRJwU28x3" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-489f2d13-7fff-cb65-7e89-a4453fd1c656"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-12.jpg</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr"> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;" dir="ltr">The common and major issues with pursuing a career in technology discussed were the inaccessibility to internet and infrastructure to work at home besides the other household responsibilities. Also the freedom to pursue a career in this field is less and not permissible for longer years in these women's lives.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-bf32409e-7fff-bfe5-9b8a-3d6230a1e080"><br /></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Key observations/ learnings</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-fd8e76ba-7fff-2345-8c3c-a763a49aedf3"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/q3PI3c37BgQRc4ML_XVrLgwIqp9PN_zv1adLFdCtBM-IFJCyBBjkcG59ccpRCo1P_mWlMfKj-5BumFUS04l1u6W8Gc1nLMZOaHh6oDg01z5wFtD930qthGW8DMBV3HfmE7KPMQAO" alt="null" height="200" width="300" /></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-a1d57c54-7fff-99af-34c9-f33c7b995d55"></span></p>
<p style="text-align: center;" dir="ltr"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikiorientation_at_Dr.GR_Damodaran_college_of_arts_and_science,_Coimbatore_-9.jpg</a></p>
<ul><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">The key issues of women working on technology in a structured environment (such as an educational institution in this case).</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">The possibilities of initiating a WikiClub at the campus.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Almost 60% was interested in non/less coding contributions/subjects.</p>
</li><li style="list-style-type: disc;" dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr">Discussed the kinds of projects students can contribute to on Wikipedia. </p>
</li></ul>
<p dir="ltr"><br /><br />Press coverage about the event can be seen at <a href="https://youtu.be/5APh01ScHrM">Desathin Nambikai </a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/QEWl8z0Q07Y">The Covai mail news</a> , <a href="https://youtu.be/BkZbDWmvWdQ">Prime Time Tamil </a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/16mqiY_M3NE">Covai news</a> and <a href="http://bit.ly/2PTC3u6"> Updatenews360.com</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikiorientation-at-dr-gr-damodaran-college-of-science</a>
</p>
No publisherbhuvanaWikimedia EducationCIS-A2KOpen SourceWikimediawomen and internetWikipedia gender gapteaching2019-12-23T08:18:11ZBlog EntryGurshabad Grover nominated to join advisory group on open source software for ISO/IEC JTC 1
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/gurshabad-grover-nominated-to-join-advisory-group-on-open-source-software-for-iso-iec-jtc-1
<b>Gurshabad Grover has been nominated through the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) to be a member of the Advisory Group AG) on Open Source Software for ISO/IEC JTC 1.</b>
<p> </p>
<div id="_mcePaste" style="text-align: justify; ">JTC 1 deals with international standards on information technology. This AG is currently documenting requirements and potential opportunities for <span>industry use of open source software for all work areas under the various committees of JTC 1.</span></div>
<div></div>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/gurshabad-grover-nominated-to-join-advisory-group-on-open-source-software-for-iso-iec-jtc-1'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/gurshabad-grover-nominated-to-join-advisory-group-on-open-source-software-for-iso-iec-jtc-1</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessOpen Source2019-11-02T05:17:24ZNews ItemDevFest'19
https://cis-india.org/openness/devfest19
<b>Bhuvana Meenakshi was a speaker at the event organised by Google Developers Groups at Coimbatore on September 14, 2019.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">She spoke on WebXR: The journey to the centre of Reality. The audience were all beginners and they were amused to see her works on Mixed Reality. They also learnt to kickstart with the easiest ways of developing the most cool applications using Firefox's framework.</p>
<div>Website: <a href="https://devfest19.gdgcbe.com/" target="_blank">https://devfest19.gdgcbe.com/</a></div>
<div>Blog: <a href="https://kbmtechie.wordpress.com/2019/09/22/speaker-experience-at-devfest19/" target="_blank">https://kbmtechie.wordpress.com/2019/09/22/speaker-experience-at-devfest19/</a></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/devfest19'>https://cis-india.org/openness/devfest19</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessOpen Source2019-10-14T14:50:33ZNews ItemRootconf 2019
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/rootconf-2019
<b>Karan Saini participated in the annual Rootconf conference held by HasGeek on June 21 and 22, 2019. This conference was held at the NIMHANS Convention Centre in Bangalore, India.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Apart from being responsible for reviewing proposals for security-related talks for Rootconf, Karan also moderated a 'Birds of a Feather’ session with Vandana Verma and Shubham Mittal wherein participants discussed the various offensive and defensive security applications of open source intelligence. The conference schedule can be <a class="external-link" href="https://hasgeek.com/rootconf/2019/schedule">accessed here</a>. The abstract for the Birds of a Feather session on OSINT can be <a class="external-link" href="https://hasgeek.com/rootconf/2019/proposals/defensive-and-offensive-applications-of-open-sourc-owwNwhiToSrkP9VjvC3ev3">found here</a>. More information on the event can be <a class="external-link" href="https://hasgeek.com/rootconf/2019/">viewed here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/rootconf-2019'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/rootconf-2019</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessOpen Source2019-07-05T00:52:38ZNews ItemComments on the Draft National Policy on Software Products
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-draft-national-policy-on-software-products
<b>The Centre for Internet & Society submitted public comments to the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Information & Communications Technology, Govt. of India on the National Policy of Software
Products on December 9, 2016. </b>
<p> </p>
<h2>I. Preliminary</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>1.</strong> This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society, India (“<strong>CIS</strong>”) on the Draft National Policy on Software Products <a name="fr1" href="#fn1">[1]</a> (“<strong>draft policy</strong>”), released by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (“<strong>MeitY</strong> ”).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>2.</strong> CIS commends MeitY on its initiative to present a draft policy, and is thankful for the opportunity to put forth its views in this public consultation period.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>3.</strong> This submission is divided into three main parts. The first part, ‘Preliminary’, introduces the document; the second part, ‘About CIS’, is an overview of the organization; and, the third part contains the comments by CIS on the Draft National Policy on Software Products.</p>
<h2>II. About CIS</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>4.</strong> CIS is a non-profit organisation <a name="fr2" href="#fn2">[2]</a> that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, freedom of speech and expression, intermediary liability, digital privacy, and cyber security.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>5.</strong> CIS values the fundamental principles of justice, equality, freedom and economic development. This submission is consistent with CIS' commitment to these values, the safeguarding of general public interest and the protection of India's national interest at the international level. Accordingly, the comments in this submission aim to further these principles.</p>
<h2>III. Comments on the Draft National Policy on Software Products</h2>
<h3><strong>General Comments</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>6.</strong> CIS commends MeitY on its initiative to develop a consolidated National Policy on Software Products. We believe that there are certain salient points in the draft policy that deserve particular appreciation for being in the interest of all stakeholders, especially the public. An indicative list of such points include:</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;"><li>A focus on aiding digital inclusion via software, especially in the fields of finance, education and healthcare.</li>
<li>The recognition of the need for openness and application of open data principles in the private and public sector. Identifying the need for diversification of the information technology sector into regions outside the developed cities in India.</li>
<li>Identifying the need for innovation and original research in emerging fields such as Internet of Things and Big Data.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>7.</strong> We observe that the draft policy weighs in the favour of creating a thriving digital economy, which indeed is a commendable objective per se. However, there are certain aspects which remain to be addressed by the draft policy, to ensure that the growth of our domestic software industry truly achieves the vision set out in Digital India for better delivery of government services and maximisation of the public interest.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>8.</strong> We submit that the proposed policy should include certain additional guiding principles to direct creation of software and its end-utilisation. These principles would ensure responsible, inclusive, judicious and secure software product life cycle by all the relevant stakeholders, including the industry, the government and especially the public. An indicative list of such principles that we believe should be explicitly included in the policy are:</p>
<ol style="text-align: justify;"><li>Ensuring that internationally accepted principles of privacy are followed in software development and utilisation, including public awareness.</li>
<li>Requiring basic yet sufficient standards of information security to ensure protection of user data at all stages of the software product life cycle.</li>
<li>Enforcing lingual diversity in software to allow for India’s diverse population to operate indigenous software in an inclusive manner.</li>
<li>Mandating minimum standards on accessibility in software creation, procurement and implementation to ensure sustainable use by the differently-abled.</li>
<li>Focusing on transparency & accountability in software procurement for all public funded projects.</li>
<li>Implementing the utilisation of Free and Open Source Software (“<strong>FOSS</strong>”) in the execution of public funded projects as per the mandate of the Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India; thereby incentivising the creation of FOSS for use in both private and public sector.</li>
<li>For software to be truly inclusive of the goals of Digital India, it is essential that to provide supports to Indic languages and scripts without yielding an inferior experience or results for the end user in non-English interfaces. Software already deployed should be translated and localised.</li></ol>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>9.</strong> The inclusion of these principles in substantive clauses of the policy will go a long way in ensuring the sustainable and transparent growth of domestic software product ecosystem.</p>
<h3><strong>Specific Comments</strong></h3>
<h4><strong>10.</strong> Development of a robust Electronic Payment Infrastructure</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>10.1.</strong> CIS observes that clauses 5.4 and 6.7 of the draft policy aim to establish a seamless electronic payment infrastructure. We submit that an electronic payment infrastructure should be designed with strong standards of information security, privacy and inclusivity (both accessibility and lingual).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>10.2.</strong> We recommend that the policy mandate minimum standards of information security, privacy and inclusivity in all payment systems across private and public sectors. The policy should, therefore, ideally specify the respective standards for these categories, for instance ISO 27001 and National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility <a name="fr3" href="#fn3">[3]</a>, alongside other industry standards for Electronic Payment Infrastructure.</p>
<h4>11. Government Procurement</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>11.1.</strong> CIS observes that clause 6.1 of the draft policy seeks to develop a framework for inclusion of Indian software in government procurement. It is commendable that the draft policy identifies the need for a better framework. CIS notes that the existing procurement procedure allows for usage of Indian software. In fact, the Government e-Marketplace(eGM) already has begun to incorporate some of these principles in general procurement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>11.2.</strong> Indeed, the presence of a transparent and accountable government procurement, which leverages technology and the internet, is key to ensuring a sustainable and fair market. CIS recommends that the policy refer to these guiding principles to enable the development of a viable cache of Indian software products by creating more avenues, including government procurement.</p>
<h4>12. Incentives for Digital India oriented software</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>12.1.</strong> CIS observes that clause 6.3 of the draft policy incentivises the creation of software addressing the action pillars of the commendable Digital India programme.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>12.2.</strong> For development of superior quality software which will ensure excellent success of the Digital India programme, CIS recommends that the incentives should be provided <em>contingent </em>to the incorporation of certain minimum standards of software development. Such products and services should, <em>inter alia</em>, adhere to the stipulations under National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility, the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites, Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011, etc. In the process, the software should be subjected to reviews by a neutral entity to gauge the compliance with the abovementioned minimum standards.</p>
<h4>13. Increasing adoption of Open APIs and Open Data</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>13.1.</strong> CIS observes that clause 6.6 of the draft policy promotes the use of open APIs and open data in development of e-government services.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>13.2.</strong> We strongly recommend that open APIs and open data principles be adopted by software used in all government organizations, and non-commercial software . Open Data and Open APIs can serve a vital role in ensuring transparent, accountable and efficient governance, which can be leveraged in a major way within the policy by the public and civil society.</p>
<h4>14. Creation of Enabling Environment for Innovation, R&D, and IP Creation and Protection</h4>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>14.1.</strong> CIS observes that clause 8.1 of the draft policy seeks to create an enabling environment for innovation, R&D, and IP creation and protection.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>14.2.</strong> CIS submits that the existing TRIPS-compliant Indian intellectual property law regime is adequately designed to incentivise creativity and innovation in the area of software development. The Indian Patents Act, 1970 read with the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions, 2016 do not permit the patenting of <em>computer programmes per se</em>. Several Indian software developers, notably small and medium sized development companies have made evidence-based submissions to the government previously on the negative impact of software patenting on software innovation <a name="fr4" href="#fn4">[4]</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>14.3.</strong> CIS recommends that the proposed policy re-affirm the adequacy of the Indian intellectual property regime to protect software development, in compliance with the TRIPS Agreement.</p>
<h2>IV. Conclusion</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>15.</strong> CIS commends the MeitY on the development of the draft policy. We strongly urge MeitY to address the issues highlighted above, especially emphasising the incorporation of essential principles such as information security, privacy, accessibility, etc. Adoption of such measures will ensure a fair balance between commercial growth of domestic software industry and the maximisation of public interest.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify;" />
<p>[<a name="fn1" href="#fr1">1</a>]. National Policy on Software Products (2016, Draft internal v1. 15) available at <a class="external-link" href="http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/National%20Policy%20on%20Software%20Products.pdf">http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/National%20Policy%20on%20Software%20Products.pdf</a></p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/National%20Policy%20on%20Software%20Products.pdf">[</a><a name="fn2" href="#fr2">2</a>]. See The Centre for Internet and Society, available at <a class="external-link" href="http://cis- india.org">http://cis- india.org</a> for details of the organization,and our work.</p>
<p>[<a name="fn3" href="#fr3">3</a>]. See <a class="external-link" href="http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Accessible-format-National%20Policy%20on%20Universal%20Electronics.pdf">http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Accessible-format-National%20Policy%20on%20Universal%20Electronics.pdf</a></p>
<p>[<a name="fn4" href="#fr4">4</a>]. See <a class="external-link" href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/52159304.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&amp;utm_me%20dium=text&amp;utm_campaign=cppst">http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/52159304.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_me dium=text&utm_campaign=cppst</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-draft-national-policy-on-software-products'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-draft-national-policy-on-software-products</a>
</p>
No publisherAnubha Sinha, Rohini Lakshané, and Udbhav TiwariOpen StandardsNational Software PolicyOpen SourceOpen DataInternet GovernanceOpenness2016-12-12T14:45:11ZBlog Entry4 tips for DIY makers
https://cis-india.org/openness/opensource-november-18-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-4-tips-for-diy-makers
<b>I started learning stencil printing and hand lettering this year, and became quite enthralled with it. These age old techniques really add something special to postcards, which I usually send to myself, my wife, and my friends while traveling.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in <a class="external-link" href="https://opensource.com/article/16/11/4-tips-DIY-maker">Opensource.com </a>on November 18, 2016</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of course, I started considering how I could make the artwork from these postcards open to others.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">First, I take a picture of the postcard and upload it to <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Linocuts_and_stencils_made_by_Subhashish_Panigrahi" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a> under a free license, usually <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 </a> or <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank">CC BY-SA 4.0 International</a>. These two licenses allow anyone to use the image of my artwork for both non-commercial and commercial purposes, modify and remix them. And uploading to Wikimedia Commons puts my artwork in a place where many people will see it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sometimes, I capture the postcard-making process as well, and upload those images to Wikimedia Commons.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If you're considering making your DIY project open, here are four main considerations:</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">1. To share or not to share?</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Deciding whether to share your craft project or image might be an easy "sure, why not?" but you may be wondering "but, is it useful to others?"</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">My opinion is that yes, everything you make could be interesting to others, so why not make it open? There is certainly something in every maker activity that is worth sharing publicly. When I was making a stamp that was quite special and personal, and I did not want the whole world to see it because it was personal, but I did capture the stamp carving process for others to see. You might want to ask around friends and other people in any maker community you are part of. Also, try asking yourself what really would matter to other people so that you can share only useful outcomes and tips rather than sharing everything.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">2. Choosing a license</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I wrote about <a href="https://opensource.com/education/16/8/3-copyright-tips-students-and-educators" target="_blank">three tips for sharing your work online</a>. And there are many other resources out there, including <a href="https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a> and <a href="http://choosealicense.com/" target="_blank">GitHub</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A simple rule of thumb is: Except content that clearly indicates the work is released under a free license, or that the copyright has lapsed and the work is in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain" target="_blank">Public Domain</a>, you can assume content is not freely/liberally licensed.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">3. Where to share</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There is almost a platform to share anything these days. Most popular multimedia platforms support Creative Commons-licensed works, like <a href="https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797468?hl=en" target="_blank"> YouTube</a> and <a href="https://vimeo.com/creativecommons" target="_blank"> Vimeo</a> for video, <a href="https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/" target="_blank"> Flickr </a> for images, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/2015/05/06/medium-embraces-cc-licenses/" target="_blank"> Medium</a> for writing, <a href="https://www.jamendo.com/faq#q8" target="_blank"> Jamendo</a> for music, and many more. <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Upload" target="_blank"> Wikimedia Commons</a>, mentioned above, is a sister project of Wikipedia and the world's largest multimedia repository; it allows original works to be uploaded and shared by <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/relgen/" target="_blank">Copyright holders and others</a> of works like images (.jpg, .png, .gif), presentations (.pdf), videos (.webm and .ogv), and audio files (.ogg).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Know of more places to share works? Let us know in the comments.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">4. Meet birds of feather and exchange ideas</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are tons of global and local events that bring people of all maker interests under a single roof.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">An event that I love is Mozilla's <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/tag/maker-party/" target="_blank"> Maker Party</a>. I have been to one in my city of <a href="http://blog.mozillaindia.org/24" target="_blank">Bengaluru</a>, India and can guarantee it is lots of fun!</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Events like this help connect you with other makers who live nearby.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Tell us about your experience</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">I hope these tips have helped. Do you have other tips to share? Leave us a comment.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/opensource-november-18-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-4-tips-for-diy-makers'>https://cis-india.org/openness/opensource-november-18-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-4-tips-for-diy-makers</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessOpen SourceCreative CommonsWikimedia2016-11-22T02:36:39ZBlog EntryOpen 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>
<hr />
<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 EntryIndian language localization community meets in New Delhi
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/open-source-mayank-sharma-october-3-2016-indian-language-localization-community-meets-in-new-delhi
<b>Localization is one of the less glamorous aspects of computing. Despite the fact that less than 6% of the world speaks English, a majority of projects don't feel inclined to accommodate the rest of the population. One of the primary reasons for sticking to English is the steep learning curve and the lack of standardization in various aspects of the localization process.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The post by Mayank Sharma was <a class="external-link" href="https://opensource.com/life/16/10/gilt-conference">published by Opensource.com</a> on October 3, 2016. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was quoted.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The <a href="http://fuelproject.org/" target="_blank">FUEL Project</a> organized the <a href="http://gilt.fuelproject.org/" target="_blank">GILT conference</a> in New Delhi, India September 24-25 to highlight and address these issues. The annual event showcases the efforts of language technology organizations and volunteer communities, but this year's also gave a platform for non-technical users to voice their concerns. The Indic computing developers were joined by academics, reporters, language researchers, publishers, and entrepreneurs who rely on localization tools to connect and interact with audiences in the various regional languages in India. The brainstorming between the two groups, both on and off the stage, was one of the highlights of the conference.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img height="236" src="https://opensource.com/sites/default/files/resize/group_1-520x236.jpg" width="520" /> <sup></sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><sup>Mozilla ran a two-day hackathon alongside the conference that was attended by teams from India, Nepal and Germany. Photo by Rajesh Ranjan. All Rights Reserved.</sup></p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Focus on standardization</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another recurring theme discussed in detail at the conference was the need for standardization. The FUEL Project spearheads standardization efforts with its terminology management system to preserve consistency across translations. The project also created translation style guides for various languages, including Spanish, German, French, Scottish Gaelic, and several Indian languages. In addition to these guides, the project is also working on a couple of tools to help maintain the accuracy of the translations. One that caught the attention of the translators at the conference is the Unicode Text Rendering Reference System (UTRRS). It's a web app that lets you enter a character, word, or phrase and then compares it to a reference image generated by a text rendering engine.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">The current state of localization</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The conference began with an inaugural address by the keynote speakers. Rajesh Ranjan, who heads the FUEL Project and is currently the open source community manager at the Indian Government's National eGovernance Division (NeGD), kicked things off by talking about the evolution of the 8-year-old project. There was also an enlightening address by Jeff Beatty, who heads localization efforts at Mozilla. He talked about the role of his alma mater, the University of Limerick, in the initiation and growth of multilingual computing. Later, Vinay Thakur, director of project development at NeGD, discussed the Indian Government's increased interest in localization and listed the various initiatives currently underway.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was also reiterated by Mahesh Kulkarni, assistant director at CDAC's GIST research labs. He talked about the scale of the government's plan for making all its official websites available in all the officially recognized 22 Indian languages.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Addressing problems</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kulkarni also chaired a panel discussion later in the day. The panel members talked about the issues plaguing the localization community and what it would take to solve them. Sudhanwa Jogalekar, a well-respected contributor to Indic computing, suggested that translators should get ISO certified as a first step toward standardization. Jogalekar pointed to the ISO 7001:2015 standard, which certifies conformity in translation services. Another panel member, Prabhat Ranjan, executive director of the technology think tank TIFAC, talked about the stress on translation in the Vision 2035 document recently released by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Ranjan's team found English to Hindi translation easier when documents are first translated into another Indian language. Based on this experience, Ranjan bounced the idea of agreeing on a meta language to ease the translation process.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">A chat with the Document Foundation</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The conference also had a video conference session by the Document Foundation's Italo Vignoli about LibreOffice. While the talk was fairly overview-ish the Q&A generated some valuable suggestions that Vignoli promised to take up with the LibreOffice developers. One of the concerns raised by Pavanaja U.B. was that localizing the office suite was a cumbersome process, as it involved recompiling the entire application. Pavanaja, who is well-known in the localization community for creating the Kannada version of the Logo programming language, requested Vignoli ask LibreOffice developers to brainstorm a less tedious process for the localizers. Later in the day, Pavanaja also talked about his experience localizing Wikipedia in Kannada and Tulu languages.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Unicode</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img height="292" src="https://opensource.com/sites/default/files/resize/karunakar-520x292.jpg" width="520" /> <sup></sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><sup>Karunakar G demos an in-development spell checker for the Hindi language. Photo by Mayank Sharma. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/" target="_blank">CC-BY 3.0</a>.</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The second day began with a session on the evolution and current status of the Unicode standard. It was delivered by Karunakar G, one of the stalwarts of the Indic localization community. A longtime localization developer, Karunakar also demoed the support for Indian languages in LibreOffice. He highlighted a few missing features, such as the lack of an Indic thesaurus and autocorrect functionality.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Sailfish OS</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Karunakar was followed by Raju Vindane, who introduced the audience to the <a href="https://sailfishos.org/" target="_blank">Sailfish OS</a>. He also demoed the only Sailfish OS phone available in the Indian market, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_Fish" target="_blank">Intex Aqua</a>, which retails for about $90. Vindane mentioned that while the community is encouraged to contribute and improve the Indic translations to the Sailfish OS project, these wouldn't be included in the Indian phone, as Intex does its translations in-house.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Other highlights</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img height="292" src="https://opensource.com/sites/default/files/resize/ryan-520x292.jpg" width="520" /> <sup></sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><sup>Ryan Northey asks the community to explore the use of XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format). Photo by Mayank Sharma. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/" target="_blank">CC-BY 3.0</a>.</sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The day also had introductory presentations by Ryan Northey, lead developer at Translate House, and Satdeep Gill from the WikiTongues project. Northey mentioned that there's been a disconnect between software development and localization, and that going forward localization should become a part of the software development cycle.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In addition to the scheduled sessions, there were several fruitful discussions during lunch and tea breaks. The presentation-free exchange of gray matter between the stalwarts and the young padawans were a delight to witness. The 2016 edition of the GILT conference helped bring together longtime developers and experts from the government with niche communities and individuals working on different aspects of localization in various parts of the country. The conference ended with the participants hoping that the Government's increased focus on localization would translate into a considerable leap in the quality and quantity of localized content and localization tools.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/open-source-mayank-sharma-october-3-2016-indian-language-localization-community-meets-in-new-delhi'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/open-source-mayank-sharma-october-3-2016-indian-language-localization-community-meets-in-new-delhi</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen SourceAccess to Knowledge2016-10-03T13:26:31ZNews ItemFuel Gilt Conference 2016
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/fuel-gilt-conference-2016
<b>Fuel Gilt Conference 2016 was organized by the Fuel Project is being held in New Delhi on September 24 and 25, 2016. This is the fourth conference in series. Subhashish Panigrahi made a presentation at this event.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Technical and other interface strings that fall under the ambit of FUEL are actually a subset of several other localization projects. They can also be used for bettering the corpus of machine translation. And there is a need for collaboration between communities and institutions -- both free and open source, and the proprietary ones -- to help grow their corpus. More and more collaborations in place will help the volunteer localizers even more as the localization suggestions will increase drastically with partnerships are more. Two existing such partnerships could be Pontoon by Mozilla and Content Translation by the Wikimedia Foundation. When the former shows localized strings from memory as suggestion and even include translations by proprietary organizations like Microsoft, the latter helps Wikipedians create Wikipedia articles faster by translation suggestions sourced from the corpus of Apertium and Yandex. Bettering collaboration needs strengthening two major aspects; a) growing professional and mutual bonding with other communities/organizations that are there in the same domain, and b) creating technical infrastructure to address the aforementioned pluralism. In my talk, I will detail about my own experience and best practices from working with several communities beyond borders and lessons learned from from my own work and the work of many others. A larger discussion with other colleagues at the Conference will hopefully shape into creating a manual or a few Open Educational Resources of some kind to help the future localization leaders. For more info, <a class="external-link" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Presentation_by_Subhashish_Panigrahi_at_the_FUEL_GILT_Conference_2016,_New_Delhi.webm#.7B.7Bint:filedesc.7D.7D">click here</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Video</h3>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eJfnWodVvlo" width="500"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/fuel-gilt-conference-2016'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/fuel-gilt-conference-2016</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaVideoOpennessOpen Source2016-09-25T03:27:38ZNews ItemOpen source effort gives indigenous language an official typeface
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/opensource.com-subhashish-panigrahi-july-8-2016-open-source-effort-gives-indigenous-language-an-official-typeface
<b>Santali, an aboriginal South Asian language, has a brand new freely licensed font and set of cross-platform open source input tools on the way.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="https://opensource.com/life/16/7/indigenous-language-official-typeface">The article was published by Opensource.com on July 8, 2016</a>.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">More than 6.2 million people in four South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan) speak Santali. In India, it is one of the 22 major languages as mentioned in the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution. However, Santali is not the official language in regions where it is largely spoken, nor is it widely taught in schools. A large segment of the native speakers are socially and economically disadvantaged, which doesn't help either.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When it comes to mainstream media and the Internet, use of the native Santali alphabet, Ol Chiki, is limited. Right now there exists no single, fully Unicode-compliant website with Santali content. The Indian government's Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which is set up for the development of many aboriginal groups in the country, does not have its web portal in Santali or any other indigenous language. However, the government <a href="http://www.livemint.com/Industry/tAMIQv9Etdeg17HirI0n8H/Indian-languages-support-in-mobiles-to-be-made-mandatory.html" target="_blank">announced last year</a> that it would make native Indian language input mandatory in mobile phones.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The need for a typeface, especially in a universal encoding standard like Unicode, became apparent during a <a href="http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/01/14/odia-wikisource-digitizes-classic-books/" target="_blank">three-month digitization project</a> on Odia Wikisource, an Odia-language online library and sister project of Wikipedia. Many of the students who were part of the digitization project were native speakers. The students shared how they couldn't opt for education in their own language, thus affecting their knowledge and understanding of the written language.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The question whether digital activism can help revive indigenous languages was discussed at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7SpUnvFYZI" target="_blank">2015 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit</a> in Cebu City, Philippines. After the event, a pilot project was started within the Center for Internet and Society's <a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K" target="_blank">Access to Knowledge program</a> to create a freely licensed font and input methods so that anyone can easily type in their native language.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The typeface family was designed by type designer <a href="http://www.poojasaxena.in/" target="_blank">Pooja Saxena</a> and went through several rounds of review by language experts. However, the <a href="https://github.com/anexasajoop/olchiki-fontfamily" target="_blank">typeface</a> is still one step away from reality. Because of this, <a href="https://github.com/GuruGomke/ol-chiki" target="_blank">two input methods</a> will be made available along with the typeface; <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector/Input_methods/sat-Sarjom_baha" target="_blank">Sarjom Baha</a>, a phonetic input method so that every common user can easily type the they pronounce the words, and <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ol_Chiki_InScript_keyboard_layout.svg" target="_blank">InScript</a>, a keyboard layout standard for Indian scripts. Even though the original plan was to create a editor community to contribute to the <a href="https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/sat/Main_Page" target="_blank">Santali Wikipedia</a> and bring it live from Incubator, outputs will just be distributed for the users to use them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The input method will also be available on <a href="https://github.com/wikimedia/jquery.ime/tree/master/rules/sat" target="_blank">Mediawiki</a> so that the input methods will be available on Wikipedia and all its sister projects. Hopefully in the future, a group of contributors will use the tools, contribute, and bring the Santali Wikipedia live!</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/opensource.com-subhashish-panigrahi-july-8-2016-open-source-effort-gives-indigenous-language-an-official-typeface'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/opensource.com-subhashish-panigrahi-july-8-2016-open-source-effort-gives-indigenous-language-an-official-typeface</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaCIS-A2KOpen SourceAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipedia2016-08-03T02:00:36ZBlog 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 RightsFOSS2016-03-29T17:06:13ZEventPre-Budget Consultation 2016 - Submission to the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance
https://cis-india.org/openness/pre-budget-consultation-2016-submission-to-the-ministry-of-finance
<b>The Ministry of Finance has recently held pre-budget consultations with different stakeholder groups in connection with the Union Budget 2016-17. We were invited to take part in the consultation for the IT (hardware and software) group organised on January 07, 2016, and submit a suggestion note. We are sharing the note below. It was prepared and presented by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with contributions from Rohini Lakshané, Anubha Sinha, and other members of CIS.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>It is our distinct honour to be invited to submit this note for consideration by the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, as part of the pre-budget consultation for 2016-17.</p>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society is (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. We receive financial support from Kusuma Trust, Wikimedia Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, IDRC, and other donors.</p>
<p>We have divided our suggestions into the different topics that our organisation has been researching in the recent years.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is the Basis for Digital India</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>We congratulate the policies introduced by the government to promote use of free/libre and open source software and that of open APIs for all e-governance projects and systems. This is not only crucial for the government to avoid vendor lock-in when it comes to critical software systems for governance, but also to ensure that the source code of such systems is available for public scrutiny and do not contain any security flaws.</p>
<p>We request the government to empower the implementation of these policies by making open sharing of source code a necessity for all software vendors hired by government agencies a necessary condition for awarding of tenders. The 2016-17 budget should include special support to make all government agencies aware and capable of implementing these policies, as well as to build and operate agency-level software repositories (with version controlling system) to host the source codes. These repositories may function to manage the development and maintenance of software used in e-governance projects, as well as to seek comments from the public regarding the quality of the software.</p>
<p>Use of FLOSS is not only important from the security or the cost-saving perspectives, it is also crucial to develop a robust industry of software development firms that specialise in FLOSS-based solutions, as opposed to being restricted to doing local implementation of global software vendors. A holistic support for FLOSS, especially with the government functioning as the dominant client, will immensely help creation of domestic jobs in the software industry, as well as encouraging Indian programmers to contribute to development of FLOSS projects.</p>
<p>An effective compliance monitoring and enforcement system needs to be created to ensure that all government agencies are Strong enforcement of the 2011 policy to use open source software in governance, including an enforcement task force that checks whether government departments have complied with this or not.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Open Data is a Key Instrument for Transparent Decision Making</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>With a wider set of governance activities being carried out using information systems, the government is increasingly acquiring a substantial amount of data about governance processes and status of projects that needs to be effectively fed back into the decision making process for the same projects. Opening up such data not only allows for public transparency, but also for easier sharing of data across government agencies, which reduces process delays and possibilities of duplication of data collection efforts.</p>
<p>We request the 2016-17 budget to foreground the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy and the Open Government Data Platform of India as two key enablers of the Digital India agenda, and accordingly budget for modernisation and reconfiguration of data collection and management processes across government agencies, so that those processes are made automatic and open-by-default. Automatic data management processes minimise the possibility of data loss by directly archiving the collected data, which is increasingly becoming digital in nature. Open-by-default processes of data management means that all data collected by an agency, once pre-recognised as shareable data (that is non-sensitive and anonymised), will be proactively disclosed as a rule.</p>
<p>Implementation of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy has been hindered, so far, by the lack of preparation of a public inventory of data assets, along with the information of their collection cycles, modes of collection and storage, etc., by each union government agency. Specific budgetary allocation to develop these inventories will be crucial not only for the implementation of the Policy, but also for the government to get an extensive sense of data collected and maintained currently by various government agencies. Decisions to proactively publish, or otherwise, such data can then be taken based on established rules.</p>
<p>Availability of such open data, as mentioned above, creates a wider possibility for the public to know, learn, and understand the activities of the government, and is a cornerstone of transparent governance in the digital era. But making this a reality requires a systemic implementation of open government data practices, and various agencies would require targeted budget to undertake the required capacity development and work process re-engineering. Expenditure of such kind should not be seen as producing government data as a product, but as producing data as an infrastructure, which will be of continuous value for the years to come.</p>
<p>As being discussed globally, open government data has the potential to kickstart a vast market of data derivatives, analytics companies, and data-driven innovation. Encouraging civic innovations, empowered by open government data - from climate data to transport data - can also be one of the unique initiatives of budget 2016-17.</p>
<p>For maximising impact of opened up government data, we request the government to publish data that either has a high demand already (such as, geospatial data, and transport data), or is related to high-net-worth activities of the government (such as, data related to monitoring of major programmes, and budget and expenditure data for union and state governments).</p>
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<h3>Promotion of Start-ups and MSMEs in Electronics and IT Hardware Manufacturing</h3>
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<p>In line with the Make in India and Digital India initiatives, to enable India to be one of the global hubs of design, manufacturing, and exporting of electronics and IT hardware, we request that the budget 2016-17 focus on increasing flow of fund to start-ups and Medium and Small-Scale Manufacturing Enterprises (MSMEs) in the form of research and development grants (ideally connected to government, especially defense-related, spending on IT hardware innovation), seed capital, and venture capital.</p>
<p>Generation of awareness and industry-specific strategies to develop intellectual property regimes and practices favourable for manufacturers of electronics and IT hardware in India is an absolutely crucial part of promotion of the same, especially in the current global scenario. Start-ups and MSMEs must be made thoroughly aware of intellectual property concerns and possibilities, including limitations and exceptions, flexibilities, and alternative models such as open innovation.</p>
<p>We request the budget 2016-17 to give special emphasis to facilitation of technology licensing and transfer, through voluntary mechanisms as well as government intervention, such as compulsory licensing and government enforced patent pools.</p>
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<h3>Applied Mathematics Research is Fundamental for Cybersecurity</h3>
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<p>Recent global reports have revealed that some national governments have been actively involved in sponsoring distortion in applied mathematics research so as to introduce weaknesses in encryption standards used in for online communication. Instead of trying to regulate key-length or mandating pre-registration of devices using encryption, as suggested by the withdrawn National Encryption Policy draft, would not be able to address this core emerging problem of weak cybersecurity standards.</p>
<p>For effective and sustainable cybersecurity strategy, we must develop significant expertise in applied mathematical research, which is the very basis of cybersecurity standards development. We request the budget 2016-17 to give this topic the much-needed focus, especially in the context of the Digital India initiative and the upcoming National Encryption Policy.</p>
<p>Along with developing domestic research capacity, a more immediately important step for the government is to ensure high quality Indian participation in global standard setting organisations, and hence to contribute to global standards making processes. We humbly suggest that categorical support for such participation and contribution is provided through the budget 2016-17, perhaps by partially channeling the revenues obtained from spectrum auctions.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/pre-budget-consultation-2016-submission-to-the-ministry-of-finance'>https://cis-india.org/openness/pre-budget-consultation-2016-submission-to-the-ministry-of-finance</a>
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No publishersumandroOpen StandardsOpen SourceCybersecurityOpen DataIntellectual Property RightsOpen Government DataFeaturedPatentsOpennessOpen InnovationEncryption Policy2016-01-12T13:34:41ZBlog EntryOpen Source India 2015
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/open-source-india-2015
<b>The twelfth Open Source India event organized by EFY Group was held at NIMHANS Convention Centre in Bangalore on November 19 and 20, 2015. Subhashish Panigrahi attended the event for the first day.</b>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Open Source India (OSI) is the premierconference in Asia targeted at nurturing and promoting the Open Source ecosystem in the subcontinent. Started as LinuxAsia in 2004, OSI has been at the helm of bringing together the Open Source industry and the community in the last 11 years. The 12th edition of OSI this year aimed to take this event a notch higher by focusing on the Open Source ecosystem in Asia, and more specifically, in India.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">For more information see the <a class="external-link" href="http://osidays.com/osidays/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/OSI_brochure-2015_distri.pdf">brochure of the event</a>. Schedule of the event on Day 1 <a class="external-link" href="http://osidays.com/osidays/open-source-india-2015-day-1/">here</a> and Schedule of the event on Day 2 <a class="external-link" href="http://osidays.com/osidays/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Web_Schedule_OSI_2015_V7-Day2.pdf">here</a>.</div>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/open-source-india-2015'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/open-source-india-2015</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaCIS-A2KOpen SourceAccess to Knowledge2015-12-15T07:46:46ZNews Item