Red Hat, provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, shared the proceedings of their recently held Knowledge Symposium titled, 'Owning the Future: Ideas and their role in the digital age'. The event organized by IIT Delhi and Red Hat was held in New Delhi and was supported by the Software Freedom Law Center, CII and Creative Commons.
A wide spectrum of policy makers called for the greater usage of open source to modernize India in the digital era and the re-evaluation of the laws pertaining to Intellectual Property. The event sought to examine the notion of intellectual "property," in the context of traditional knowledge, globalization and the growth of the open source movement worldwide.
The Indian policy makers and thought leaders who spoke at the event included, Mr. Prithviraj Chauhan, Minister of State in Prime Minister's Office; Dr. Sam Pitroda, Chairman of the National Knowledge Commission; Mr. HL Bharadwaj, Minister for Law and Justice; Prof. VS Ramamurthy, Chairman of Board of Governors, IIT Delhi and former secretary, Department of Science and Technology; Prof. Debesh Das, Minister for IT, Government of West Bengal; Mr. V Ponraj, Director (Technology Initiatives), President's Office;Justice Yatindra Singh, Allahabad High Court; Mr. Madhukar Sinha, Registrar of Copyrights and Mr S. Chandrasekaran, Controller General of Patents.
The event also brought together global leaders from the open source community, including Jim Wales founder of open source encyclopedia, Wikipedia; Prof. Paul Jones from the University of North Carolina & founder of Ibiblio and Dr. Vijay Kumar, Director of Academic Computing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and adviser to the National Knowledge Commission.
The international speakers highlighted how the open source model, based on collaboration and sharing of knowledge, was leading to a tremendous knowledge generation. Wikipedia, a freely available online encyclopedia that anyone can edit and is now available in 200 languages, has attracted one million entries in the English language and has emerged as one of the top 20 web sites within a short span of five years. The Open Course Ware initiative of Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides students and teachers across the world access to the courseware of 1,400 of MIT's courses and select audio and video lectures. Open Course Ware has been published under an open source, Creative Commons license that gives users the freedom to to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and to make derivative works while Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Inaugurating the event, Mr. Prithviraj Chauhan said, "This is probably the first era in the history of humanity that people have grown wealthy due to the ownership of ideas and not the ownership of natural resources like oil or minerals. The growth of the Indian IT industry and the wealth it has created for several first generation entrepreneurs and employees in the IT industry is ample proof of this fact. Our challenge now is to democratize this wealth creation so that a wider section of society can benefit from a trend that is inevitable."
Mr. Chavan added, "The open source community is performing a historic role in reversing that order which has been created over centuries which has commercialized and priced knowledge."
Delivering the Chairman's Address, distinguished scientist, Prof. VS Ramamurthy said, "While the world is working towards a regime of strict Intellectual Property Protection built upon the industrial era's mindset of tangible property ownership, there are also groups which share the view that knowledge is a non-diminishing resource and needs new models of management based on the principles of collaboration and sharing. India has a major stake in the development of alternate forms of Management of Intellectual Property Assets. So far we have been playing a peripheral role in the development of such alternate models. Perhaps it is time for a more proactive role if India perceives itself as a major player in the emerging knowledge economy. The scientific community in the country must take a lead."
In an outspoken talk, Prof. Debesh Das, from Jadavpur University, said that his university used open source software extensively for VLSI research. "As I joined the ministry, the question of open source was not a question of choice or hobby. I am compelled to use open source. If I don't use it, I don't see a good future for my state."
Dr. Das said that the history of the world showed that we are always moving towards more freedom from slavery to feudalism to capitalism to socialism.He said that if we don't have freedom and production that the system would fail. "Proprietary software blocks freedom and obstructs production,"he said and called for the formulation of a free and open source software policy throughout India by the central government. He pointed out that Maharashtra Government has saved around Rs 90 crore using the open source Open Office productivity software and said that open source software must be used in all government organizations and government supported academic institutions.
"Software patents hurt the Indian software industry, and could have a negative, crippling effect on the open source model," said Tom Rabon, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Red Hat at the symposium. "Governments in the United States and elsewhere are adopting Linux and striking down software patent legislation. Call it economic efficiency or a futuristic approach, we believe that all roads lead to open source."