“India is ready for free software”
“Why free software is God’s gift for India”
… and many similar articles talk about how India could be benefited by the Free Software. I agree. There are many more articles that talk about Indians in the software industry, but its dissapointing to see that there are a very few articles that talk about “Indians in the development of free software”. Everyone thinks twice before putting “India”, “Free Software” and “Development” in the same sentence - Why?
Last year I read an article on this which said lack of internet penetration is the main reason for Indians not contributing much to the free software development. This reason could have been valid a couple of years back… but now with good internet penetration among the computer professionals, penetration of internet cannot be blamed.
“Why do you develop free software? Its either to make money in some form or to be known to other developers. In India you get neither. Some other company or an individual takes your code and would publish it on their name. There is nothing you can do about that from here”. This was what a multimedia developer had to say when I asked him about why he prefers to use proprietary software and develop proprietary content… “How does proprietary software cost me more? I use pirated software and the software I use meets my requirement” said the same person. Looks strange, but this is how most people think like in India.
For anyone to contribute to the free software development, they need to be motivated - thanks to the ‘very strict’ copyright law in India many Indians are afraid of losing their identity and thanks to the piracy related laws, most use pirated software and are not aware of the costs involved in proprietary software. There see no advantage of using free software and are not motivated to contribute to its development.
Do send in your comments…
I am Prasad Sunkari,
co-founder of