Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 09:16:17 +0530
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
Friends:
Here is an article from The Hindu, one of India's leading English language
dailies, that must be of interest to all of us working in the area of ICT
enabled development. Best wishes.
Arun
Reddy, C. Rammanohar. "The free software option." The Hindu (22 Nov 2003).
http://www.hindu.com/2003/11/22/stories/2003112200721000.htm
The UNCTAD report suggests that there are many advantages to be had if
the developing countries seriously explore the use of free or open source
software as against the proprietary licence-to-use software.
INDIA AS the back office capital of the world is the new mantra that is
being chanted for the country's entry into the league of developed
countries. The rapid growth of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) contracts
to India is behind this mantra. The more perceptive observers point out that
while there are many high-profile BPO activities that have moved to India,
only a very small proportion of the businesses that can be out-sourced have
been contracted out, and, of that, an even smaller fraction has come to
India. The larger question, however, is if India can really ignore
manufacturing altogether and pin its future hopes so much on servicing the
rest of the world. The answer is "no"; services like BPO can make an
important contribution to India's GDP but they cannot replace the potential
of manufacturing.
The obsession with software exports in general and increasingly with the BPO
segment, has had an unfortunate side-effect. "Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) for development," which was much talked about in the late
1990s, has now been reduced to an empty slogan. There are no doubt a number
of e-governance initiatives in the States, but if we are talking about a
serious attempt at using IT for development, then that effort is largely
absent. Of course, the fundamental problem is that the basic infrastructure
necessary for this purpose is not yet in place. In spite of a rapid increase
in tele-density over the past 18 months, the telecom infrastructure is
woefully inadequate. And while internet use keeps growing rapidly, the
population of internet users (estimated at 7 million in 2001) in India is
far too small to speak about using phones, computers and the Net for
development.
Any serious attempt at harnessing the power of the new technologies must
begin with expanding the infrastructure. Here, while there is at least an
awareness of the gaps in telecom and the cost of computer hardware, there is
very little acknowledgement of the demands that software in its various
forms can make on users. A new United Nations publication, "E-commerce and
Development Report 2003" of the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development offers important insights into the kind of software that
developing countries can use if they are serious about bridging the "digital
divide".
The UNCTAD report suggests that there are many advantages to be had if the
developing countries seriously explore the use of free or open source
software (FOSS, also referred to as FLOSS, or Free Libre or Open Source
Software) as against the proprietary licence-to-use software that now
dominates the IT sector in the developing countries. Free software, as a
popular slogan of the FOSS community describes it, is "`free' as in `free'
speech and not as in `free' beer". What marks out FOSS is that because the
code - the hundreds of thousands of lines of instructions that make up the
software - is available to the larger computer programmer community, it is
constantly improved upon, modified, tested and the problems removed. This is
not possible in the use of proprietary software, where users are dependent
on the licensors of the product. Users have no choice but to turn to the
software "proprietors" for correcting the smallest flaws.
Worldwide, the growth of open source software has been remarkable in recent
years. But in spite of the fact that India is home to perhaps thousands of
programmers who have contributed to the development of FOSS, whose
best-known product is the Linux/GNU operating system, it is yet to be taken
very seriously by either the Government or the corporates. Universities do
use FOSS on a fairly widespread basis and the odd State Government has
explored the possibility of using open source software, but this software is
still not considered a reliable mainstream product. But reliable and
mainstream FOSS already is. UNCTAD reports some statistics, which establish
how deeply entrenched FOSS products have become in many areas. One, Apache,
the open source software which runs on web servers, now has a market share
of 63 per cent, more than twice that of Microsoft products. Two, GNU/Linux
has a 30 per cent share in the operating system used on web servers, while
the proprietary Windows has a 50 per cent market share. Three, 40 per cent
of large U.S. corporations and 65 per cent of comparable Japanese firms are
reported to use GNU/Linux in some form or the other. FOSS products have also
proved themselves in the market. In a survey last August, the 20 web servers
which had the longest uninterrupted uptime (without a breakdown) in the
world were, in all but one case, running on FOSS operating systems.
Since FOSS is non-proprietary software, the initial cost of acquisition is
considerably less than proprietary software. However, while the saving on
upfront costs can be a major incentive in developing countries, this is not
the only cost to be taken into account. What is relevant is the total cost
of ownership (TCO), which consists of the cost of acquisition, training,
deployment, maintenance, repair and upgradation. UNCTAD's cautious
assessment is that the "jury is out" on where FOSS stands on the total cost
of ownership for, while the upfront costs are considerably less the training
and deployment outlays can be as high as in proprietary software. Yet with
FOSS suffering from fewer bugs and less downtime, the savings on maintenance
costs will be considerable.
For governments in developing countries with limited IT budgets, savings on
costs - even just on upfront costs - can be a significant factor in aiding
the spread of ICT. However, as the UNCTAD report points out there are a
number of other advantages of special relevance in developing countries. The
availability of the source code of FOSS facilitates involvement of a large
domestic programmer community in repair and maintenance activity. This
contributes to skill development at home. Overall, to quote the UNCTAD
report, "The availability of source code makes it possible to use in-house
expertise to fix bugs or change configurations, as well as to hire external
support from a competitive market that anyone can enter. What seems clear is
that FOSS can help a business or a public institution avoid getting into a
vicious circle of hardware and software upgrades, and changes in data
formats that require investing in new licence fees and significant
retraining and can provoke major down time." And "the use of free software
means that installation, training, support, and maintenance can be flexibly
contracted out to a range of local suppliers competing on quality and
price."
Governments of a number of developing countries have already decided in
greater or lesser degree to turn to FOSS. China, Brazil and South Africa are
the most well-known examples. In addition to the advantages of cost and
reliability, the increased security provided by the use of FOSS is a factor
that has prompted a growing number of developing countries to turn to this
software. No Government has as yet decided to make a 100 per cent shift, but
the explicit policy directions given in national and regional governments to
use open source software is a pointer to which way the wind is blowing.
Governments in the advanced countries - including the U.S. - are also
increasingly using FOSS because of its advantages in costs, reliability and
security.
In the developed countries, FOSS is close to replacing proprietary software
in the "back offices", but on the desktop it is still the latter which has
almost a complete dominance. The non-availability of a wide range of
applications for the individual user and a perceived difficulty in initial
installation of the FOSS operating system have held back the spread of open
source software in homes. However, it is just a question of time before the
spreading use in offices leads to adoption at home. A new problem that has
emerged is that a few U.S.-based companies selling FOSS operating system
software have been slapped with suits for alleged infringement of
intellectual property rights. This has created some uncertainty about the
future of the core operating system. With commercial interests having a
strong stake in arresting the development of FOSS, it is inevitable that
every possible attempt will be made to halt the spreading use of open source
software. This, however, need not come in the way of developing country
governments switching to FOSS.
Next month, the U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society will
discuss the many options possible to use ICT for development. The use of
FOSS as an option to save costs, develop IT skills and facilitate the
adoption of open standards will hopefully figure prominently on the WSIS
agenda.
