[Fsf-friends] From Archives of Indian business

[smitha balraj]

Have anyone done through this link ?
http://www.domain-b.com/companies/companies_o/open_software/20021031_statement.html

Open Software Solutions makes pro-free software
statement
Jays Jacob
31 October 2002

Kochi: Open Software Solutions (OSS), the first
software development industrial venture in the
cooperative sector that has gone official today, has
made a pro-free software definitive statement in the
ongoing Linux versus Microsoft debate in Kerala.

Based on the philosophy and politics of the
‘copyleft,’ as opposed to copyright, the society is
already into developing and marketing products in Open
Source Software Platforms like the Linux OS and the
PostgreSQL RDBMS, providing the much-needed price and
reengineering buoyancy to its clients.

Already the flagship product of OSS — Sanghamitra, the
online banking software for cooperative banks — is
making a silent wave in the sector. This cooperative
banking tool is currently being implemented in 14
locations in six districts of Kerala and is growing at
the rate of two-to-three installations every month.

The tool, which took more than 27,000 man-hours to
develop, is expected to revolutionise the way primary
service cooperative banks work as it will help in
inter- and intra-bank transfers. The users need not
have to pay for licences, version upgrading or adding
new users. “The cooperative sector in the state will
be able to save up to Rs 80 crore by using the free
software which otherwise goes out of the national
wealth,” says OSS social entrepreneur and chief
technology officer K V Anil Kumar.

Social entrepreneurship is also the motivating force
for the society, which currently has 36 members mostly
with techie background. The seed for this unique geek
tree was sown in 1999 when Kumar, along with three
other youngsters currently with the OSS (Joby John,
Krishnadas M and Joseph Thomas), were actively
involved in a study for a total e-governance strategy
development for the Ernakulam District Panchayat as
part of the Electronics Industrialisation
Infrastructure Development (EIID) Society. “The
argument then was that projects like e-governance can
be done only by bigger agencies and with the help of
companies like Microsoft,” says Kumar.

The study recommended that free software should be
used to cut on the massive licensing fee that the
state would have to pay year after year,” says John,
an IT consultant and honorary member of the
Appropriate Technology Promotion Society, which
promotes and guides OSS.

“We stand for a cause. By providing cost-effective
appropriate technology, the state will be able to save
crores of rupees that would otherwise go out of the
country. It is also a unique experiment of social
entrepreneurship where a bunch of like-minded
individuals have come together to create opportunities
in jobs and learning,” adds John.

The politics of the venture is to take on the
unscrupulous market forces that have got into
patenting knowledge and using them for monopolistic
gains based on the philosophy of greed. “It is almost
similar to the new capitalism that no more claims the
ownership of land, but has usurped the technology of
the seed. The murky world of Intellectual Property
Rights is helping transnational corporates gain more
than 40-per cent profit,” says John.

OSS with its unique philosophy has attracted a lot of
youngsters and has a good gender balance. “I became
attracted in the philosophy while doing a project at
EIID as part of my postgraduate studies in Cochin
University of Science and Technology (CUSAT). I feel
free software is the most appropriate technology for
the software community,” says Sindhu Jerson, an MBE
from CUSAT and an OSS honorary secretary.
Kerala State Minister for Tourism K V Thomas
inaugurated OSS’s office at Subhash Chandra Bose Road,
Kadavanthara, Kochi, today. Four other products
developed by OSS, including a cheque printing
software, interactive voice response system (IVRS),
jukebox and a chitti software, were also released. OSS
can be reached at eiidp@vsnl.com.

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