[FSUG-Bangalore] National Coalition for promotion of FOSS - meeting on 22.02.2009

[renuka prasad]

Dear All,

Many of us have been advocating for several years the adoption of FOSS
applications and platforms and FOSS related advocacy has been gathering
momentum. Last year, we had an advocacy processes relating to software
patents and the OOXML debate, we had RMS and Eben Moglen visiting various
places in India sharing their views on FOSS.

Yet, we do have a long way to go before FOSS is widely used in India.
Bringing different groups of actors (who believe in the principles of Free
Software), including academic institutions, NGOs and CBOs, research and
advocacy groups, professional associations, FOSS enterprises providing
services in different areas as development, training, support and
maintenance, we believe will help in supporting and cohering a positive
discourse in favour of FOSS.


Some of us have been thinking that a loose national coalition of such
individuals/ organizations and associations should be formed that will work
towards the widespread adoption and promotion of FOSS. Such a network of
organizations working along a broad consensus on promoting FOSS will provide
stronger and more effective responses to events relating to FOSS as well as
initiate proactive actions than perhaps individuals or institutions acting
in isolation. We are writing to you all, to suggest a meeting to discuss
this idea of the coalition and thereafter also items for immediate action.
We would request you to join for a half-day meeting, on Sunday, the 22nd of
February to discuss the same.

 Time : 3pm - 6pm
Venue : CIS office, Cunningham road, Bangalore, landmark – same building as
Wockhardt hospital

Map : http://tinyurl.com/apltcb


Present below is the proposed agenda for the meeting -

a. Formation of a national coalition of organisations advocating for FOSS.
The goals, scope, priorities, approaches, structures, issues / risks,
alternatives, resources for such a coalition etc, name of the coalition will
be discussed.

Some proposed activities which can be discussed -

b. Working with government departments and public sector units advocating
them to adopt and promote FOSS
When we individually speak to any of our contacts/departments in the
government the impact may not be significant. However, if we send collective
representations to departments such as the e-Governance, IT, Education, RDPR
departments, and seek meetings to explain the issue and the advantages of
FOSS, it would gradually help them to look at the issue in depth.

c. FOSS initiatives in the country, including the Gujarat ICT in schools
program

Many state governments across India are in different stages of adoptiong
FOSS (many on the extreme of not using FOSS!) and we can share our
understanding and views on the current situation. The Gujarat government for
instance is implementing a 500 crore ICT in school education program. They
are inclined to go towards FOSS, however the final decision has not been
taken yet. We need to look at ways so that they consider FOSS seriously.
There are also plans for a FOSS workshop in Delhi, where different groups,
including political parties and government officials could be invited and
disuss the advantages of adopting and promoting FOSS.


 d. FOSS initiatives in Karnataka

There are some initiatives in Karnataka for which we can work together to
help in the adoption of FOSS.

We have an informal request for a proposal for a pilot project to train
government staff and vendor staff in Bangalore on GNU/Linux platform that
has been chosen for the ICT in schools program. We also need to work on the
issue of using Nudi on FOSS. A big impediment currently to getting the
government to use FOSS is be that 'Nudi' works only on MS Windows and does
not work on FOSS distributions. Lastly we should explore what could be done
to help VTU adopt FOSS and prefer it over proprietary technologies.
Engineering colleges adopting FOSS will make a huge impact on the creation
of the FOSS ecosystem in the state.

 We can also discuss other means and methods which we can collectively work
on to promote FOSS.
Please do let us know if you can make it (so that we know how many chairs,
tea/coffee we need) Please mail vinay at itforchange.net to let us know. Please
also mail in with suggestions and ideas for the agenda for the meeting.

 In case you are interested in participating in the coalition, but are
unable to join the meeting, please do email and let us know.


Thanks,

(On behalf of the organizers - Anivar Aravind, ,Gurumurthy K, Renuka Prasad,
Sunil Abraham, Vinay Sreenivasa)
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