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

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@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)