Indian software "industry"

[Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[ This is basically what I said at my IISc talk back in December 1998 ]

I'm personally of the opinion that for the Indian software "industry"
to get out of the "lower echelons" of the industry into the more
profitable parts and make a difference to the economy, we need real
products to sell. And open source can significantly reduce barriers
to entry for Indian companies. That can make a huge difference to the
Indian economy.

In other words, making good products and selling it abroad can make
more economic sense and significantly offsets the savings by not paying
for foreign closed source companies for software. This is because, I
believe India produces more software than it consumes.

I'd like to emphasize the economic aspects of open source software and
it's benefits to the Indian economy as much as the social aspects that
GNU and debian focus on.

The Hindu editor covering the proceedings at IISc had a very specific
question on this (whether open source makes any economic sense for India)
and I think he was pretty happy with my answer. However, over time I see
little progress on entrepreneurial front and more drifting away towards
"exploitation", "leeches", "GNU/Linux" vs "GPL virus", "infection" and
"communism" debates.

My appeal to all of you (I'm as guilty as you are in pressing the 
right side of the equation) is to 

1. Watch your language. Most dormant disagreements keep resurfacing
   because of some one's inappropriate usage of one of these controversial
   words.

2. Focus less on the license and more on software. Writing a two line
   change to a document and claiming that these two lines are under
   license FOO, is not only in bad taste, but also diverts people's energy
   to all the wrong places.

3. Recognize that both social and economic aspects are important to the
   success of open source software. They don't have to be mutually
   exclusive.

	-Arun

PS: Thaths or one of the "Geneva men", could you take all this stuff and
write up a section for the Linux India (General ?) FAQ ?