Free Open Software and Growing Entrepreneurship Climate in India

“Imagine if Mathematics was owned by corporates and every time you wanted to use it you had to buy some from a corporate!” started Eben Moglan, Founder of Software Freedom Law Centre at the Open Innovation and our Digital Future Lecture series organised by iSPIRT. It was definitely a thought provoking preview of the work that is taking place in India in the space of Free Open Source Software with Moglan emphasising the need to create a viable environment for an alternative legal scenario for the growing start ups in India. If Make in India has to be a success it is pertinent that start ups not only have feasible options of protecting their knowledge but more importantly are not infringing the big corporates patents. For the growing entrepreneurial system the system of patents is not only dampening but also acts as a growth step towards fund raising albeit detrimentally. While corporates file patents to demonstrate hold over knowledge in the past few years this has led to patents over software suits that impacts open source creation adversely.

SFLC and OIN are working towards shifting the game and ensuring that start ups have effective legal counsel available to not only create long term strategies but also to have access to defensive patent pool. Keith Berglt, CEO, OIN made a pertinent point when he said that the advantage that a start up needs is access to global patents to work with while they hack new solutions to global problems. With the emerging world of big data and the scope of solution creation from big data analysis is going to lead how Intellectual Property Laws of India are interpreted and eventually amended to feature in the innovative approaches of start ups. While the legal system holds IP close to its chest Mishi Choudhary, Legal Director, SFLC pointed out that the government is keen on defining start up specific legal mandates and modalities.

The realm of possibilities that open up for hackers creating solutions for todays problems is boundless when the team doesn’t have to die a thousand deaths at the hand of protracted patent defence suits! Whether or not big corporations will move towards releasing their grips over knowledge and creations through softwares has to be waited out but open source innovations are going to pave the way for future solutions in India, especially with low cost solutions, and need a better support mechanism. The Digital India mission needs open source creations to fuel remote learning mechanisms which in turn requires a robust structure that allows hacks in the existing software architectures.

It was only befitting that Moglan closed the discussion on how models like facebook need to be replaced with distributed data models equalling it with the power that open sharing contains over capitalist ownership.

Post contributed by Megha Sharma Bhagat