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Open Innovation, entrepreneurship, and our digital future

Open Innovation has lead to the creation of priceless resources like Wikipedia, and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) that form the foundations of our digital society. The freedoms enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of young people around the world, hacking on laptops, hacking on servers, hacking on general purpose hardware is the primary source of the innovation which drove much of the world’s great economic expansion in the past ten years. This freedom to hack has enabled innovation and entrepreneurship, and made it possible for innovation to occur where it can occur without friction, which is at the bottom of the pyramid of capital.

As India witnesses one of the greatest entrepreneurial spurts in its history, much of it based on technologies built through collaboration and openness, it is important to understand the forces that drive the Open Innovation ecosystem. In this session, some of the brightest minds in the Open Innovation ecosystem, and the world of FOSS, will discuss:

  • 1) Why Open Innovation is important for India’s digital future
  • 2) Why Open Innovation and entrepreneurship are deeply interconnected
  • 3) How India can become one the leaders of this entrepreneurship
  • 4) What India needs to do to protect and nurture Open Innovation

The speakers are:

Prof. Eben Moglen: Prof. Eben Moglen is Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University Law School. Professor Moglen is the founder of the Software Freedom Law Center, which has represented many of the world’s leading free software developers. Professor Moglen earned his PhD in History and law degree at Yale University. He has taught at Columbia Law School since 1987 and has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, Tel Aviv University and the University of Virginia. In 2003 he was given the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award for efforts on behalf of freedom in the electronic society.

Keith Bergelt: Keith Bergelt is the chief executive officer of Open Invention Network (OIN), a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux. In this capacity he is directly responsible for enabling, influencing and defending the integrity of the Linux ecosystem. Central to the achievement of his goals is the acquisition and transfer of patent rights designed to permit members of the Linux ecosystem to operate free of the threat of assertion and litigation from those whose business models are antithetical to innovation and global economic growth in information technology and computing.

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Software Patents: Evil, Necessary or an Evil Necessity? iSPIRT OEQ Hangout

iSPIRT organized a OEQ(Open Ecosystem Hangout) on 20th April, 2015, to understand the role of software patents within the software ecosystem.Software patents are a much debated subject in the technology world today. In some jurisdictions like India, software is not part of patentable subject matter, while in other jurisdictions like the US, software patents are rampant. Do Indian startups need software patents? In a globalizing world, what strategies can they adapt to navigate through the software patents conundrum?

I moderated the session and asked the software entrepreneurs in the discussion to share their cost-benefit analysis of software patents.

Rushabh Mehta of ERPnext responded by saying that as a young startup, they find the cost of software patenting (estimated at around $ 15,000-$20,000 or between Rs 9.3 lakh to Rs 12.4 lakh) to be too high.

Srivibhavan Balaram of Vocera Communications, an entrepreneur, who has worked with open source and closed source software companies, said that patenting makes sense only if there is something unique that is worth patenting. However, he also added that the market for enterprise software was tilting more to open source now because companies were more inclined to go with time tested open source software, which find much faster acceptance. He added that companies are wary of proprietary software from startups.

Subramaniam Vutha, a veteran IP Lawyer and founder of the Technology Law Forum, said that India should actively encourage open source software, while accumulating as many patents as possible in jurisdictions that allowed it. He called this strategy, “Running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.”

Samuel Mani, Partner at Mani Chengappa & Mathur, said that defensibility is the only reason to file software patents. In a study that his organization did, he found that most areas that could be patented were already staked out. He pointed out that the cost of patenting is between $15,000-$20,000 which is the cost of hiring one employee for two years. He suggested that companies that aim to create a defense against software patents could join a defensive patent pool like the Open Invention Network (OIN).

Mishi Choudhary of the Software Freedom Law Center agreed with Mani on defensive patent pools like OIN. She added that most Free and Open Source Software are copyright licenses, but some also contain patent grants. She suggested that participants review the Debian Patent Policy.

This was the first such Hangout on software patents from iSPIRT, and there are plans to organize more such Hangouts to generate greater understanding of this topic.

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Join us in hosting the Minister for IT – Bengaluru, 1st July

At the forefront of progress is change. iSPIRT continues to drive the process of change to Transform India as a Product Nation, using the engines of private initiative, policy and programs like Playbook Round Table and PNCamp. iSPIRT’s policy initiatives involve active dialogue with Government.

Conclave for India as the Product Nation

As part of this initiative, iSPIRT is hosting  the “Conclave for India as Product Nation #1″, an open dialogue between the Product industry and our Ministry for IT.

Welcome Sh. Ravi Shanker Prasad

iSPIRT lives and breathes (software) Products and Products only. It’s think-tank has passionately engaged with the Ministry of IT to advocate recognition of the Software Product industry in its own right. We welcome the Hon’ble Minister for IT Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, to meet the Industry folks and experience our Industry in person, first hand.

 

You already know iSPIRT is an open-source movement. This means everyone can contribute, and each contribution is recognized. It is each such contribution that makes the open-source movement go from strength to strength. In keeping with this philosophy, you are warmly invited to participate in the Conclave with the Minister. iSPIRT Founder Circle members, Product Circle members, Fellows, Mavens and Saarthis are all welcome to attend. It’s your industry, our industry, so be there!

Prior confirmation is required… so do RSVP here to help us make adequate arrangements.

Agenda:

    • Introduction
    • Showcase of Disruptive product initiatives in India
    • Interaction session with the Product industry

Venue:

Hotel Le Meridien, 3pm – 6pm
Sankey Road, Bengaluru
Registration : 2.00pm

Do come in early. Doors close at 2.45pm.

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OpenSource: The Most Underused Strategy by Indian Software Product Companies

Open Source has been quietly making its mark. Kickstarter just completed a billion dollars in crowdfunding. A lot of the work funded via Kickstarter is licensed for public use. Because the initial capital is pitched in by lots of people, the creators have a lot of incentive to give it back to the people.

The Do-It-Yourself community in both software and hardware is also on the rise. This is an early adopter and very influential community. The promise of free software promoted by Richard Stallman is no longer a promise. A lot of the backend tools you are using to build your software product are already Open Source. So why not take the next step and make your product Open Source too.

Adapt or Become Extinct

Five years from now, the product you are building will be replaced by an open source alternative.

Ok, maybe ten years from now. But it is going to happen. In the long run, as more and more libraries and mature frameworks become available, the barrier to entry to make a new open source product will reduce further. Deployment will become easier and the ecosystem will provide easy to install platforms. Right now, there is a dearth of high quality, usable open source tools, but it just takes one motivated developer to change that.

Unfortunately in India, we do not have too many examples of Open Source software products. We at ERPNext, open sourced our product a few years back and now we are seeing the benefits. We spend very little time worrying about surface level things such as Customer Acquisition Costs and A/B Testing, because our users and customers come looking for us. Sometimes, there is a cherry too. A German company just wired us $5000 because they wanted us to listen to them when we decide the product roadmap.

Getting Started

So if you are considering going the Open Source way, here are some pointers:

1. Believe in Open Source: There are no half measures here. There are tons of projects on sourceforge and GitHub that are dead because there is no documentation, or are not deployable or not updated. If you are going Open Source, go the whole way.

Another annoying strategy some projects follow is that they make a part of the product open and some parts paid. This is something like the freemium model. Avoid this, you will never win true followers this way.

2. Documentation: Prepare good documentation for users and developers. I had read an interesting comment by John Resig (the creator of JQuery) on why JQuery became the standard leaving all others aside. He had said that JQuery was simply the best documented project. As a developer just remember the time when you came across a badly document API or library. This is very hard and is a huge investment, but its a very important step for going ahead.

3. Make it Deployable: Give your users a good development environment and a production environment. Unless your users can deploy your solution in production, there is no chance of you getting feedback, or issues or contributions. And when you make it deployable also make the upgrade scripts public, so people can easily upgrade your software. Ever really noticed when Chrome or Firefox upgrades? Make it as easy as possible for your user.

When you do all of this, you will automatically start following a lot of best practices, because suddenly not only are your users your customers but also developers.

Cloud and Open Source

As virtualization and cloud gets more popular, Open Source will be the direct beneficiary. Already platforms like Bitnami specialize in creating free deployable VMs for Amazon and DigitalOcean. Soon, it will be easy for anyone to start using Open Source products on the cloud.

We at ERPNext give away VMs for free, but they can also become a source of revenue.

Business Models

The most obvious doubt you will have when you think about Open Sourcing is what will happen to your current revenue, will your customers stop paying you? Think again. Open Source is no longer a pariah to venture funding. Scalable business models can be built around Open Source. MongoDB and RethinkDB are great examples. MongoDB got funded at a valuation of a billion dollars. Here are some revenue sources:

1. Hosting: WordPress makes money off blogs hosted at WordPress.com – they own the brand.

2. Support: RedHat and all the Open Source databases make their money out of support.

3. Implementation and Deployment: SugarCRM, OpenERP and others make money via their partner network, who in turn give implementation, deployment and training services to their customers.

4. Sponsorship: As your property gets more and more visitors on the web, it will be a great opportunity to find sponsors. Examples Mozilla and others.

5. Consulting: Over high value consulting to paying customers. Enterprises are already paying huge sums to licensed vendors. With money on the table, they will be happy to buy premium consulting from your company. Example, PerconaDB

Let Us Lead

The sharing economy has already begun and is going to be the future. India is coming from behind as far as the software product revolution is concerned, but Open Source can be a great enabler in helping all of us break in.

The Buddha never patented the eight-fold path and neither did Patanjali copyright Yoga. Knowledge grows when you share it and same is true for software. The more used your software becomes, the better it will get and the faster you will reach to nirvana.