The other day, one of my former bosses, now retired, rang me up and asked, “What is open-source software and GNU?” He had always been quite an IT-savvy person. However, this question from him was a total surprise. I explained what GNU and open-source software are all about, and asked him how he came to be interested in them. What he said was an even bigger surprise.

He said that these must be a real threat to the empires of software giants and perhaps that is why they have started donating money in India. He guessed that in the years to come India would be one of the biggest markets and if this block falls out of their kitty, the ‘domino’ effect may topple them from the whole of South-East Asia. The ripples may even dampen business all over the world.

As I thought about what he said, I realised that there was some truth in it. The amount donated by the non-open-source software companies in India is not even a decent fraction of the business they generate from here. Since the versions sold in our country are the same as those released anywhere else in the English-speaking world, they do not incur any additional expenditure in localising the product. All they have to do is ship the software to India and reap the harvest.

No secrets
On the contrary, there is no single central agency or company benefiting financially from the distribution/adoption of open-source software and therefore, there is no single agency advertising it. This is not a weakness of the open-source movement, but perhaps, its greatest stren-gth. It is adopted by different groups and professionals because it is good, clean, and trustworthy, and it does not treat you as a lesser mortal.

The whole software and its source code is available for scrutiny and testing and there are no hidden codes or secret instructions doing things you do not know. You can compile it yourself if you like and be certain that there will not be any surprises. The creators/architects of the software expect you to understand programming and may like you to add to it or change/adapt it to your liking and, therefore, share the code with you.

When we look at the larger perspective, we find that open-source software being “FREE” makes a lot of sense not only for private sector organisations, but also for the government and public sector organisations. The government and public sector organisations, particularly in the strategic sector, can look at the source code and decide whether or not to trust the software. We have no such choice in the case of proprietary software because while dealing with such software we do not know all that it is capable of doing. An enormous danger/security threat is posed by such software, particularly when it connects to its server in a foreign country and exchanges information without the user knowing exactly what it is doing.

The software checking for the installed components on our PC or updating it through its server in the foreign country poses an even greater threat. Can organisations in strategic sectors really be sure that their resources are well guarded when they use such proprietary software? These days when we talk about transparency in all areas of working it is really unfortunate that proprietary software does not always provide such transparency to us.

Criticism addressed
There has been a lot of criticism of open-source software on grounds that it is difficult to configure and it is not really “plug-and-play.” Most of this criticism is not valid today. Such allegations were perhaps justified a few years back, but it isn’t any longer. I have been a user of Linux and other open-source components for over seven years. In the early days, it was really quite a task to configure the software and get it up and running. These days it is a cakewalk. I recently visited the Knoppix site (www.knoppix. com) and downloaded the full version (about 700 MB) and my “boot” CD was ready in no time.

For those who have not visited this site, Knoppix is a bootable CD with a collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. It is not necessary to install anything on a hard disk. It comes with Linux Kernel 2.4.x, KDE 3.0, K-Office, MPEG, MP3 player, DSL & ISDN- configured, OpenOffice, network and security tools, programming languages, etc, all in about 900 installed software packages. Now I just put the CD in the drive and boot the PC off the CD and my full GUI Linux system is up and running in no time—that’s real plug-and-play for you!

We all know who won in the Biblical battle between David and Goliath. Whether history repeats itself in the software world, we’ll have to wait and see, but regardless, I am certain that in times to come, most IT users all over the world, and particularly in India, will see the benefits of using open-source software. In our country, one obvious benefits is the huge savings in foreign exchange that this move could bring.

If all the users of open-source software in India donate a fraction of their savings, I am sure it will amount to a sum far greater than what was donated by a certain American philanthropist recently!

Harsh Kumar is Advisor — IT at Hindustan Petroleum. He can be contacted at harshkumar@hpcl.co.in