« New CDT report on privacy and surveillance | Home | Some Internet Politics Related Links »

Open source in India

Posted on Sat, May 13, 2006 at 7:48 PM by Andrew Chadwick

A nice article by Bill Thompson on the benefits of free and open source software (FOSS) in India, with some original and provocative arguments about FOSS's compatibility with western capitalism:

Until now free and open source software has been one of the ways in which the US spread its values around the world, the soft guy approach that seems to oppose but in fact is symbiotic with hard-edged capitalism on the Microsoft and Intel model. Both are firmly embedded in US cultural values, and the free market is as important to Linux as it is to Microsoft.

But also how the developing countries might subvert this:

These programmers will take today’s Linux code and make it far more useful to the people of India and other developing countries than today’s predominantly Western developer community ever could. And when that happens the centre of free software development will soon begin to move from the US and Europe.
Free software provides a bridge between the affluence of the West and the poverty of most of the world’s population, and amounts to a massive flow of intellectual capital into the developing world.

« New CDT report on privacy and surveillance | Top | Some Internet Politics Related Links »