India, once seen as fertile ground for open-source software, has yet to embrace the development model in the way many hoped
it would.
As a developing country with an emerging pool of talented, industrious programmers, India was once seen as a natural fit for
open-source software. But today, while the country has software developers by the thousand, only a fraction of them do work
in the open-source area.
A big reason is that most developers work for large outsourcing companies, where decisions about whether to develop proprietary
or open-source software are largely dictated by their customers.
The number of independent developers in the country probably adds up to no more than about 2,000, said Vinay Deshpande, chairman
of Encore Software, an embedded software and product design company in Bangalore. The rest work for companies where their
choice of software is decided for them.
Of those who work for companies, most are highly career-oriented and don't contribute to open-source projects in their spare
time, said Muthu Krishnan, head of the Indian operation of CollabNet, which provides services for distributed development
projects. Indian software company employees have little spare time because they typically work late hours, he added.
"I used to participate in open-source projects when I was in college and even in my first job, but now work pressures and
deadlines don't give me any time to do it," said a developer at the Indian operations of Dell Inc., who asked not to be quoted
by name.
As a result, probably less than 2 percent of India's developers contribute to open-source projects, according to R.K.V.S.
Raman, senior staff scientist in the National Center for Software Technology (NCST), part of the government's Center for Development
of Advanced Computing. NCST works with open-source groups on projects such as localizing open-source software for Indian languages.
Developers' interest in Linux and open source has also been lukewarm in India because they were not certain whether users
would adopt open source, according to Deshpande, who helped develop a handheld Linux computer called the Simputer for developing
countries.
For sure, India is not averse to the open-source model, and there are reasons why it could yet take hold.
"The cost of proprietary software is as much as the cost of the computer in India, so people are either not able to take advantage
of technology to the full, or have to resort to using pirated software," said Prakash Advani, a co-founder of IndLinux.org,
a project to develop local language versions of the Linux operating system.
If computer literacy is to spread beyond English-speaking urban elites and to the country's rural masses, software is needed
that supports India's numerous languages and dialects. The country has more than a dozen "official" languages and many more
that are used besides. Although Microsoft Corp. has introduced some localized versions of Windows and Office, the centralized
approach does not give users the freedom to introduce nuances of their particular region, Advani said.
Indian developers are starting to get involved in open-source development as an outlet for their creativity, and because some
have a passion for the development model, Encore's Deshpande said. By his estimate, about 10,000 developers in India participate
in open-source development in their spare time, partially to relieve boredom at work.
"India is not yet a hotbed for Linux development, but it could become one soon, " Deshpande said.
More developers are showing interest in writing software for the Simputer, as they are beginning to see money being made from
the effort, he said.
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