India Eyeing Its Own Open Source Licence

Guru Goo writes "Deepak Phatak of the Indian Institute of Technology,Mumbai has begun an effort to create an open-source license that will let programmers share ideas while also letting them retain the rights to their own software modifications.The license will likely function much like the Berkeley Software Distribution or the MIT License programs, he added. The number of open-source licenses has exploded, leaving many in the community miffed. But Phatak's proposal comes with the power of numbers. India's 1,750 colleges with computer science and electrical engineering degrees admit about 250,000 students a year. Combined with the outsourcing boom, that makes India one of the major centers for software development. While the collaboration between academia and industry in india is not as pervasive as in the U.S., it is growing."

Comments

That makes sense

[ninja_assault_kitten]

They already have an Out Sourcing license.

A fair and even price

[Timesprout]

A recent visitor to Phatak's office was Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie. "I told him a competitive price point (for a desktop OS) would be in the single digit dollars," Phatak said.

Would that digit have been 0 by any chance?

Re:A fair and even price

[hostyle]

I'd say it was 1, and he counted it out on his fingers just so there was no mistake ...

"Please permit these groups to coexist peacefully

[Senor_Programmer]

and harmoniously."

"Dr. Phatak's dream is to see a resurgent India catching up with the world using Information Technology as the spring board. He hopes to make IT work for the millions of Indians so as to enable them to lead an honorable, comfortable and peaceful life full of love and harmony."

But best of all, under P^2's 'hobbies':
" Giving unsolicited advice to unsuspecting individuals and groups."

He's a natural /.er...

Re:what the?

[vrt3]

The great thing about lisences is that there are so many to choose from!

s/lisences/spelling standards/

IPA

[glarvat]

I vote for India Public Agreement.

Nothing like compiling your free-as-in-speech and free-as-in-beer software with an IPA.

It's just like the GPL

[DrXym]

Except it says "sir" and "humbly" a lot more.

Licensing maze

[chiph]

You are in a maze of twisty little licenses, all subtly different.

Chip H.

Re:This article has very little to do with India

[donutello]

Phatak is not India. He's a professor in one college in India.

Knowing Phatak, though, I'm pretty sure he did nothing to dissuade the reporter from thinking he represented the entire country :-)