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Over the past decade open source software has become popular with technology users in India. The benefits of open source - affordability, availability of source code and freedom of choice - have made open source a preferred platform for many innovative Indian organizations and individuals who want to harness the power of high quality software which can be freely adapted to their own requirements.

What's Happening Today

India has a diverse range of interest groups promoting the adoption of open source software. Major motivators for these groups include politics and special interests, government programs, outsourcing service requirements, and education as well as skills training. Global issues such as software patents vs. freedom of knowledge and adoption of open standards have also become pivots around which local organizations and activists promote free and open source software.

In December, FOSSology turned one year old as a public open source project, and at the same time we released version 1.0 of the software analysis framework.

The Board of Directors of the OSI typically conducts two face to face meetings each year. Our first meeting in 2009 will take place this week, just before FOSDEM, one of the largest open source conference for developers. We want to use this opportunity to be more visible in Europe, and to meet open source developers, users and policy makers.

We'll hold a presentation and a public meeting at FOSDEM. In our talk, we'll cover recent activities and discuss the future direction of the OSI, such as the introduction of a membership program. Our public meeting has a very open agenda and is aimed to discuss activities related to the OSI and other issues of interest to the open source community.

I hope to see many of you at FOSDEM!

Following the recent innaguration of our 44th president, it is fitting that we focus on our nation and the security of it through open source. The United States was founded on principals of freedom, so it makes sense that now we look towards "free software" to protect her. However, a question that beckons to be asked is, is open source ready to protect the United States' networks, or is the democratic development and decentralized distribution potentially a downfall? There are obvious benefits to open source software, but at the same time there are flaws to it that need to be addressed before it can be considered secure enough for government's systems.

While both the Open Source software as well as the Free Software Movement has been in existence for quite some time now, some of you may be wondering, what's the difference? Don't both ideas basically proclaim free software for all? While some may see both ideas basically reach the same conclusion of free software for everyone, philosophically the ideas are very different.