Multiple conversations at IndiaFOSS 2025 led a few of us to start a virtual reading group at the intersection of FOSS and Public Policy. To maintain the momentum after IndiaFOSS, we have decided to get together on Oct 6 (Monday) at 9 PM to discuss the 2014 Policy on adoption of OSS for Government of India (8 pages long)
If you’re interested, please join us for the first virtual session to discuss this policy. and hopefully many more in the future.
Hi @rahulporuri would be interested to join, just wanted to confirm that the meeting is at 9pm on Monday. Givens it’s late and the timezones etc are confusing hence double checking.
Yup, 9 PM IST on Monday, the 6th of October. We picked a weekday after dinner because there are already a lot of things happening on weekends. We hope a short 1-1:30 hours virtual call is digestible once or twice a month to most people. We can see how things go on the 6th and move date/time depending on participant feedback.
Towards the end of the call, after half of the participants had dropped off, we discussed what to discuss next and when to meet again. We settled on the following
We will be meeting one month from now, during the first week of November. Likely 3rd/4th of Nov (Monday/Tuesday) between 7-8:30 PM. 9-10:30 PM was incredibly inconvenient for most of the attendees, and it likely prevented a lot of people from participating
If you’re interested in participating in the next reading group call, please share your thoughts about the topic/policy and the timings. In the meanwhile, participate in the discussion on the “Policy on Adoption of OSS for GoI” forum topic.
P.S. The only official govt. link to the policy document I could find was in the openforge website - FAQ - OpenForge - under “Q: Does the Government of India have a policy for open source software?”. The link points to a slideshare page, and downloading the policy document requires a paid subscription to slideshare
Thanks a lot for moderating so well @rahulporuri. Was very helpful to participate in the discussion.
I was just trying to check the tech stack of a website to understand and I remember I used builtwith.com to understand more.
I tried to do the same for e.g. with mygov.in (https://builtwith.com/mygov.in) and came across that Drupal is part of their stack.
Given such kind of technology exist to scan tech stacks, would it help us if some volunteers take out time and do this exercise for some govt websites.
My knowledge w.r.t how websites such as builtwith work is also limited, but found it interesting and hence sharing. (For e.g. I understood just now that we can’t just give the overall domain link in builtwith, but the route to actual applications to know the stack better)
When should we schedule the next virtual reading group call? I’ve only used 6-7:30 PM to make selection easy, but if necessary we could maybe schedule 7-8:30 PM too.
Hi, when is the next meeting? I’m interested in joining this and would like to suggest a discussion topic of technological anti-circumvention law in India. Specifically the DMCA sec 1201 and Sec 65a, Copyright Act 2012.
I think these are critical laws in the fight for software freedom and India’s digital sovereignty/resilience, yet nobody is really prescient of their effects. Discussing these would be a really good opportunity to round out the other areas of cyber-law that affect most people.
While the focus is mostly on data protection, corporate/state surveillance and overreach, which themselves are important topics, little attention is paid to the absurd fact that it’s illegal (and thus economically unviable, socially unknown/unpopular) for you to really change and reverse engineer the apps/programs you use daily.
We discuss whether the software feudal overlords of Google, Apple, etc are benevolent or wise, and push for them to make good decisions on behalf of us for our apps and devices, when I feel the fight should be concentrated on removing the shackles that legally prevents us from from making those decisions for ourselves, by 2 measures:
By banning app/device jailbreaking, (explicitly binds device/app users against ownership/repair/freedom) or
By making it legal for companies to actively install and develop measures that lock apps/devices (implicitly permits companies/governments to develop technical measures to block modifications/jailbreaking). This may further cause a technical war of attrition between the app/device company and the small capable group of jailbreakers that have the skill, time, energy to keep up with the new measures, where eventually the company wins by default just because they have more time, resources, energy. e.g yt-dlp vs Youtube, or Android Rooting vs Google Play Protect.
If I continue this post it will become very long and rambling. There are a lot of factors to discuss from a lot of different past jailbreaking communities, corporate and national laws/responses, and examples from across the world.
Hence I’d like to be able to discuss this in a meeting or in person somewhere, as I feel it’s really important for people to know about it, and to push for it in our relevant regulatory agencies.
Hey @Aadhithya_N.M , thank you for posting. Why don’t you organise the next call? Feel free to create a poll for dates in January that work for you, and others can vote for a suitable slot. Evening slots in the later half of the week work best for people in general. You can check out the votes to Rahul’s poll above to get an idea. Thanks
Sure @ansh I’ll do it. Unfortunately it seems creating a poll needs “trust level 1 or higher” in Discourse, which I don’t have. If you give me the poll permission manually I could add the poll, or I could just conduct it by plaintext here
Hey guys, if you’re interested in seeing a discussion about anti-circumvention law, jailbreaking and interoperability in Indian IT law, let me know when you’d like to have it!
As per the poll I’ll conduct the discussion on January 9th, 7:30 - 8:30 Pm.
January 8th, 7:30 - 8:30 PM
January 9th, 7:30 - 8:30 PM
January 10th, 7:30 - 8:30 PM
January 11th, 7:30 - 8:30 PM
January 12th, 7:30 - 8:30 PM
0voters
Vote for a maximum of 2 dates that work for you. Or if you have another timing that works for you later in these days reply to this here.
Note this is my first time having any discussion like this and honestly I’d like to be able to spread some awareness and clarify my own doubts about the IT/anti circumvention laws, as well as any ways they could be amended/changed, or what’s changed in them recently. @ansh If this isn’t in scope for this kind of discussion group please let me know!
Hey @Aadhithya_N.M . Love the topic, but please consider sharing reading material for potential participants, mandatory and preferred. It’d be great for people to show up a little prepared. The following reading material feels relevant and mandatory
Cory Doctorow gave a nice talk at 39c3 this year [transcript], [video] that asks politicians across the world to repeal anti-circumvention measures inserted via US trade agreements. He argues that the time is ripe for a repeal to happen.
His thesis (summarized by me):
There are 2 new groups who have joined the fight for general-purpose computation: National Security (or Digital Sovereignty) who have lots trust in the US neutrality and want true independence from US Big Tech, and “people who want to turn America’s Big Tech trillions into billions for their own economy”.
The reason behind most of these insertions was US-bilateral trade agreements and a threat of tariffs. Given that US has already enacted tariffs across the globe, the threat is no longer true. A repeal cannot hurt your economy, and the benefits from a repeal (repair and jailbreak industries for vehicles, phones etc) are economically significant.
There’s 2 interesting directions I’d like to see this go forward:
What’s the legal situation in India. What would it take for us to get a repeal of DMCA anti-circumvention (which was inserted as a WIPO/WTO requirement I think?).
How are India’s anti-bigtech firms ranking on DRM-independence. Paytm for eg relies on SafetyNet. How big of a hold does Widevine/Fairplay have in India - BookMyShow runs a streaming service that mandates Widevine for HD streaming. PhonePe is trying to a Google Play alternative by shipping its Indus Appstore, but it is unclear if they have an alternative for Widevine?
Just spent 3 hours reading the materials and the laws. We seem to have it better in India than in the US. We also have much less case law though. We are typically not going to court to enforce these rights unlike in the US.
. Love the topic, but please consider sharing reading material for potential participants, mandatory and preferred. It’d be great for people to show up a little prepared. The following reading material feels relevant and mandatory