After the event I was explaining to my friend (a beginner in this field) about what IndiaOS was about. I first explained to her what open-source meant. Then I talked about Kailash’s talk. She asked me, so, “Zerodha” is open source?
Then I explained to her how free software and open source, although superficially same, are widely different philosophies. I told her how in a “free software” conference Zerodha, MOSIP, etc would have no position, but in an “open source” conference all of them would be welcome.
The way I explained that to her is that “free software” has traditionally been about the political vision of a society where software is fundamentally free and respects the user rights. It is about a radical economic structure where every human enjoys the benefits of software.
And that “open source” is less strict in the political sense and is a compromise made by big companies and small organizations (individuals included) alike to work together on a common base and contribute to each other’s (usually) libraries so that everyone benefits in the long term. That building a proprietary business over open source projects would be totally alright in the “open source” philosophy.
She then asked me, “Ah, so is this the same as the difference between for-profit and non-profit” (in that both of them have to make profit to be sustainable, but the primary motive for a for-profit is to make profit while that for a non-profit is to benefit others). I agreed. Open source is like for-profit sharing of code. Free software is like non-profit sharing of code.
The sense I got from the event was that “OS” was the right suffix for India in this conference.