[Request for Comments] FOSS United Public Policy Roadmap for FY 24-25

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

FOSS United’s Public Policy objectives are to:

1. Build a powerful voice for FOSS United in policy discussions that impact the Free and Open Source Software community in India
2. Build coalitions with industry, academia and policy makers in key areas like Open Tech, Open Standards, FOSS & Software Patents to defend and grow the FOSS movement
3. Mentor a new generation of FOSS Policy advocates

Under Objective # 1 of building a powerful voice for FOSS, we are working with the Prof. Arul Scaria and his team at the National Law School (NLS) on a report on the impact of FOSS on India. The report is expected to be completed in the last quarter of 2024 and will be widely circulated among policy makers and think tanks. It will draw upon existing research like the recent study released by Harvard Business School and University of Toronto, titled The Value of Open Source Software, which found that the value created by FOSS is around $8.8 trillion. Leading IT organizations in India will also be interviewed for this report. A similar FOSS impact study done by IIMB in 2009 found that India can save $1 billion per annum by adopting FOSS. In the 15 years since the IIMB report was published, the importance of FOSS has increased dramatically. Therefore, we expect the current numbers to be much higher.

FOSS is a commons-based public good like air and water. The value of these public goods is realized only when the Air Quality Index (AQI) degrades, or when the taps run dry. By surfacing the value of these goods, and making it more explicit, we hope to help Indian policy makers realize the value of FOSS in terms of protecting India’s digital sovereignty, reducing barriers to entry, and supporting government initiatives like Atmanirbhar Bharat, Startup India and Digital India. We will be supporting Prof. Scaria and NLS with inputs and introductions to the FOSS ecosystem for this study.

For Objective # 2, we do weekly outreach to industry, academia and think tanks to generate support for the End Software Patents (ESP) coalition. This is a slow process given the low awareness of this issue. However, as can be seen from the quotes that we have received, we now have support from opinion leaders whose words carry weight with the Indian government. In the next few months, we expect to see more individuals and organizations follow suit. We are also working with NLS and its students to do periodic reviews of software patents. An earlier effort to work with volunteers to do software patents did not take off because of unfamiliarity with the subject but we will continue exploring this path. Through the ESP effort we are building institutional relationships that will help our public policy advocacy in the long run. Post elections, we also plan to step up our outreach to state governments.

Even as we build coalitions with external stakeholders, we also have a big task ahead in terms of educating Indian FOSS developers on the risks of software patents, and how they go against the Four Freedoms of FOSS. Our volunteer, Rahul Sai Poruri gave a talk on software patents at the ChennaiFOSS 2.0 event held on 6th April, 2024, while Akhilesh G spoke on the subject at the FOSS United Kochi event held in November, 2023. We plan to conduct more such sessions within the FOSS community in the current year.

On Objective # 3, we are now in our sixth cycle of sponsoring engineers and FOSS developers for the The Graduate Certificate in Public Policy (Technology and Policy) at Takshashila. This was prompted by the observation that very few engineers participate in public policy discussions, which are mostly dominated by lawyers. Given the central role that technology now plays, we felt there is an urgent need to involve more engineers in public policy. Applications for the May to July 2024 cohort of GCPP are now open. While there is no strict quid-pro-quo that the sponsored candidates have to volunteer for FOSS United, we do see some interest from the Takshashila cohort. Rahul Sai Poruri is an active volunteer, while Akhilesh G has also contributed in the past. This is an ongoing process. Given the nature of pro-bono, volunteer activity, contributions ebb and flow. Therefore, we are constantly on the lookout for volunteers and aim to build a strong cadre over the next few years.

How can you help?

If you have made it thus far, thanks for your interest in FOSS United’s Public Policy initiatives. Here are the ways in which you can help:

1. Let us know what kind of public policy initiatives you look forward to.
2. If you know of academics and industry leaders who can support our End Software Patents campaign, please connect us to them. We can be reached at publicpolicy@fossunited.org.
3. If you are an engineer, or a professional with knowledge of software patents, help us review and evaluate software patents.
4. Help us by writing blog posts and reviewing software patents for the End Software Patents website.

[knadh]

Thanks @Venkatesh_Hariharan. Policy work is indeed slow, thankless, but someone has to do it. Anecdotally, I’ve seen good outcomes from the GCPP sponsorship for techies and I’m positive it’ll slowly keep mounting. With software patents, which from what I’ve been hearing, is picking up momentum, seems to have become more serious than when we started discussing it a couple of years ago. It’s good to see the steady alliance/consensus building amongst people who have a voice in tech.

However, the one thing that hasn’t panned out as we expected is community participation (apart from the interest in GCPP). Events and meet-ups have taken off organically massively and has become the most successful “vertical” at FOSS United. Participation, let alone interest in policy, has had very little uptake.

It’s a bit disappointing, not very surprising, but very worrying given how systemically important and critical it is as a fact of life. The number of significant tech laws and regulations that have been introduced with significant ramifications is crazy. The very low participation and interest show that our tech communities are still extremely nascent despite the tech industry’s growth.

That makes the policy work all the more important. It must continue. In the specific context of FOSS United as an org though, given practically nil uptake from the community, how do we reconcile this? Policy as a project has been isolated from where the org is getting pulled to, where all the demand is.

Do we continue the work under the FOSS United umbrella? Do we look for a better suited umbrella for it? The work must definitely continue, but without feeling like a force fit within a community org.

Thoughts?

[ansh]

I was curious on what sort of response a talk on patents would have at ChennaiFOSS , since we’ve never had one before and our audience had always been mostly students. But I could see a lot of people listening to it very attentively and talking to @rahulporuri after his talk.

I saw another group of people go upto @Venkatesh_Hariharan after this talk at IndiaFOSS with an interest in volunteering, I’m not sure if we were able to retain them or not.

I’m not sure if the organisation umbrella is the best place to carry out policy work, but probably our best shot at spreading awareness about these subjects to a crowd that has a good chunk of members that may potentially care about the downsides of patents and other important issues we discuss.

I would propose we look for another umbrella to carry out actual policy work, but more actively form a subdivision inside FOSS United that focuses on spreading awareness about these initiatives (say, https://endsoftwarepatents.in/)

Some means to do it would be having regular talks (or even policy themed meetups) in our chapters where we have an interested audience, create and push related content, and redirect volunteering interest we get (if any) to the respective umbrella.

I can volunteer to help kickstart and set up an initial framework within the community if required.

[rushabh]

@knadh

Do we continue the work under the FOSS United umbrella? Do we look for a better suited umbrella for it? The work must definitely continue, but without feeling like a force fit within a community org.

I think FOSSUnited can be a great platform to talk about policy, but since there is no mechanism to authentically represent the community it should be taken to another umbrella. Also since the funding comes from a small group of organisations, there will always be the questions around how the agenda is set.

[mangesh_x0]

I feel there is very little exposure to the general audience or the public in the country about Public Policy or Software Patents.

We started something called “Linux Installation Party” last year when we had a specific Linux workshop in Pune. Maybe, for Public Policy we can slowly start something similar for having regular talks about Public Policy, reading Privacy Bills, or even reviewing Software Patents together under a roof.

[rahulporuri]

Internal policy proposals

• Gather the FOSS United GCPP alumni together (in-person or online) to understand what FOSS United can do to get them to participate within our community (and with the society-at-large, if they aren’t already doing so)
• Policy talks at company internal events, not just at FOSS United meetups
• Regular (invited) policy talks by other civil societies at meetups e.g. IFF, SFLC
• Regular (invited) policy talks from Academics and Industry Professionals who are aligned with our vision at meetups e.g. Professors at Law schools, Policy Heads at Indian Startups and/or MNCs
• Community catchups and “Unconference”-style Policy sessions organized by city chapters e.g. reading bills and reviewing software patents that @mangesh_x0 mentioned

The invited policy talks go against the usual format of a meetup where proposals are accepted from the community. We risk antagonizing the community by forcing policy talks on them so we need to tread carefully.

Some/most of this might be obvious to folks here but I am still writing it down to communicate my thought process

Over the past year, I’ve given a few tech policy talks at various city chapters and the common thread across all of them has been good audience participation. I don’t know what the audience were expecting from my talk but in every single talk, I was able to get audience members to participate in policy discussions, whether it’s about data privacy, data protection, software patents. And I’ve had follow on conversations after the talks with tens of audience members at each talk.

In my personal experience, there is a strong but implicit demand for (tech) policy talks in our community, and in society in general. But because policy discussions in our society are infrequent, people usually come off as apathetic. Most of the audience is able to grasp the policy questions and understand the tradeoffs involved but don’t have the “policy thinking” to be able to weigh the pros and cons of the policy solutions.

There is a significant mental barrier for people to overcome before they get involved in policy in our country, exemplified by the slow progress on reviewing/evaluating software patent review in India. This mental barrier needs to be chipped away using formal and informal policy discussions.

@knadh

In the specific context of FOSS United as an org though, given practically nil uptake from the community, how do we reconcile this? Policy as a project has been isolated from where the org is getting pulled to, where all the demand is.

The (somewhat surprising) demand for FOSS chapters in new cities seems to be because people either fundamentally believe in the essential freedoms of open source or because the market is incentivizing them to take up open source.

The same demand doesn’t exist for tech policy but if we are able to bring-in policy professionals into the community regularly, we might be able to make the community recognize the market demand for tech policy professionals.

@knadh

Do we continue the work under the FOSS United umbrella? Do we look for a better suited umbrella for it?

I don’t know what a better suited umbrella would look like because FOSS United is the only such org that I’ve ever seen. The policy work got a lot of ears by pigging back on the FOSS United agenda and I think the FOSS United community is able to see the bigger picture thanks to the policy work. Breaking up the policy work into a different umbrella risks the symbiotic relationship between them.

@rushabh

I think FOSSUnited can be a great platform to talk about policy, but since there is no mechanism to authentically represent the community it should be taken to another umbrella.

At the moment, the community hasn’t been vocal about their policy stance. Unless we spend significant effort educating the community on policy matters, I don’t think we will be able to understand whether or not we are authentically representing them.

@ansh

I’m not sure if the organisation umbrella is the best place to carry out policy work, but probably our best shot at spreading awareness about these subjects to a crowd that has a good chunk of members that may potentially care about the downsides of patents and other important issues we discuss.

I strongly agree with this. I think we need to expend significant effort over the course of an year or two before we can decide whether the work should continue under a different umbrella.

[rushabh]

@rahulporuri

I don’t think we will be able to understand whether or not we are authentically representing them.

If we can’t say whether we are authentically representing someone or not, then we are probably not

Edit: Let me expand. Will try to be blunt in the interest of the organisation. We have basically 2 leaders here - @Venkatesh_Hariharan and @knadh who are passionate about policy. Both of them have some intrinsic drives (just from observing them over the past few years).

Venky is a veteran who has been enthusiastically promoting open source / open standards over the years. Venky also sometimes promotes DPG/IndiaStack - which in many people’s opinion is a euphemism for GovTech / surveillance tech - which goes against individual liberty and right to privacy. I personally feel conflicted when Venky supports DPG on one side, and represents FOSS United on another. AFAIK, the most folks in the FOSS community would be against the kind of deep state (or the threat of it) that is being built on India Stack. I would love to have a deeper debate on this.

Kailash on the other hand has been passionate about stopping patent trolls. I have observed him over the years and I think he is also genuinely passionate about legislation and having a voice when arbitrary rules or laws get made by people who don’t probably understand the implications of those rules (like the stupid AI regulation that got semi-proposed). I think @rahulporuri is probably the only other person is interested in legislation.

So when we talk of FOSS United taking a stand for or against something it is essentially these 2-3 people who are taking these stands. Also some of these initiatives seem arbitrary. Like writing a letter to UPI to open source the standards - and people have questioned the timing of such initiatives.

If we really want to do this right, we need to first identify what we stand for. Do we stand for right to privacy, or do we support DPGs (can’t be both)? Do we stand for more regulation, or less? And this needs some mechanism - like a membership - where we hear more opinions. So along with education, I think some mechanism to capture broader opinion (and not just of a few) is not a nice-to-have but a must-have if we want to authentically represent the community.

Edit 2: Since I am also a director, my personal opinion on policy has been leaning more to the libertarian side in terms of policy.

• Policy: Governments should not create special policies for FOSS, but should naturally absorb FOSS (and this is already happening). Digital sovereignty is another natural motivation for governments to adopt FOSS. But we don’t want more BOSS and BharOS kind of things.
• Regulation: Tech regulation should be minimum. Instead of regulating innovation, government should regulate harm and misinformation (which is already the law). I think inequality should be addressed via more social / human capital investment and taxes than regulation.
• Right to privacy vs GovTech / DPG: Sadly this becomes a choice between efficiency and surveillance. We need more efficient government, but not at the cost of creating a deep state. Digital services should not be created by the central governments, but at as local level as possible so that there is decentralisation. Central government services should only be for the local governments, not for direct citizens (except for cases like Passports etc).
• Intellectual property: Patent trolls are horrible and I am strongly against IP. But I see this as a deep rooted problem that goes beyond just tech / software. Also with global trade dominating our own policies, I find it hard to see how much impact we can create locally.

[knadh]

@rushabh

If we can’t say whether we are authentically representing someone or not, then we are probably not

Support vs. participation can be mutually exclusive.

This is what I was referring to when I said community participation is low (@rahulporuri). There’s demand for meetups and talks on the matter, but there’s little participation.

That said, if you ask someone “do you want poorly though out laws and regulations hampering software freedoms/privacy? Do you want us to do something about it?”, there will be unanimous support. @rushabh , so it’s not a matter of a lack of implicit support for policy stuff, it’s a matter of tangible participation.

So are we “authentically” rooting for principles representing a good section of the community and society? 100% yes is my view.

@rushabh

So when we talk of FOSS United taking a stand for or against something it is essentially these 2-3 people who are taking these stands.

This is not a good way of articulating the initiative. Implicit support vs. active, tangible participation as I explained above.

For example, the idea to build a unified FOSS United tech platform is being lead by a small group of people as we (small group of people) agree that it’ll help the community and org better organise its activities. There is no active “participation” from the broader community in the process of designing or building the platform, but there is of course implicit support and approval from the community.

Does that mean it’s 2-3 people doing stuff arbitrarily? No.

@rushabh

Also some of these initiatives seem arbitrary. Like writing a letter to UPI to open source the standards - and people have questioned the timing of such initiatives.

hm, writing an open letter is not exactly an initiative. We tweet/retweet posts from community partners which align with our FOSS goals. Sending a letter is basically that (but more “formal” I guess). Policy work is primarily about engagement with policy makers. I don’t see how sending letters as an attempt/experiment pertaining to FOSS is arbitrary under policy as a whole vertical.

My original post is not about the value, relevance, or the motivations of the policy work at all. It’s importance has grown significantly over the last two years. I’ve no doubts about the implicit support from community as well.

I was asking, because there’s no hands-on participation from the community and the org itself has now grown significantly under one particular vertical—offline events—purely from an organisational point of view, does the small policy vertical fit in. The org’s DNA is naturally changing to be that of events/activities/meetups first.

[rushabh]

@knadh

I was asking, because there’s no hands-on participation from the community and the org itself has now grown significantly under one particular vertical—offline events—purely from an organisational point of view, does the small policy vertical fit in. The org’s DNA is naturally changing to be that of events/activities/meetups first.

Will give a longer reply (have to go out), but my point is not that the DNA should be constant, if we really want to do this, authenticity is necessary. It just feels inauthentic when most people don’t care about policy or the issues that are being talked about. Maybe we need to have vigourous debates on big issues like privacy vs DPG head on.

@Venkatesh_Hariharan

• Build a powerful voice for FOSS United in policy discussions that impact the Free and Open Source Software community in India
• Build coalitions with industry, academia and policy makers in key areas like Open Tech, Open Standards, FOSS & Software Patents to defend and grow the FOSS movement

This just sounds like platitudes. Build a powerful voice, yes, but for what?

@knadh

So are we “authentically” rooting for principles representing a good section of the community and society? 100% yes is my view.

I don’t think we have articulated the principles clearly as well. They are not clear to me either. If we create a framework, then more people can contribute and participate.

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

I think we need to take a long-term institution building perspective and not an immediate, “here-and-now” perspective on public policy. Given the huge role that government plays, we can ignore it at our own peril. For example, if the government comes up with rules that make it hard for FOSS developers, how do we respond to it without having a policy initiative?

On software patents, this is an issue that affects the four freedoms of FOSS. Therefore, FSF, Stallman, OSI and every other FOSS organization in the world are staunchly opposed to it. If we lose the software patents battle, our freedom to use and share are in peril. Should we wait until we have community, support or should we proactively address address this clear and present danger? Let’s assume that we meet with Stallman and he asks us what we are doing on the software patents issue, what would our answer be?

@knadh

That makes the policy work all the more important. It must continue. In the specific context of FOSS United as an org though, given practically nil uptake from the community, how do we reconcile this? Policy as a project has been isolated from where the org is getting pulled to, where all the demand is

Again, taking the long-term view, if we think community participation in policy is essential, we have to invest in it. This is one of the areas that requires a long-term approach. From an institution building perspective, every organization has to address current demand as well as long term issues and the two are not contradictory.

@ansh

I was curious on what sort of response a talk on patents would have at ChennaiFOSS , since we’ve never had one before and our audience had always been mostly students. But I could see a lot of people listening to it very attentively and talking to @rahulporuri after his talk.

This is a good example of the kind of long term work that is required. We cannot (and should not) start digging a well when we feel thirsty.

@ansh

I’m not sure if the organization umbrella is the best place to carry out policy work, but probably our best shot at spreading awareness about these subjects to a crowd that has a good chunk of members that may potentially care about the downsides of patents and other important issues we discuss.

We need to look at this from the policy makers perspective. When someone approaches a policy maker with a representation, the first question they ask is, “What is this person’s locus standi?” “Is he/she an affected party?” “What is their credibility in this matter?” The fact that we approach policy makers on behalf of the FOSS community, we articulate how FOSS is critical for India and how software patents impact the four freedoms, gives great legitimacy to our point of view with policy makers. The fact that we have a growing and thriving community gives greater credibility to our arguments. If we set up a new organization that does only FOSS Policy, we will have to start again from scratch, our locus standi might be suspect in the eyes of policy makers and we will have to deal with the cumbersome work that comes with setting up another non-profit.

@rushabh

I think FOSSUnited can be a great platform to talk about policy, but since there is no mechanism to authentically represent the community it should be taken to another umbrella.

If the FOSS community had an ambivalent stance on software patents, I could have agreed with you here. My view is that is is an issue that is core to FOSS, and not a “nice-to-do,” optional issue that we can address.

@rushabh

Maybe we need to have vigourous debates on big issues like privacy vs DPG head on.

Again, from a long-term institution building perspective, we have to be crystal clear as to what we stand for. Are we a FOSS organization or are we a privacy organization? I have been involved in privacy discussions for almost a decade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j9EgcoJZGg and I can say from first hand experience that there are a multitude of organizations addressing this issue. On the other hand, how many organizations are out there representing the FOSS community to policy makers? Just one, at the moment. Secondly, there is the issue of resourcing. If we want to successfully push our point of view in FOSS/Privacy, we have to be well resourced. Currently, we are not even well resourced for FOSS advocacy, but we have to start somewhere because institutions get built up over time. To try and deal with multiple, complex issues at a time when we are not well resourced is a recipe for failure.

@rushabh

This just sounds like platitudes. Build a powerful voice, yes, but for what?

Any policy maker who takes a look at www.endsoftwarepatents.in/quotes will agree that we have built a powerful coalition in support of our stance against software patents. The NLS study will also add to this over time.

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

Let us also look at the counterfactual situation. FOSS United does nothing on software patents. 10 years down the line, there are hundreds of thousands of software patents on every conceivable programming technique imaginable. You want to do AI? Negotiate with the patent owners. You want to do e-commerce? Ditto. The code is freely available under open source licenses but to build any program, you have to pay royalties to the patent owners. At that point in time when someone asks, what was FOSS United doing about software patents, what do we say?

[rushabh]

@Venkatesh_Hariharan

Let’s assume that we meet with Stallman and he asks us what we are doing on the software patents issue, what would our answer be?

If we meet Stallman, he’s most likely going to say “What the hell are you doing about Aadhaar and DPG”

By what framework does intellectual property become more important than violation of our freedom of expression and privacy rights? You are just side stepping the elephant in room.

@Venkatesh_Hariharan

Secondly, there is the issue of resourcing. If we want to successfully push our point of view in FOSS/Privacy, we have to be well resourced.

But we have resources to push against IP rights? The question is what is our priority - that is my entire point - Somehow I am not just able to communicate it.

@Venkatesh_Hariharan

Any policy maker who takes a look at www.endsoftwarepatents.in/quotes will agree that we have built a powerful coalition in support of our stance against software patents. The NLS study will also add to this over time.

Yes, we all want patents to end, but this seems just like a safe issue because we can’t really comment on the issues that present a “clear and present” danger, can we? Maybe I need to be more blunt to put my point across. Zerodha is the poster child of Aadhaar and eKYC. FOSS United and Frappe are both supported by Zerodha funds (to varying degrees). In fact the lion’s share of FOSS United funds come from Zerodha. Can @knadh take a stand against Aadhaar. He can’t. Neither can you @Venkatesh_Hariharan - you have been a big supporter of IndiaStack and part of iSpirt. (do I need to share references?)

Here is the elephant in the room. We are compromised. We can’t really have an independent stand on many very important issues of the day, unless. unless. unless, there is a membership and voting mechanism. Yes we can take a position on software patents, but that would not accurately represent the community.

Anything that does not address this just sounds like hypocrisy to me. We just become a platform to whitewash DPG by not talking about it. I hope my point is clear. I am open to any other mechanisms, but don’t give me platitudes about institution building, that is a very moot point.

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

@rushabh

But we have resources to push against IP rights? The question is what is our priority - that is my entire point - Somehow I am not just able to communicate it.

As a FOSS organization, our policy priority should be to push back against software patents, and to create a favorable policy environment for FOSS, and that is what we are engaged in.

I would also like to remind you that I did submit FOSS United’s policy position on the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill. and that reflects my own views as well. Kindly read that. It may be a short document but it took a lot of time to put that together, and my realization was that it took time away from the software patents work. In the field of privacy, there are hundreds of organizations involved. Just look at the comments submitted to the Srikrishna Committee’s draft. However, how many organizations are out there advocating for FOSS? Isn’t that something we should be focused on?

On Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), yes, I am a supporter because I think all of us need efficient governments. However does that equate to supporting surveillance as you postulate? I think you are postulating a false dichotomy. Rather than take an “All DPIs are bad,” stance, I prefer to take a more nuanced approach that balances efficiency with oversight and the checks and balances of democratic institutions. For example, when Aarogya Setu was released during the Covid Pandemic, I wrote the following in an op-ed in Indian Express:

"Where the collection of data through such apps is done by the state, the state must recognize that it is not the owner of the collected data, but merely the custodian of data. It holds the data in custody, on behalf of its citizens. Secondly, as compared to the private sector, the state has a much higher responsibility for safeguarding data, because its control of the police, tax authorities and other instruments gives it great coercive power. The threats of state misuse of data are therefore much higher than its misuse by the private sector. The only way to mitigate this is by putting privacy and good data governance practices at the center of such data collection, and by instituting checks and balances on state power.

“Wherever data is collected by the state, it must be the minimum required to get the job done. For example, self-testing apps should not collect personally identifiable information, except essential information like age (higher age groups have higher risk, and therefore this is essential), gender etc. This data should be deleted after the crisis is over.”

To repeat, I prefer to take a nuanced approach on these issues, and not an absolutist approach. If that equates to “compromised” in your mind, I am not going to try and change your opinion.

On institution building, I have said again and again that what we are building at FOSS United is really precious. I have been in the FOSS community since 1999, and the big mistake that we made in the past was that we did not focus on building a FOSS institution. Most of us were happy organizing FOSS meetups and dispersing. Different FOSS groups used to talk to each other rarely. Our policy advocacy was unfocused and sporadic. With FOSS United, we now have an organization that is spreading the gospel of FOSS to places like Sholapur that have never seen a FOSS meetup, we are supporting many FOSS organizations around the country. By trying to be all things to all people, we can very quickly lose all of that. In other words, I don’t agree that institution building is a “moot point.” On membership, I have replied on a previous thread and don’t have anything more to add.

[knadh]

Whew, that’s such a weird take.

What have state services like Aadhaar or eKYC got to do with FOSS/FOSS devs or tinkering/hacking? Why not the adverse effects of climate change then? One of the biggest issues threatening everything out there.

Openwashing is a FOSS-related issue and the letters that we’ve attempted to send (like the NPCI one) were hoped at addressing them specifically. Directly related.

DPG is a vague and overused buzzword umbrella term like AI/web3/big data. If stuff gets openwashed, it may make sense for FOSS United to address that.

Apart from the FOSS angle, FOSS United “calling out” specific state services like eKYC or Aadhaar or the centralised systems like the income tax portal or the vehicle database or IRCTC or N number of other things that central and state governments, I don’t know how that falls in the purview of FOSS. Rights, privacy, surveillance etc., are a different ballgame altogether and I don’t see how all of them fit directly into FOSS United. There are orgs out there with people who understand those issues deeply involved doing good work. What’s that got to do with FOSS United?

Can @knadh take a stand against Aadhaar.

I can’t/won’t take a stand on plenty of things, technology or otherwise, for various reasons. I don’t see how that’s relevant to FOSS United which focuses on FOSS stuff. Also, I don’t see the relevance of Zerodha using these services as mandated by laws/regulations prescribed specifically for financial intermediaries like it.

By what framework does intellectual property become more important than violation of our freedom of expression and privacy rights? You are just side stepping the elephant in room.

Anything that does not address this just sounds like hypocrisy to me

Um, I don’t get this. These are huge fundamental issues indeed, but really, we’re talking about FOSS United, an org that works on stuff directly pertaining to FOSS, not broad societal issues, no matter how serious. I can’t make sense of this.

Also, by that logic, any org that doesn’t work on the existential problem of climate change doesn’t make sense either, right? Should FOSS United work on climate change issues too? The Supreme Court just the other day declared “right against the adverse affects of climate change” a fundamnetal right.

Software patents on the other hand, they directly affect FOSS, software, code, FOSS innovation, and FOSS developers.

unless. unless. unless, there is a membership and voting mechanism.

Please feel free to attempt this again. In our past attempts, we haven’t seen participation or strong interest from a critical mass in the community to get involved in governance, ironically. There were also a number of unresolved questions if I recall correctly. Perhaps that is the nature of community that has formed around the org.

FOSS United Memberships [Version 1]

I guess this program fell flat after the initial enthusiasm We should probably close this as there is little interest?

Discussing governance for FOSSUnited at IndiaFOSS

IndiaFOSS would be a great opportunity to discuss the future of FOSSUnited and specifically its governance. We can do this either at the end of the sessions or during the sidelines. Here are some thoughts: So far FOSSUnited is in its early stage. It is registered as a not for profit entity (and a charity) and we have tried various things in terms of the value it can provide to the community. The FOSS community consists of broadly: Contributors (code, documentation) Users Students Public in …

Finally, the entire point of talking about tech/policy related matters in the community (via community partnerships, talks, the policy scholarship etc.) is to increase awareness, hoping that people take an interest and pursue various issues that they relate with, be it tech/privacy, or tech/rights. Can’t think of a more democratic approach than this!

We just become a platform to whitewash DPG by not talking about it.

What? Anything that FOSS United doesn’t talk about, FOSS United whitewashes? I don’t understand.

[knadh]

Also, honestly, getting jaded with any serious discussion here spiralling out of the focus area into overly general matters—rights, existential freedoms, democracy, liberty, justice, equality … @rushabh. All extremely important matters, but here, can we just stick to stuff that directly pertain to FOSS in the community (software, code, developers, tinkering, innovation, sharing etc)?

[rushabh]

@Venkatesh_Hariharan

As a FOSS organization, our policy priority should be to push back against software patents, and to create a favorable policy environment for FOSS, and that is what we are engaged in.

For the nth time, how can you say this should be the priority policy without providing any mechanism to see if the entire community thinks this way? Maybe it priority for you, but is it for the entire community?

This is the only unscientific poll I have seen yet. And according to this, whatever the community that responded says we should be focussing on ensuring school syllabus is based on FOSS - which I think is a great point to reflect on. Btw, this was Jan '23 - we have not conducted any such survey yet. Since we have limited resources, should we not focus on this as our prime policy objective? Have we done anything in that direction?

@Venkatesh_Hariharan

On Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), yes, I am a supporter because I think all of us need efficient governments. However does that equate to supporting surveillance as you postulate? I think you are postulating a false dichotomy. Rather than take an “All DPIs are bad,” stance, I prefer to take a more nuanced approach that balances efficiency with oversight and the checks and balances of democratic institutions.

Just on the principle of centralisation of power this is bad. Checks and balances don’t matter when you are dealing with the central governments. Our systems must be designed to be de-centralised. The key ideological thinking behind free software is about “freedom”. Dictatorships are most efficient. Efficiency cannot be the only variable that matters.

@Venkatesh_Hariharan

To repeat, I prefer to take a nuanced approach on these issues, and not an absolutist approach. If that equates to “compromised” in your mind, I am not going to try and change your opinion.

Yes these topics require vigourous debates before we come to any common stand. My question was why are we even avoiding them and jumping to “safe” issues?

Also this is not about nuance, it is about incentives. Follow the money.

@knadh

What have state services like Aadhaar or eKYC got to do with FOSS/FOSS devs or tinkering/hacking? Why not the adverse effects of climate change then? One of the biggest issues threatening everything out there.

Climate change? That’s a strawman (and you are usually the first to pick those ). Aadhaar is a software platform that violates all the principles of free software and we are forced to use it - is this even up for debate?

@knadh

Apart from the FOSS angle, FOSS United “calling out” specific state services like eKYC or Aadhaar or the centralised systems like the income tax portal or the vehicle database or IRCTC or N number of other things that central and state governments, I don’t know how that falls in the purview of FOSS.

What is in our purview or not, should be decided through a community mechanism. I may feel how is intellectual property rights in the purview of FOSSUnited? This is a genuine question. Based on the poll, more people think this should be important than ESP.

@knadh

I don’t see how that’s relevant to FOSS United which focuses on FOSS stuff. Also, I don’t see the relevance of Zerodha using these services as mandated by laws/regulations prescribed specifically for financial intermediaries like it.

There are huge financial incentives for the parties involved.

[knadh]

The poll, we’ve been putting in effort into all of those areas with the capacity we have, right? Conversations about FOSS curriculum and adoption in Karnataka, Telengana, Tamil Nadu etc. “Mandating open standards for digital public goods (DPGs)” also. Remember the letter to NPCI that you mentioned earlier?

These are all things, including FOSS/software patents, that we’re slowly working on. What is the point here?

@rushabh

Climate change? That’s a strawman (and you are usually the first to pick those ).

Um, no. That is not a strawman. I just used climate change as an exaggerated “bigger issue” to illustrate a point because you said “there are bigger problems than software patents”. Yes, there are always bigger problems. You cited liberty in society. Sure, but that’s not FOSS Unite’d purview, just like climate change isn’t.

@rushabh

Aadhaar is a software platform that violates all the principles of free software and we are forced to use it - is this even up for debate?

Huh, this makes no sense. Every state and central govt. system, from election card registration, income tax, MCA portals, vehicles, health, insurance, exam results, absolutely every system, 1000s of them, is proprietary SaaS operated by various govts. This is one of the reasons why as a part of our policy efforts, we’ve attempted to advocate for FOSS and open standards wherever we can. We’re talking about absolutely every single govt. system. What do you want us to do about it? What exactly is the solution for govt. SaaS? I don’t know and I hope one day there is one.

Also, this argument is the actual strawman here.

@rushabh

There are huge financial incentives for the parties involved.

Okay? Every sponsor of FOSS United/our events have varying levels of financial incentives. These are all for-profit corps. I don’t get the point.

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

@rushabh

For the nth time, how can you say this should be the priority policy without providing any mechanism to see if the entire community thinks this way? Maybe it priority for you, but is it for the entire community?

Because it is against the four freedoms of FOSS and the entire global FOSS community is against it.

@rushabh

This is the only unscientific poll I have seen yet. And according to this, whatever the community that responded says we should be focussing on ensuring school syllabus is based on FOSS - which I think is a great point to reflect on. Btw, this was Jan '23 - we have not conducted any such survey yet. Since we have limited resources, should we not focus on this as our prime policy objective? Have we done anything in that direction?

I think we are finally getting somewhere. All these are pro-FOSS suggestions and yes, we can work on them. I wish you had brought this up right at the beginning. Also, this is a Request for Comments and I hope more folks chime and and say what they would like to see us do. Will try to create capacity (voluntary/paid) for additional initiatives.

When I signed up for the policy role, I had very clearly told you and Kailash that this is what I would like to pursue. I am happy to take on more pro-FOSS initiatives but not at the cost of deprioritising the software patents initiative. We are slowly getting traction there and it would be utterly foolish to flush it down the toilet after so much of hard work.

@rushabh

Just on the principle of centralisation of power this is bad. Checks and balances don’t matter when you are dealing with the central governments. Our systems must be designed to be de-centralised. The key ideological thinking behind free software is about “freedom”. Dictatorships are most efficient. Efficiency cannot be the only variable that matters.

Agreed. In one of our conversations, I had mentioned to you that I am against monopolies in the private sector as well as the government sector. I agree that we must have more decentralized systems too. However, I disagree when you say, “Checks and balances don’t matter when you are dealing with the central governments.” On the contrary, this is exactly where we need more checks and balances. By its very nature, central governments have access to a vast array of IT system and data. Without the kind of governance I argued for in my Indian Express op-ed quoted above, it is hard to have trust in government systems. The problem is not with government systems but with the governance of these systems. For example, some political parties have been known to use electoral records and beneficiary records in their political campaigns. The solution is not in scrapping electoral records or stopping benefits but in preventing and punishing misuse, and building in privacy safeguards.

My humble request is that we keep this a FOSS focused discussion. For non-FOSS issues, there are plenty of forums and we can have vigorous debates there.

[rushabh]

@knadh

These are all things, including FOSS/software patents, that we’re slowly working on. What is the point here?

The point is a tiny set of people (with varying incentives) setting agenda without a clear mechanism for a broad community based group like FOSS United feels inauthentic. If that is not clear, maybe I am just terrible at communication

My strong opinion would be to use FOSSUnited as a platform to discuss policy and taking stands with some democratic model, but to avoid direct use of funds in specific policy initiatives.

IF we have more funds we should used them to fund indie FOSS projects like AdonisJS, Skytable, RethinkDNS rather than put them in policy.

[Venkatesh_Hariharan]

@rushabh

The point is a tiny set of people (with varying incentives) setting agenda without a clear mechanism for a broad community based group like FOSS United feels inauthentic. If that is not clear, maybe I am just terrible at communication

This is how most organizations evolve. Almost all organizations start with a small set of people. Over time, if they don’t broad base themselves, they don’t scale. We are still in the very early stage of our evolution but sharing our thought processes on the forum (something that you have been a strong advocate for), and seeking community input are the right things to do.

Let us look at the counterfactual. If we outline something and get no feedback, should we just twiddle our thumbs and do nothing? In my book, that would be an abject lack of leadership that goes against the goal of building FOSS United as an institution.

@rushabh

IF we have more funds we should used them to fund indie FOSS projects like AdonisJS, Skytable, RethinkDNS rather than put them in policy.

Why do you see this as an either/or kind of proposition? Can’t we do both?