Freedom of software is our birthright

Uncode, a group of software 'activists', wants to break free from monopolising the technology and knowledge on the subject

Freedom of software is our birthright

Uncode, a group of software 'activists', wants to break free from monopolising the technology and knowledge on the subject
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Meet this tight group of highly-motivated individuals, who work to promote free software for Indian students and computer users through Lokayat Free Software Initiative called Uncode.

This group of young software professionals and engineers are passionate about their endeavour.

"We believe that knowledge has always been free and universal and because of that human race progressed so much. That is why the importance of free software is very high in today's society, where we see all tendencies towards monopolisation of knowledge," said Vaibhav Gupta (28), a software professional, working in the city.

They are a strong group of five today.

Abhijit A M (28), software professional, who is now a faculty with COEP said, "We promote the concept of free software in colleges, other educational institutions and in day-to-day life."

Now what is free software? "Free software doesn't mean free as in phokat but free-of-cost, and but the freedom to copy, study, modify and redistribute," said Vaibhav. Abhijit also echoed his sentiment. "Today, copying software is illegal, plus you need a source code, which you do not get. Many software professionals feel copying should be allowed," he added.

Tracing the history of free software, Abhijit said, "In 1984, Richard Stallman started the Free Software Foundation and spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against both software patents and what he sees as excessive extension of copyright laws."

He added, "Therefore we have been advocating Linux, which is free to download, is more powerful and user-friendly than Windows. So, activists like us have to promote free software, which brings in ownership of the community, because I can share it with all," he explained.

"We believe that free software is the appropriate alternative for Indians and particularly students. Most of the well-known technical education institutes (IITs, IISc and NITs) use free software for their day-to-day use.

Hence, we want to promote free software to meet the needs of academic institutes," said Vaibhav.

"In a way, it gives more choice and freedom to customers," explained Abhijit and went on to say, "This brings in the idea of copy left as against copy right."

The group has held presentations and workshops in many colleges in their one-and-a- half year of existence. They also celebrated Software Freedom Day on September 19, with a full-day event.

They pointed out that other free software are u2014 Open Office (like MS Office), Firefox, VLC Player etc. "Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. People try to monopolise software today, knowledge cannot be patented. It is free," concluded Abhijit.