FOSS in South Asia - Part 1
Part- I. Realizing True Potential
Readers on this side of the world may not be aware of some very interesting ICT and FOSS developments taking place in the various regions of Asia. First of all, there are many FOSS initiatives that are very active within the overall region adding value to the global FOSS movement. These regional or country level initiatives include organizations and groups like:
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Hundreds of Linux User Groups LUGs spread throughout the South Asian, Asia Pacific and ASEAN regions
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Asian Open Source Software Symposium [here]
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UNDP-APDIP International Open Source Network IOSN [here]
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Free/Open Source Software Society Malaysia [here]
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FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan [here]
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Indian National Resource Centre for Free and Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) [here]of C-DAC
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Ubuntu Linux Community Official Teams [here] in various countries.
Collectively the above initiatives and organizations are bringing about a very positive change in the perceptions of how the citizens of various countries in Asia understand:
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Combating Software Piracy
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Information and Communication Technologies ICTs
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Local Skills and Capacity Development
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Local Research and Innovation
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Local Industry based ICT Production through Entpreneurship and Technopreneurship
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Respect for Intellectual Property Rights IPR
- Moving up the Economies of Scale ladder joining shoulders with the Knowledge Economies of the developed world
Pakistan and India have been on the forefront of benefiting from the offerings of FOSS that brings them an option for competing software piracy, building local skills to promote innovation and then develop products for the international market. When we mention local skills, it refers to developing local FOSS Ecosystems encouraging demand and supply building lucrative business and industry around FOSS.
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