OPEN SOURCE
Experience the Freedom of Open Skies

The Indian PC Landscape
• Officially, the percentage of Indians
paying money for the software they
use is about 25 per cent.
• It is “normal” for Indians to pay for
the PC hardware and expect it to
come with all the required software.
• Either deliberately or due to ignorance, PC buyers pirate
software; Many argue that the price of licensed software is
the main reason for piracy in India.

What’s Open Source Software?
• OSS literally means software whose source is
open, it should also not restrict the user from
freely using it, modifying it and distributing it.

Need for Open Source in India
• With a PC penetration of 1.4 per cent thousands of
Indians are being introduced to the PC every day.
• By exposing first-time users to OSS, they can be free
from the monetary hassles of Proprietary Software (PS)
, or the legal implications of pirating it.
• OSS also allows customisation to suit the needs of every
linguistic group in every state of India. Altering the user
interface to the local language will greatly increase
acceptance of the PC.

Comparable OSS Programs
• For those who want to switch over to the new
“realm”, following are the alternatives to their
Proprietary counterparts.
• Illustration for : Microsoft Windows moving on to Linux

Applications of OSS

Android : Open Handset Alliances
• Android is the first free, open source, and fully
customizable mobile platform. It offers an operating
system, middleware, along with key mobile applications.
• It also contains a rich set of APIs that allows third-party
developers to develop applications for Android enabled
devices.
• Applications are written using the Java and run on a
custom virtual machine designed for embedded use,
which runs on top of a Linux kernel.

Android & Open Source
• With the advent of android Google entered the mobile
phone arena.
• Because of its robust features and Linux based
kernel, Asus has decided to embed android as an OS in
their upcoming series of netbooks being launched in
December 2009.This move will considerably reduce the
cost of netbook as customers will have to pay only for the
hardware.
• Big players of entertainment like Sony, Apple ,Creative
and Microsoft have declared android to be a future OS.

Applications of OSS
•

WordPress : Blog Publishing Platform
• WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a
focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
• WordPress has a template system, which
includes widgets that can be rearranged without editing
PHP or HTML code, as well as themes that can be installed
and switched between. The PHP and HTML code in
themes can also be edited for more advanced
customizations.
• WordPress also features integrated link management, it is
search engine-friendly & has clean permalink structure.

Concluding Remarks
• Since most programmers are working on
proprietary software, the decision to go with OSS
will impact their long-term prospects.
• Delaying the acceptance of OSS by continuing to
rely on proprietary software, will negatively
impact our ability to remain independent of the
whims of a vendor.

Reference
Content Source
• Digit Magazine
▫ Fast Track - Open source
Image Source
• code.google.com/android/
• Sun.com
• Wordpress.org
• Firefox.com
• Blog - callingallgeeks.org

Thank You
• Vaibhav Kanwal
http://www.CallingAllGeeks.org

Questions
• Please feel free to ask your queries related to
Open Source Software (OSS)