What is "Swatantra" Software???

Software is a public utility.

Why?? Because most important tasks of software today is communication and archiving information for future use. In this context, software functions like human languages. Language on the other hand, is free. You can speak any language you want, so long as the your listener understands it. So long as you speak a language in accordance with its grammar, every body else who knows the language can understand you. No body will prevent you from using any given language. But, unlike mere language, software also an economic value because it speeds up and simplifies several tasks.

And that is why software is a utility. Very much the same way transport, water, electricity, hospitals, drainage, gas etc. are called utilities.

If it is to perform its task, software has to depend on other software. Software has to be designed so that it takes advantage of other software. An excellent example would be a situation when an application like a word processor depends on an operating system for tasks like writing to, and reading from memory, or when a database has to depend on a spread sheet for data. Such tasks are accomplished through what are referred to as APIs (Application Program Interfaces). These APIs need to be documented, free available and accessible if one programme is to take advantage of another.

Like APIs, the internal structure of a file, often called the file format should be known if one program needs to access data created and stored by a different program. Communication protocols too need to be known and freely implementable if human beings are to communicate through computers. In the absence of properly documented APIs, transparent file formats, and standard communication protocols, software cannot perform its most essential task - communication and archiving information.

However, it is found that corporates which market software keep APIs, file formats and communication protocols secret. This creates dependency on software from the same vendor - a situation called "vendor lock-in". To perpetuate this dependency, the corporates go to great extents. One (mal)practise is to ensure that software does not inter-operate with software developed by others. This ensures that others are tied in to software from a particular vendor.This practise is intended to ensure that people do not use one software for one purpose (say, an operating system) and software from somebody else for some other purpose (like a work processor).

Another malpractice found is to adopt a widely accepted standard, and introduce incompatible additions into them, so that software conforming to the real standards does not work with the modified standards. This tactic is called 'embrace and extend', and is extremely harmful to the public interest.

Of course, apart from the malpractices in the process of creation and maintenance of software, the usual malpractices indulged in by any large distributor of the 'brick and mortar' world, like restrictive trade practises and agreements with intermediaries, are also being adopted.

Such malpractices could have been ignored, but for the fact that software is a public asset. Monopolization is bad in any free market economy. It is terrible if it happens to software. Public interest, the ability of citizens like you and me to communicate with each other, with our governments, and to store our information for posterity, would be undermined if software is monopolized.

You could easily have overcome the anti free trade policies of software vendors, if software were a material object, like, for example, a car. In that case, APIs, protocols and file formats could have been easily identifiable, if you were sold a copy of the software, very much the same way you are sold a copy of a book. Unfortunately, most software is designed such that you cannot do such simple things within the limits permitted by law.

If you step a bit outside the limited permissions granted to you by the End User License Agreement, or the EULA, you will be subjected to fiscal, (no pun intended) psychological and emotional torture.

So, what is an EULA? To understand the EULA, you should understand some basic things about the law of copyright. The law relating to Copyrights is the same law which protects such assorted and unrelated things like books, audio recordings, songs, drawings and paintings, speeches, dramatic performances and even a collection of works created by others. You can always purchase a copy of one of these things (huh? Copy? Even the original, in case of manuscripts and paintings). Once you get a copy, you are free to do just about any thing you want with your copy. But that is not how the software industry does business. They will only license, not sell you a copy.

Historically speaking, the license was intended for other things than what it is now being used now by the software vendors. Along with the mechanism of assignment, licenses enabled the original author(s) to fully utilize rights under the law of copyright. Thus, an author could, if he felt that it is more beneficial to him, either transfer all his rights under the law of copyright to another by way of an assignment, or, he could transfer limited rights by way of a license of the copyright. Assignment of copyright was a (more or less) permanent transfer of the all rights of an author or copyright holder to another. License was transfer of only limited rights in the software.

While the law of copyright prevented distribution of copies by persons other than copyright holder, these these methods of transfer were employed to enable better distribution of the copyrighted works.

Thus, a copyright holder or author could assign his rights to another, for example, as is usual with books, to create a revised edition. A license, on the other hand, was granted for a, limited period, or may be, for a limited geographical area. This mechanism (licensing) was more often found in the field of exhibition of cinematograph films and distribution of audio, video, music and films. The licensee of a film or music can use his rights only for a pre-determined duration, or only within a limited area. To put it shortly, licensing was not intended for transfer of of rights to consumers, or end users.

While sale involved transfer of all rights (except moral rights) to the assignee, the mechanism of licensing permitted the transferee only so much rights as was permitted by the transferor - that is, the seller.

The legal brains in the software world adapted this system of licensing to consumers also. Unlike the purchaser of 'normal' material which was covered by law of Copyright, the software consumer (the 'End User' in the "EULA") got only a very limited right in the software by virtue of this license. Thus, while a buyer of books could have done just about anything with his copy, the buyer of software is severely restricted by terms of the license in his use of his copy of software.

Some licenses contain obnoxious and often ridiculuous terms, like claims granting permission to copy the software into the hard disk from the installation media. In one extremely bad case, I came across a license which permitted the licensee (the consumer) to copy the program into the RAM from the hard disk. Such statements in the license ignore the position of law that the consumer inherently enjoys these rights since these come within the purview of fair use exceptions. However, since licensing is not the same thing as a sale of a copy. Therefore, the consumer who licenses a software product does not get the same rights as he would in the case of sale of a copy.

Not satisfied with this erosion of the consumers' rights, the legal eagles in the software corporates did not stop here. They started looking beyond copyright laws to retain their monopolies. Copyright protection was available only for expressions of ideas. If one person's ideas was implemented using software, somebody else can create competing software implementing the same ides in a different manner. So, the corporates wanted protection for the ideas. For this, they turned to patents as an instrument of creating and maintaining the monopoly.

Coupled with statutory protection afforded by law of copyright and patents, several corporates indulge in unethical business practice to ensure their strangle hold over the consumers.

These practises would tend to subvert the interest of software vendors over that of the public and users. I believe that only way out of this quagirmire is use of free software.

The word "free" appearing in the phrase "Free Software" has confused many. Those who know have clarified time and again that it is "free" as in "freedom," and not the "free" as in "no cost". The French use the term "libre" to overcome the confusion. We Indians have a better vocabulary to distinguish the terms. Almost all Indian languages refer to the word "Swatantra" to mean freedom, and "Sowjanya" refers to "free" as in free of cost.

Free Software means, and always should mean, swatantra software. The perils of non-free software are un-fathomable. Some believe that merely by opening up the source, and allowing its modification by users would solve the problem. But, the concept of 'swatantra' software is much more. There an organization called the the Free Software Foundation. I am not a part of the FSF, but am a subscriber to a few mailing lists of both the FSF and also the Open Source Foundation. Further reading on the difference between "swatantra" and "sowjanya" is available from the GNU home page and Free Software Foundation's home page.

There is a watered down version of this approach, termed Open Source Definition, and you can find their home page here. At first blush, it might seem that both the OSD and FSF's definition of free software are identical. Indeed, on paper, they look the same. But, the fact is that while Open source movement lays more emphasises on the business and commercial aspects of swatantra software, the FSF concentrates on the public interest aspects. Proponents of the term 'Open Source', feel that the phrase 'free software' gives the impression of sowjanyam rather than swatantryam. On the other hand, the term 'free software', or, swatantra software as we Indians can call it, stress the importance of software as a public asset. Both the Open Source movement, and Free Software movement have a common objective - freeing software from clutches of restrictive monopolists.

Whose side are you on? Yours? Or the monopolists?