Talk Details

Free and Open Source: Opportunities for India

Name Danese Cooper

Organisation Open Source Initiative (employed by Intel)

Website http://danesecooper.blogs.com/divablog

Scope General

Topic Encouraging Indian contributors

Type talk

Abstract Everywhere in the news now you read about governments adopting policies to encourage use of free and open source software, both as a hedge against vendor lock-in and North American technical imperialism, and as a way to bootstrap fledgling local tech-sector economies. But what's really going on? Are developing nations simply leveraging work from the rich developed countries, or can they begin to innovate and develop original work? What are the opportunities for India to become a FOSS powerhouse?

Pre-requisites

Profile Danese Cooper has a 15-year history in the software industry and has long been an advocate for transparent development methodologies. Cooper worked for six years at Sun Microsystems, Inc. on the inception and growth of the various open source projects sponsored by Sun (including OpenOffice.org, java.net and blogs.sun.com). She was Sun's chief open source evangelist and founded Sun's Open Source Programs Office. She has unique experience implementing open source projects from within a large proprietary company. She joined the OSI Board in December 2001 and currently serves as Secretary & Treasurer. In March 2005, Cooper joined Intel to advise on open source projects, investment and support. She speaks internationally on open source and licensing issues.