Free and open source software is fast taking on licenced software giants worldover, and in India too, it is catching the fancy of IT industry.
"The war is already brewing between software majors and proponents of open source and free software, which is becoming popular in developing countries, where high costs of the proprietory software is the major cause of rampant piracy," says a new book Open Source and the Law by legal counsel Priti Suri.
The worldwideweb is the most successful example of open software.
The Indian Institutes of Technology use open source software for research; and the government is o promoting its use in education and financial services and multiple e-governance projects, says Suri.
Unlike proprietory software, where every time a new user has to buy the software, open source allows the users to view and modify the source code, a set of instructions used in the creation of the software.
When the source code is viewed by other users, who can make improvements to it, the modified versions of the same software are further redistributed to subsequent users to do similar things.
Technology research firm Gartner Inc has forecast that open source computing holds great promise in India and that the country's technology adoption is gaining momentum. It expects a growth of 20.8 per cent for the next four years in business spending on computer hardware, software and communication products, notes the book.
Trade associations, including NASSCOM and MAIT believe that Linux and open source products can play an important role in spreading e-governance in India, with low cost local language applications. Deployment of open