Recently, Red Hat commissioned the Georgia Institute of Technology – Georgia Tech, to research the state of open source around the world, and has now publshed the results of the research as the Open Source Activity Map and Open Source Environment Map.
Open Source Activity Map
Open Source Environment Map
And surprisingly, India fares pretty well in the activity department, but shows signs of weakness in the Open Source Environment Map. The environment map is approximate – and is function of various variables like Government initiatives, Industry environment and Community initiatives. The references that were taken for measuring this activity are not known, but the research has observed some important themes that impact the Open Source movement:
- Technology adoption at national (country) level
- Public policy issues and adoption within public sector
- Private sector adoption and use
- Developer roles in adoption and use
- Economic issues pertaining to open source software
India stands 23rd in the current activity map and falls to a gloomy 53rd in speculative ranking (mostly because of lack of initiatives from govt. as well as community). France tops the current activity map, while Sweden leads the speculative/environment map.
Some of the important questions that can be raised now are,
- If BJP comes to power, does it have the people and attitude to change this picture (BJP’s manifesto talks of supporting open source)
- With our country producing some of the best coding minds in the world over and over again, can we move on to the Open Source structure?
- Doesn’t this make good sense in the current economic recession?
