This cutesy mail about “organizational reflex” set me thinking whether one should strive towards creation of a national level industry driven body for Free and Open Source within India. Right now, the ones who shoe horn this function include MAIT, NASSCOM and a few scattered bodies including NRCFOSS. The problem in the current scenario is more of communication rather than coordination. What would be well served in terms of functional goals if such a body was formed might include (but not limit itself to):

• being the primary point of contact for consultation related to standards, industry information. This would enable Government, companies and the media to be what in cliche-speak is called be on the same page
• be the national coordinator of events around FOSS especially those related to business advocacy
• align with other FOSS organisations locally and/or globally to increase the quantum of FOSS contributions from India
• to help in preparation of reports, guidelines and processes that would facilitate migration to FOSS
• to help improve local businesses around FOSS

Such a thing has been discussed threadbare in the past and most of the times I guess it has ended in failure with splinter groups working towards a select menu of the above possibilities. I tend to think that given the quantum of commercial uptake of FOSS products and services in the corporate and especially in the government segments, this would be as good a time as any to take some steps in this direction.

I pushed a few tentative mails to a select few folks about this – would blog about the responses or the thought processes as and when they decide to respond 🙂