Translating "FOSS" into Indian Languages

FOSS has been commonly translated in Indian Languages as “swatantra”, “mukta”, “azad” etc. All of which have missed the philosophy. Hence, the public at large have completely missed understanding the real benefits of “freedom”. Only 10% of Indians are comfortable in English. Thus, our advocacy and policy efforts suffer as a consequence too. With India going digital at an unprecedented rate, it is imperative that we look urgently to make a better case for open systems - and merely focussing on licenses and costs savings hasn’t been enough.

In this talk, I will expand on some of the ideas I presented in during my presentation in the GB Reflections session at IndiaFOSS. During this earlier presentation, I presented rough ideas on why FOSS is a “dharma”. I now have much better formulations and translations - such as how “Software dharma” might be a better way to translate FOSS, etc

1. How to root FOSS into Indian philosophy to properly understand it, and explain it to everyone, including laymen.

2. Why we should import software as dharma, overload it, and export it back to the whole wide world. And a pathway to do this.