Representatives from NGOs, academic institutions, government, schools and colleges attended the Workshop on “Public Software for Social Sector – Principles and Practice”, held in Jaipur on 25 Feb, 2010.

The event promoted awareness about the advantages of Public Software amongst those who have not heard about FOSS or have inhibitions adopting it; addressed the perceptions of people who are aware of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to appreciate the benefits of public software over proprietary software; and helped people/institutions who are convinced about the imperative for public institutions to adopt public software to adopt it.

The conference commenced with presentations and talks relating to the importance of public software to society, especially to the social sector by senior academics and practitioners. A volunteer team helped individuals and organizations migrate to public software platforms.

The workshop was co-organised by Digantar with UNESCO, Knowledge Commons, Digital Empowerment Foundation, IT for Change. It is as part of a series of events being organised this year throughout India on public software and its imperative for the public sector.

Read the workshop concept note

*Public software can be defined as software developed for the public good, which is publicly owned. Public ownership also implies that it cannot be privatized or privately owned. It is freely shareable and customizable and hence is basically Free and Open Source Software. Public software is of two kinds:

1. Public Software developed to promote public good - that helps government (public sector) to fulfill goals of government - software that supports NREGA transactions in a transparent manner;

2. Public Software itself as a public good - new digital goods such as Wikipedia where the software itself performs public interest functions.

Public Sector for the purpose of these guidelines, is defined broadly as comprising of institutions working for public interest. While this includes not only governments but also academic institutions, civil society (NGO/CBO), community media institutions etc, there is a special role for the government as the key public sector actor in promoting public software.