The global smartphone penetration shows that around 50 percent of mobile users worldwide own a smart device. Mobile phone penetration in India is set to rise to 85-90% by 2020. This has led to a large scale penetration of computation devices into a large section of society.
Hence this technology is becoming an
integral part of any discourse. It can also be said that for some of the
current issues, technology is setting the course. For the rest of the
issues, technology is having enough effect so much that, in its own way,
it is influencing the direction of the discussion.
For the sake of this article, technology is referred to as the software that is actually driving a software application. When Social Media Platform is being referred to as a technology, the softwares under discussion would be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc. It is these softwares that decide as to who gets to see what content, which of the content are allowed and which content goes viral.
It becomes extremely important for
socially responsible organizations, including NGOs, to select
appropriate softwares for their operations in order to influence the
popular discourses in the appropriate directions.
PS vs OSS
In the current world, most of the technology is dominated by proprietary software(PS). These are also known as closed-source-software,
which are non-free, and the software’s publisher retains intellectual
property rights, usual copyright of the source code. The problem with
such closed-source-software is that there is no way of knowing
as to how it is influencing the society at large. For example, now that
WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, there is no way of telling if and how
personal messages on WhatsApp are being used to select content to be
shown on the FB wall. Currently, the alternative present out there in
competition with the closed-source-software is the open source software(OSS).
Open source is a term denoting that a
product includes openly available source code, design documents, or
content with permission to use it as deemed necessary.Open-source
software or other products are released under an open-source license as part of the open-source-software movement. Use of this term originated with software, but has expanded beyond the software sector to cover other open content and forms of open collaboration.
One can contribute to this movement in any of the several available
avenues of Open Source. Some of the recommendations that can be adopted
by the organization are provided further.
Awareness
The first step is becoming aware of.
Self-awareness as to how every single action is affecting the larger
picture in the world of software needs to be understood. This awareness
needs to be spread across the organization, even up to the individuals
associated with it for the movement to be affective. With awareness, one
also has to build enthusiasm so as to orient the people associated with
the organization towards OSS. This is a challenging task for any
organization and hence will have to make collaborative efforts to
achieve it. This can be done in collaboration with other organizations
like the FSMI.
At various levels, discussions need to
be held on OSS. One can avail resource person from various backgrounds
or organizations for these discussions. Innovative content can be
created to suit specific organization needs like images, posters, and
videos to spread awareness.
Adopt
Once the awareness is in place, the why has been answered. Now for the how.
With awareness also comes the knowledge of alternatives that can be
used in place of proprietary software. These alternatives need to be
explored, understood, and adopted. In the case of an organization which
is ideologically based then it does not suit it in any way to be using a
pirated copy of proprietary software. Instead, OSS alternatives need to
be explored and adopted.
Once adopted, the change will definitely
not be smooth. There will be glitches and hiccups. These need to be
addressed. Again this may need external assistance from other
organizations, or even professional help can be availed.
Specialized training program on specific
areas can be provided to a specific group of interested people. This
group created within the organization will equip itself with expertise
in OSS. This group can then lead the organization in the part-wise
roll-out of OSS and handle any issues arising thereof.
Contribute
The OSS ecosystem is built on individual
contributions by the community at large that involves all forms of
actors. They can range from individual users to companies who contribute
at various levels for the development of the OSS.
At the organization level, there exists
human resource. If each individual does a small contribution at their
level, then the amount of value added back to the software and hence to
the society at large would be high. Note that contributions for OSS need
not be only monetary.Just using OSS can increase its popularity. If any
bugs are found, reporting them helps the OSS community to fix them,
hence improving the software. If a usage discrepancy is found or genuine
improvement or suggestion are identified, reporting them back to the
community also counts as contributions.
For each OSS, identify the way of
contributing back to the community. Integrate this learning into the
awareness, training &adaptation process. Make it an organization
culture to contribute back to OSS by including these contributions in
the organization’s review board.
An Example
Wikipedia
is a multilingual on-line encyclopedia with exclusively free content,
based on open collaboration through a model of content editing using
browsers, called wiki. It is the largest and most popular general
reference work on the World Wide Web. It is owned and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that operates on money it receives from donors to remain ad-free.
Organizations can leverage on this wide acceptability of Wikipedia by editing on a selected specific topic. An edit-a-thon
is an event where editors of on-line communities such as Wikipedia,
OpenStreetMap, and LocalWiki edit and improve a specific topic or type
of content, typically including basic editing training for new editors.
They often involve meet-ups, but can be distributed as well. Such an
event can be organized.
A few interested people within the
organization can be selected and trained on a topic and also on editing.
Either a meet-up can be arranged at a specific location or a remote
meet-up can be arranged from the distributed location at a fixed time.
There can be a competition format with prizes for the activities over a
given period of time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it should be noted that
these are only a few suggested ways of how an organization can start
influencing on the technological domain. This is just the starting
point. Real influence can be had if one can influence the actual
development of the software along the lines of actual public need and
not on created or forced need.
With closed-source-software currently dominating the software industry, they own loads of user-generated data. Issues like Cambridge Analytica scandal
will keep occurring. Moreover, not all such scandals will get exposed.
Google, on the other hand, takes explicit user permission to access and
use user’s data as it pleases and users feel that Google is too large a
service to say no and miss out on its features. In today’s world, where
data is gold, we all have to think on the monopoly of this resource and
ways to break it.
To break this monopolized stronghold,
building alternatives is necessary. Alternatives that do not have profit
as their primary motive and are open to discussions and inputs even
from the wayside. Remember that right from 1970 it has been said that ‘if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.’ We need to stop behaving like products and start taking control of our own data, or at the least do what’s possible, choose alternatives over conventional.
Original Article was published here.
Original Article was published here.
