Speaking at NASSCOM on the Cloud monetization strategy

Posted in Conference

NASSCOM is doing its first Annual Technology Conference on 12-13 December at Noida. In past I have been part of their panel discussions and have attended the product conclave that is now an annual feature. I have always been impressed with the organization skills of the NASSCOM team and the ability to bring expert speakers from diverse background.

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The focus this year is on topics of Mobile, BigData and Cloud – something that has impacted and is beginning to impact all industries. These organizations are looking to prepare the best strategy that will take their business forward.

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I will be presenting on “How to build and monetize the Cloud” and will cover various strategies related to cloud.

If you are planning to be in this part of the world, you do not want to miss this conference. Use this link to register.

Anatomy of an Open Source license explained – No legal terms used!

Posted in Conference, Open Source

During my recent gig as a panelist at NASSCOM open source development conference, I was not surprised to find out that over 80% of the participants (total attendance ~90) struggle to understand the core logic behind an open source license. It is not they can’t but it is just too legal (complicated)!

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I used four questions below to explain the anatomy of building an open source license. And this can be used to understand the philosophy and appropriate usage of a license.

1. Do you want to give up control of the code and distribution?

Yes – No license needed. Anyone can use the code “freely”, really!
No – Go for a license with following questions.

2. Do you want your code to be used only by other open-source programs?

Yes – Use license (like GPLv3) that ask any program to make itself open source if they are using your code.
No – Anyone can use it, fewer restrictions will be imposed by license. Commercial usage is easy.

3. Do you want to earn money if someone use it in a commercial offering (make money)?

Yes – Have a dual license – free license for free programs, commercial license for commercial programs.
No – Use a commercial friendly license like BSD

4. Do you want to enforce code modifications by others to be provided to everyone else (bug fixes and enhancements)?

Yes – Use license like Mozilla Public License (MPL)
No – Use license like BSD, Apache License

I promised not to use any legal terms and hence have simplified many of the finer points that you may encounter when considering a license. I strongly recommend you to consider a legal opinion if you are using open source for any commercial purpose.

I will be on a panel at NASSCOM open source development conference

Posted in Conference, Open Source

NASSCOM is hosting a day conference on open source development methodology at Noida on 6th June. I am part of panel discussion alongside Dr. Gopal Krishna Nayak, Director, IIIT Bhubaneswar and Rahul Dev, Patent Lawyer from Tech Corp Legal LLP.

If you’re registered to attend, I look forward to meeting you there in person. If not, you can register for the event here http://www.nasscom.org/open-source-development-methodology. Here’s the full schedule of events

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