The State Government is formulating a policy for animation, visual-effects and gaming to help Karnataka become the hub for animation industry in India.
As society increasingly uses information and communication technologies (ICTs), there would be a huge scope for employment and self-employment in digital industries such as animation, desktop publishing, audio-video editing, content management, etc.
However, most people learn only proprietary software, which is expensive. When they set up enterprises, they use pirated proprietary software. This is not only unethical but also lands them in trouble.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Mysore were recently raided for using pirated proprietary software.
Several small firms have shut shop as they are afraid of being caught for using illegal licences.
Fortunately, there are Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications that are functionally comparable to these proprietary tools. If a government policy can encourage SMEs to use FOSS tools, then the lock-in to proprietary tools could be avoided and many more enterprises could be set up.
Indian industry policy has a history of supporting SMEs in the interest of equity and promoting employment. However, the IT policy in India tends to favour large multi-nationals.
IT sector in most domains, is monopolistic. Large players prefer an environment in which only their products are learnt and used. A competitive environment in which many tools are available for the same task has higher socio-economic benefits, including reducing costs of setting up SMEs, which in case of digital SMEs is largely on software.
I hope the animation policy of Karnataka would encourage training students in FOSS tools so that the entry costs for setting up enterprises is lesser. Training institutes should be encouraged to use FOSS tools to reduce their operating costs as well as the student fee.
The Kerala Government has introduced FOSS in schools. Anwar Sadat, executive director, IT@School, says the training programme was designed to teach children all aspects of animation film-making.
A regular animation course is expensive. Here, the course is absolutely free for students and all these applications have already been included in the Operating System, says Mr. Sadat.
There is a myth that FOSS is technologically inferior to proprietary software. The technological superiority of a product depends on many factors and not on its licensing model. While proprietary software tools may be initially superior due to the huge investments made by the vendor, but over a period of time the collaborative efforts of FOSS developers across the world can create excellent tools.
FOSS tools for animation (Blender), desktop publishing (Scribus), software development (LAMP suite), image editing (Inkscape and GIMP) and content management systems (Drupal) are functionally comparable to their proprietary equivalents.
(The author is director of Public Software Centre, IT for Change, an NGO based in Bangalore)
