The industrial world has much to gain from making Software an Open Source commodity. Open Source licenses allow manufactures to bundle their industrial goods with the Open Source (free) software and sell the final product with a price tag. It is not the legalese that is in question here (because a “Copyleft” license can give the coder some leverage) but it is the very idea of “free software” that subverts software enterprise while also making software sound cheap. In the global economy the laboring states have much to lose from this. For the laboring state the industry is the human machine and this is what generates revenue for it. In other words, countries like India, which have plentiful labor depend on services for economic growth. The planners of India were brilliant in setting up Master of Computer Application (MCA) programs all over the country in the last decade or two. This has churned out plentiful knowledge workers to develop software of all kinds. Applications can be in any area of Services. But somehow the Industrial world within India has stopped the government—it appears—from allowing proper protection for software through patenting.
As someone quipped, “code (software) is poetry” and needs to be acknowledged as such not Open and Free.
In the context of today’s Global Service Economy, Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government has done well to give the Indian Diaspora voting rights to have a say in India’s future over and above merely investing in the country.