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Tripta Chandola
Politics of the source code and collaborative work in the context of Indian Copyright Law
To imagine a language is to imagine a way of life. The language the computer understands has opened up a new world, a `way of life´ with it's own syntax, semantics, problems, politics and potentialities. The language that the computer understands is that of `zeros´ and `ones'. It is called the binary instructions or the object code. This language is incomprehensible to most human beings and the set of instructions called a program in a learnable language is referred to as the `source code'. Compiler, the translation unit of the computer, translates the source code into object code for the machine to execute a program. The source code then becomes one of the core components of the program. And in the present times also a core element of many legal, philosophical, economic, social and cultural discourses and practices as well. The first part of this essay provides a brief background into the Indian policies that have affected the development of the hardware and software industries. It particularly focuses on those policies relevant to the production, distribution and the `usage´ sensibilities that have evolved around both hardware and software and how this has been incorporated into the legal system. I will argue that the manner in which the values and understandings of software authorship, the categories of creator and user, the aesthetics orientations informing and reflecting on creativity and social value have evolved cannot be understood in terms of a universal phenomenon. These aspects should be taken into consideration in the discussion of production, distribution and use of open source and free software in Indian context. |
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