How we are democratising software

It all started in the early 2000s, a time when India’s IT sector was booming and cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad were being positioned as the next Silicon Valley. Politicians were celebrated as tech reformers, the term “IT superpower” was flung about with ease, and a new urban elite began to form around the promise of a digital future.

. However, for some of us who had just graduated from college, the narrative did not sit right. Mine was the first batch to graduate from the Coorg Institute of Technology in Ponnampet, Karnataka, with a BE in telecommunication. Amid the celebration of software exports and outsourcing, the reality on the ground was starkly different: most of the jobs were in low-end service sectors — calling agents in business process outsourcing, application coding and maintenance work.

. Beyond coding

. Our country was fast becoming a giant marketplace for foreign software companies, and not a hub of indigenous innovation. This contradiction troubled many of us. We asked ourselves — can a country truly be an IT superpower if it does not own or control the technology it uses?

. These questions led me to a conversation with a close friend and fellow activist from the student movement. He introduced me to the philosophy of ‘free software’, a world where software, like knowledge, belongs to the people. The core principles of free software resonated deeply: the freedom to use, study, modify, and share software. These ideas were not just about coding; they were political, social, and cultural.

. In a country where access to education and opportunity is still uneven, free software offered a way to democratise technology. I became convinced that self-reliance in the digital age was impossible without free software. If we did not control the tools of this new digital economy, we would be nothing more than passive consumers in a global supply chain.

. The journey to learn and participate in this movement was not easy. Back then, owning a personal computer was a privilege, and Internet access was rare. I stumbled upon ‘ilug (India Linux User Groups) mailing lists’ — online communities of Linux users — and began attending their monthly city meetups. Though technically impressive, these groups often lacked a grounding in social realities. There was a noticeable elitism, a sense that you had to come to them rather than them coming to you. Free software was discussed as an abstract technical preference rather than as a tool for empowerment or liberation. That is when a shift occurred. Inspired by the successful deployment of free software in Kerala’s IT@School program, many of us began to imagine a different kind of movement — one that was not confined to labs or mailing lists, but one that truly reached the people.

. Early movement

. In Hyderabad, we launched Project Swecha with the goal of taking Free Software to the masses. We wanted to bridge the digital divide by breaking the shackles of licence regimes and language barriers. Swecha introduced the idea of GLUGs — GNU/Linux User Groups — as grassroots collectives in colleges and communities.

. These GLUGs were spaces for dialogue, experimentation, and critical thinking about technology and society. Students not only learned how to use free software but also how to contribute to it and connect it with real life.

. Focus on Kannada

. One of the early successes of the moment was in localisation — developing Kannada and Telugu interfaces of free software applications like Firefox, OpenOffice, Thunderbird and Gimp with the help of volunteers. It enabled computing for rural and non-English speaking populations.

. The biggest challenge in front of us was how to translate tech terminology into regional languages. We realised that for every change around us, it was the newspaper /media industry that invented appropriate vocabulary, took that to the people and normalised it. So we formed translation teams constituting journalists, litterateurs and technologists, and prepared glossaries, which we have put in the public domain. These glossaries became the basis for what you see as normalised IT terminology in regional languages. They are even used by multinationals like Google for their applications.

. In the backdrop of the GPLv3 conference at IIM Bangalore in 2006, we met with other state-level groups and discussed the need for a coordinated effort. Free Software Movement of Karnataka (FSMK) was born as part of this wider national push. Its aim was simple but ambitious: to take technology back to the people. We wanted to ensure that free software was a movement rooted in the political and social context of India.

. It was around this time that I moved to Bengaluru, and, along with a group of like-minded individuals, began laying the groundwork for FSMK. We currently work out of an office in Jayanagar.

. FSMK began its work by setting up GLUGs in engineering colleges across Karnataka. These student collectives became the fundamental units of the movement. Through them, we organised weekly study circles, hackathons, instal fests, and tech talks.

. We conducted workshops on Linux kernel programming and programming in LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl or Python) using applications like Anjuta. Then loomed recession. We conducted upskilling camps particularly focused on working professionals. They also included sessions on foundational elements of knowledge freedom. The discussions would eventually culminate in discussions on topics like ‘why recession is affecting us if we are considered a super power’, and ‘what would make us self-reliant both in tech and in the global economic market’.

. We conducted summer and winter camps for students to bridge the gap between their college curriculum and real world IT production models across different technologies. This has created a major impact among the students of tier-2 engineering colleges. I always tell students it is not syntax that is important, but it is the semantics of coding that teaches you the technology. It gives me immense satisfaction when some of our previous students reach out to tell me their stories of how free software impacted their lives and shaped them professionally.

. One of our earliest struggles was advocating the release of Nudi, a Kannada language software tool, under a free licence. We also campaigned vigorously to help cyber cafes and desktop publishing centres transition from pirated proprietary software to legally usable free software alternatives like LibreOffice and Ubuntu.

. New battlefields

. As the knowledge economy evolved into a data economy, FSMK had to expand its scope. We launched the Tech4Democracy campaign to address the growing concerns around surveillance, data privacy, and the monopolisation of digital infrastructure in 2016. Our activism took a more policy-oriented turn. We campaigned against Facebook’s Free Basics (Facebook wanted to launch a service providing free Internet access to people in India, but only through its applications). We argued that it violated net neutrality and the spirit of an open web. We engaged in public education on privacy and data security issues surrounding Aadhaar, digital rights, and telecom policy. In every case, our stand was consistent: technology must serve people, not control them.

. In recent years, FSMK has turned its focus to the realm of AI, calling for what we term ‘people’s AI’. India has the linguistic diversity, the cultural richness, and the population scale to train truly democratic AI models — but only if the data remains in the public domain. We are working in collaboration with Viswam.AI, a joint initiative of Swecha and IIIT Hyderabad, focused on leveraging AI for the Global South, particularly for underserved communities. It aims to develop accessible and sustainable AI solutions, especially for resource-poor languages and regions.

. We are now working with communities to build large public datasets in Indian languages, pushing back against the tendency to see AI as the sole domain of billion-dollar corporations. The idea is simple: if AI shapes the future, it must be built by and for the people.

. Organising a movement like FSMK has had its ups and downs. We have seen waves of enthusiasm as new batches of students join GLUGs and take up leadership roles. But with every graduating batch, we also lose some of our most passionate organisers. Volunteer fatigue is real, especially when most of us are juggling jobs, studies, and activism. The pandemic disrupted our offline activities significantly, but it also forced us to adopt Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)-based digital tools like Odoo for organising tasks, and Moodle for outreach and education. This transition has helped us build a more resilient digital infrastructure. Our events, like FSMK Dev Days, are a testament to the power of community. These are not just conferences but spaces of collective learning where professionals and students come together to explore the social and technical dimensions of emerging technologies. The response has been heartening. In one of our early conventions in Hyderabad, over 3,000 students participated. The impact was tangible — students started their own GLUGs, professors began adopting Free Software in their teaching, and a new conversation around ethical technology took root.

. We have facilitated internships for groups of engineering students, helped NGO and research organisations switch to free software and set up community computing centres in underprivileged areas. As an all-India movement, our most important work is policy interventions, such as the Patent Amendment Bill (2005).

. We have been providing opinions from technology interpretation and constitutional rights perspectives on all significant drafts bills and policies released for public consultation.

. Some setbacks

. Despite the success, we continue to face several challenges. Many educational institutions still resist using free software, citing convenience or industry pressure. Corporations continue to dominate policy discourse, sidelining community voices. Funding remains a persistent problem; most of our work runs on volunteer energy, which, while powerful, has its limits.

. The bigger battle, however, is philosophical. We live in a time when technology is no longer seen as a tool but as a solution to everything. This techno-solutionism blinds us to the politics embedded in digital tools. FSMK insists on asking uncomfortable questions: Who owns our data? What does privacy mean for the poor? Can a society be truly democratic if its digital infrastructure is owned by a handful of companies?

. We are not here to romanticise free software or claim that it will solve all problems. But we do believe it offers a radically different starting point, and a way to build technology that is transparent, inclusive, and rooted in the realities of people’s lives. In an age where every click is being commodified, FSMK remains committed to the idea that another digital future is possible, one that prioritises freedom over convenience, participation over passive consumption, and people over profit.

. The road ahead is long and uncertain. But we have seen, time and time again, that when people come together with a shared purpose, even a small collective can make a big difference. FSMK is not just an organisation; it is a movement, an idea, a refusal to accept that technology must always be top-down. It is a reminder that the digital future belongs to all of us if we choose to build it together.

. What is the Free Software Movement? It is a social and political campaign advocating for the use, development, and distribution of software that respects users’ freedom. It was spearheaded by Richard Stallman and aims to grant users four essential freedoms: the freedom to run, study, modify, and distribute software.

Founded in 1983 with the GNU Project, it later established the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985 to advocate for these freedoms. The movement’s core philosophy centers on the idea that software should be a tool for users to control, rather than the other way around. In India, the movement began as early it was founded — in the late ’80s. There were many online forums like ilugs or tech-support mailing lists. However, it really took a turn into a people’s movement only in 2003-2004 with the formation of project Swecha and in other states in the following years.

. How to join the movement? FMSK holds events regularly and participants are encouraged to join the community. There is no formal membership. We have close to 100 volunteers and most of them participate in our regular activities. They are predominantly students, IT professionals, academicians, research associates, writers, scientists and NGOs. About 30-40 % of the participants are women.

. Try these popular free tools... Everything that drives technology today is on free softwares — all the GNU/ Linux operating systems, everyday applications like Firefox browser, VLC player, Open Office, 3D Blender or programming languages like Java, Pearl, Python and PHP, application softwares like MySQL, Apache, Wordpress and many more. The tech behind AI/ML, GenAI is all built using free programming languages.

. Naveen Mudunuru is the general secretary of FSMK. Opinions shared in this article are his personal views.

How we are democratising software

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