Go open source, urges Sun evangelist

Cooper, who is known as Sun's open source diva, feels that Indian companies should now look at the business propositions offered by open source software such as Linux and move away from the proprietary software (Read Microsoft) technologies.

"You have developed software on proprietary software for long enough. You must now understand the freedom by joining the open source movement. India's great software development talent should not be wasted on some technology that is proprietary," she said.

As per the open source software movement, the software source code, or its blueprints, would be available on the Internet. This allows anyone to use, tweak and improve the software, and encourages wide competition from software solution developers in a market that could otherwise become the captive of a single dominant proprietary offering.

According to Cooper, who once worked for Microsoft, the shift towards open source movement in India should start from the high school levels.

"Awareness about open source software should start from the high school level. Students should be exposed to the advantage of it from the young age it self," she said.

Pointing out that Asia is a target market for the company in the evangelising the open source movement, Cooper said, "We are making considerable investments In India and China, two countries, which are developing as global leaders in software development. Microsoft is also investing in these two countries to strengthen its base. The developers should now decide in favor of the open source movement as it does not tie you down to one technology for your life time."

Cooper is currently working on bringing the leading open source movement personalities to India to work with Indian developers.

"I want to bring the leaders in open source movement in the Silicon Valley to India to work with the Indian companies," she said.

According to Cooper, to succeed in the Indian market, players in the open source movement must invest in education, bring in transparency in government, localise software tools and work on developing low cost computers.

Sun is currently working with a host of Indian companies to bring out localised and local language software tools based on open source in the Indian market.

"In Thailand, Sun invested in helping companies to developing skill sets to develop local language tools. In India, the software development companies have the capacity to develop local language tools on their own," she said.