Muktakosh is a new non-profit-oriented organization that I, Deb, Nayanika and a few friends are trying to build. Our focus is on exponential technologies — doing researches which require a good amount of time and effort, and are usually difficult to sustain, and build a strong community of thinkers and doers in the process.
About the initiative
- About Muktakosh: This discussion talks in brief about what Muktakosh is and what you can engage with at this point.
- Muktakosh mission: This discussion talks about the core mission of Muktakosh.
Muktakosh at present
- Idea hub: The Idea Hub in Muktakosh is a place envisioned to foster discussions on technologies, art, design and literature that people want. We have put some of our ideas there to begin with.
- unicorn: We have started working on unicorn, a federated connectivity suite, that we have put in the public domain. There is no demo yet, but hoping to have one in 6 months. The discussions happen on Muktakosh.org.
- ConQ: We had planned ConQ during our Applait days, as a discussion platform, when we wanted to make a business out of it. Eventually, we felt that it is better off as an open and community driven project, given its goals.
Muktakosh.org is built as a discussion platform. Instead of having a landing page, a static mission page etc., we decided to make everything participatory. The entire website is a forum, making participation possible from the very beginning. Even the about and mission pages are open for discussions.
Legal
Have you registered/incorporated?
We want to, eventually. Currently, the cost of incorporating and maintaining a legal body is more than the cost of operations for the next 6 months. Till we have further traction in the community, and unless there is a need for a separate legal entity to cover liabilities, we would like to roll lightly.
What about IP rights?
We believe concepts like IP rights, patents and copyrights are harmful for free innovation. With that in mind, the IP generated by Muktakosh and its projects are explicitly put under liberal licenses or dedicated to the public domain. Copyright, wherever applicable, are owned by the contributors, but are usually explicitly waived.
What happens to Applait?
Applait was built as a for-profit product outfit. We had extremely interesting ideas, some of which we experimented with. It still remains alive, albeit passive. The ideas will be pursued under the mission of the Muktakosh project.
Addendum
Our goal with projects like unicorn and ConQ is to enable unified, ubiquitous communication – free of silos. That was not doable as a business. We have tried. We have talked to people in the industry, to investors, to prospective clients, but our goals did not sync with them.
Think of Wikipedia as a private, for-profit corporation. It wouldn’t have achieved this level of success. It would have needed to pivot to something else to bring in revenues.
The currently proposed organization structure, modus operandi, the projects, the architecture are result of 2 years of discussions and research. We are thinkers and technologists at heart. We would rather see these projects out there, helping others, than make money.
Please do participate, and share it with others who may find it useful.