FOSS for good: a non-tech talk on how we used FOSS (and FOSS philosophy) to build an open legal test prep platform

The talk will focus on:

The problem

As per a diversity survey in the year 2021-2022, top law schools in India remain islands of exclusion accessible only to the privileged few in India. More than 80% of the sampled students (613) had attended private paid coaching, which can cost upwards of INR 50,000, to prepare for law entrance examinations. 

Our solution

The first step to increase diversity in law schools is to make the prep for the entrance exams accessible. Paid prep will always exist. But a free and open legal prep platform should also exist as a public good. We didn’t find one that met that standard, so we decided to build Ratio, using Moodle, an open source LMS.

The talk will focus on FOSS principles demonstrated on the platform, such as:

1. Accessibility:  For persons with disabilities (PWDs), most paid prep platforms are inaccessible. PWDs in India as per law are permitted 20 minutes of comp time for each hour of the exam. Most platforms do not have comp time features built-in. By using Moodle, we have ensured that WCAG 2.1 guidelines are followed and we have also set up tests with comp time.

2. Open Data: We built the platform by leveraging the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The RTI Act in spirit is very similar to FOSS - it promotes transparency and accountability with access to information. In Phase 1 of our platform, past year papers of leading law entrance exams have been made accessible. The data for these past year papers was sourced via RTI requests, which can be accessed here, here and here (personal data redacted) and via official websites.

1. You don’t need to be a coder to build/envision a FOSS platform: We are a bunch of lawyers/law students who have built the platform with the support of a talented Moodle developer who helped set up the instance. 

2. FOSS as a philosophy: We hope that our use case of the RTI Act will showcase how data can be accessed from the government and that more people use the RTI Act as a tool for future open data/FOSS projects.

3. Ancillary takeaways: (i) Intent over investment: Our platform is proof that you don’t need a whole lot of funds or expensive software or a big team to build a public good project. Intent, commitment of time and a dash of idealism is sometimes all that is needed to get started; (ii) One for the kitchen, one for the soul, philosophy: Our platform is built by a team on a voluntary basis and not as a full time commitment/job.