[Fsf-friends] INDIA: Request to sign a petition favouring Free Software in the campus

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

Please sign this petition if you agree with it... it's an attempt to convince a 
prominent technological university in Bangalore (VTU) to be opened to the use 
of Free Software too.


 	http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?VTU-FLOSS_Campaign

Krishna Pagadala, San Jose, USA. I have benefitted highly from the Free 
Software movement and the Freedoms it has provided. Specifically the Freedom to 
learn from the source code has helped me in getting a high-technology job in 
the US. I wish that all students enjoy the all the Software Freedoms.

Pramode C.E, IC Software: I would like to add that there are efforts under way 
to develop innovative hardware experimentation platforms using GNU/Linux to 
improve the quality of Physics (as well as Engineering) education; and the best 
part is that it's being done in India. Please visit 
http://www.nsc.res.in/~elab/phoenix/ to know more about the `Phoenix Project' 
being developed by Ajith Kumar at the Nuclear Science Centre, India. The wealth 
of high quality tools and the open nature of the platform is of immense value 
to young engineers and scientists raring to unleash their creativity; the 
lessons in freedom and sharing that students learn by using GNU/Linux will also 
go a long way in shaping their character as caring and responsible human 
beings.

ashidhar b desai ,6th sem E&C, B.V.Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering & 
Technology Hubli,Karnataka,India ,FLOSS is an excellent alternative for the 
existing commercial softwares..Academics(colleges and univ) is the best way to 
promote and support "Free Software".It will be a great initiative if the univ 
adopts it(it will become an example for other univ & institutes). News about 
open source and gnu/linux stuff---Indian Inside . Lets get Liberated.LONG LIVE 
OPEN SOURCE.

Praveen Arimbrathodiyil (National Instititute of Technology, Calicut) Fri Mar 
11 17:34:50 IST 2005 We use GNU/Linux in our main Computer center. It saves a 
lot of money of the college as there is no licence fee to be paid for each 
users. Since the source code of the softwares are available many computer 
science students do projects based on Linux kernel and other such projects. The 
possibility of use of thin-clients (which our computer center use) reduces the 
cost of hardware dramatically. It has proved to be beneficial to our college 
and I urge you to chose Free Software for giving a better alternative for 
students.

Debapriyo Sarkar. Final year student of BCA, Goa. As a student, I plead to 
every university, to adopt, encourage and spread the use of Free/Libre Open 
Source Software (FLOSS). The benefits are clearly far-more significant than 
cost savings (which of course is a huge motivating factor). The quality of 
software reviewed and worked on by virtually the entire developer community of 
the world is definitely at least world-class if nothing else. It is possible to 
save on costs with $0 priced closed source software often termed as freeware, 
but the limited resources of the single developer or the couple of developers 
behind the software makes future of such software bleak. Compared to that, 
software released under an open source license, helps user as well as developer 
involvement to happen as deeply and transparent as no other licensing model can 
support. As the letter includes the following (stripped) statement "...Octave, 
which is simulation software written by University professors. This usually 
comes with the GNU/Linux Operating System." which clearly shows that professors 
of universities elsewhere have contributed to the solution of making quality 
software available to the students and colleges alike under a license that 
welcomes further contributions to improve the project virtually endlessly. As a 
personal experience, I often have used open source alternatives whenever 
acquiring the proprietary packages meant depending on the lab assistant to 
provide the CD for illegal copying or genuinely going out and shelling out all 
those huge wads of cash for functionality that was already at my disposal with 
added advantage of continuing development and a long-life (of the software). As 
universities use and recommend use of open source software,rate of development 
is bound to grow with more and more students using the same version of software 
both at college and home (no limited cheap "student" edition which are "cheap" 
imitations with myriad "limitations"). Also professors' contributions in the 
form of bug reports, bug fixes, new functionality patches and their work in 
increasing awareness about the benefits of using open source software would 
help improve quality of free software to an enormous extent.

Vijay Kumar, Chennai, India. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

.P.Sujeevan,Project leader, S2S2, Kerala .Here at kerala at school level more 
than 50 of schools are still using GNU/Linux.Also SSLC IT practical examination 
has successfully done under the linux operating system.Some schools are still 
using the Linux terminal server systems.Next year aggressive work is planning 
to implement complete linux environment in schools.http://s2s2net.netfirms.com

    _____
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