[Fsf-friends] INDIA: Respected Vice Chancellor...

[Frederick Noronha (FN)]

Please sign this memo and add your suggestions and points. FN
    _____
  _/ ____\____    Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa
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http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?VTU-FLOSS_Campaign

VTU-FLOSS Campaign

The Vice Chancellor Visvesvaraya Technological University Belgaum - 590 014 
Karnataka State, India

Respected Sir,

         Re: Opening wider software avenues for your students through Free
         Software.

There are thousands of engineering and polytechnic colleges in India. Each 
year, a few hundred thousands of graduates and diploma holders earn their 
degree. They pay thousands of rupees as fees to get the best facilities. A part 
of this goes to buying the softwares which they use either in college lab or 
for doing their assignments at home.

For every software which India's engineering students use; there is an 
alternate Free Software program available. Free Software offers freedom, 
accelerated possibilities and wider vistas to our students. But in a 'talent 
rich, resource poor' country like India, it is also an issue of costs. Huge 
amounts of resources will be saved, and productivity gained, while deploying 
Free Software. This will not only make engineering education more 
cost-effective, but also more productive.

Free/Libre and Open Source Software has many other advantages such as 
reliability, performance and security; building up of long-term capacity within 
the state and country itself; the Free (as in freedom) philosophy; encouraging 
innovations; offering alternatives to illegal copying; throwing up many 
possibilities in localisation; helping students vastly by allowing them to 
learn from the source code; getting access to literally thousands of tools; in 
addition, of course, to lower costs.

Issues related to Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in education are 
outlined very well at http://www.iosn.net/education/foss-education-primer/

Other than cost benefits, Free Software has other extremely pertinent 
advantages. We would urge you to serious consider the following:

     * No-fee licensing
     * Ease of license fee management
     * Better large-scale programmability
     * Easier integration
     * Better performance
     * Development convenience
     * Better support

Niranjan Rajani in a study on FLOSS in the developing world, notes, "FLOSS has 
a complementary and reciprocal relationship to education. One needs an educated 
section of the population to fulfil the full potential of FLOSS, and at the 
same time FLOSS helps, enhances, and complements education by providing tools 
to promote education."

In the case of education in computer sciences, FLOSS provides opportunities 
which nothing else can, as the Finland-based researcher Rajani points out:

     * Unrestricted access to the source code.
     * An environment of unlimited experimentation and tinkering.
     * Collaboration and interaction with a community of programmers,
       coders and users around the world.

In addition to providing ready and available tools, Free Software provides 
positive examples from projects around the globe. In practice, this means that 
if someone in some other place has created a tool to reach a specific 
educational goal, one can take it as a starting point and build on it, without 
the need to "reinvent the wheel". The Dspace project and the Koha library 
software, mentioned earlier, are but two simple examples of such possibilities. 
As far as collaboration is concerned, Sourceforge is perhaps the biggest 
collaboration project ever created, uniting tens of thousands of software 
projects and hundreds of thousands of people around the world. "FLOSS itself 
has been called the most collaborative human effort ever," as Rajani points 
out.

In addition to the above, the inherent qualities of FLOSS make it a prime tool 
for achieving local language educational software, especially for languages 
which are not deemed commercially viable for proprietary software vendors. This 
has the scope of offering both relevance and employment to so many of your 
bright young students.

There are literally hundreds of Free Software's programs which colleges or 
universities can adopt. As Vishweshwaraiah Technological University is one of 
the biggest engineering-related universities in India, its time for VTU to give 
the lead and move towards using Free Software. This would encourage other 
Universities to follow suit. Let the VTU have the pride to be the first one to 
adopt Free Software in educational curriculum, on a scale significant enough to 
make a difference to the future of VTU, its many students, and India itself.

Here we submit some examples of three such alternative Free Software programs 
which can be used for technical education.

* (1) Operating System: Windows v/s GNU/Linux

Because of the software tools prescribed in the colleges, and also a general 
lack of awareness of Free Software options, most colleges use Microsoft Windows 
based operating system. Yet, in terms of technological features, stability, 
learning possibilities, the GNU/Linux is increasingly being recognised as the 
best available globally. It is the best suited for any educational institution. 
Students can not only use it, but also can study its source code to understand 
its internal workings. Likewise, they can easily get in touch with the many 
volunteers who have put together this amazing set of tools, and collaborate 
internationally to created more suitable products and also hike their own 
skill-sets.

But many of the colleges use or have started adopting GNU/ Linux, starting with 
the server room, where it is well known for its stability and security now it 
has entered our labs and desktops.

* (2) Simulation: Matlab v/s Octave

Matlab is used in communication and electronics lab. Matlab for an individual 
license for use in a university (academic use) costs $500. Any college will 
have to buy a minimum of 25 licenses. This means shelling out Rs.537,500.

Octave, which is a simulation software written by university professors. This 
usually comes, along and as part of, the GNU/Linux Operating System. The 
advantage to students is that they don't have to buy a limited student version 
to use at home. They can use Octave both at lab and at home.

SciLab? is another Free Software competitor for Matlab. It uses sophisticated 
algorithms to analyse data and produce aesthetic graphics.

NG-SPICE is another GPLd Circuit Simulator which is based on the University of 
Berkley's Spice Version 3f5.

* (3) Office software's: MS Office v/s Open Office

Currently, we all used Microsoft Word to submit our project documents for 
review and for other academic purposes. Recent technological developments now 
mean that we have Open Office which is as good as Microsoft Office and has the 
same, if not better, features. Microsoft Office in fact lacks some features 
like PDF (Portable Document Format) support, compatibility with older versions 
of Microsoft Office, lack a vector drawing application, etc. Open Office gives 
you everything starting from a word processor, to presentation software to PDF 
generator. It is fully compatible with Microsoft Office -- so already existing 
data in those formats can be used. Don't you think it's the right time to save 
money and enhance efficiency of technological education in our country?

The above are just examples. There are many such software programs from which 
the students can benefit. We hope the university understands the urgency and 
the need. We would be happy to give the university any information/help that is 
needed. Currently, India has a wide range of volunteer GNU/Linux support 
groups, a list of which can be found at http://wikiwikiweb.de/LugsList

* (4) Computer Networks Subject Teaching: Ethreal, tcpdump, NS2 etc

We use the above mentioned tools for the teaching of Computer Networks and Data 
Communication subjects. There are a number of other GNU GPLed tools which can 
be used in a number of other labs for teaching and learning.

* (5) Content Management Systems: Drupal, PHP-Nuke etc

For building websites and info portals for students to make online learning 
possible. In the world of online forums, Free Software have a number of free 
options. You could well imagine the impact that the accelerated spread of such 
easily-reachable and usable tools would have, not just on the engineers of 
tomorrow, but on the wider Indian society as a whole.

We thank you for your patient hearing, and urge your reputed university to take 
speedy and decisive steps in this direction.

Thanking you, We remain, Yours sincerely,