[Fsf-friends] NIIT and Adobe

V. Sasi Kumar sasi.fsf at gmail.com
Wed Dec 3 09:13:15 IST 2008


On Wed, 2008-12-03 at 00:57 +0530, Raj Mathur wrote:

> Tough battle to fight on any except the policy and ideology fronts, 
> since it would be difficult to find equivalent (easy to use) tools in 
> the FOSS arena.  We should have a story with a competitive FOSS toolkit 
> ready before we start approaching anyone.

The website says

"they will be taught to use Adobe Creative Suite preparing them for
careers in website designing, video editing and sound editing."

I think we do have applications like cinelerra, audacity and ardour that
can be taught. Rosegarden is another interesting application. I don't
know whether they have all the features required for professional
quality work, but what I understand is that they are good. I am sure
they are good enough for schools. Once the children study these, they
should be able to use any other such application without too much
difficulty. What they have to learn is actually not just how to use them
but what to do with them. I wonder how qualified the teachers will be to
handle such things.

> Couple of multimedia gurus available on the ILUGD mailing list, shall I 
> start cross-posting?

I guess you should. Let us gather whatever information we can.

I think what we have to do is to campaign against promoting a particular
company's stuff, especially if they are promoted by the state school
system. The other, of course, is to promote freedom, especially by
pointing out that the students who have computers at home can install
these applications without doing anything illegal. We could probably
arrange for lectures and demonstrations in schools. They may be
attracted by the cost and legality arguments. Once we get a chance to do
a demo, we can talk about freedom.

What about arranging a competition of, say, animation movies created
using Blender? School teams could participate. We could also have
similar competitions for other things (music created using Rosegarden?).
Maybe FSFI can sponsor the prizes.

Best
-- 
V. Sasi Kumar
Free Software Foundation of India
http://swatantryam.blogspot.com



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