[Fsf-friends] draft declaration at Kozhikode

[Nagarjuna G]

==This is a Draft Declaration==
We request all those who read this to suggest any changes before
Monday 13th September 2010, so that the declaration can be released
sooner than later.

==The Role of ICT and Education in Social Inclusion==
Information & Communication Technology (ICT) is one of the most powerful
technologies ever developed by humankind. It has drastically changed
the way we do things, the way we communicate and even the way we
think. Education is one of the spheres of human activity that is being
strongly influenced by ICT. While the teaching of ICT has been
incorporated at the school-level, ICT itself is being used in the
classroom and outside for teaching and learning more
effectively. However, access to ICT is not universal due to various
reasons, including obscurity and the high cost of proprietary software.

Education is a basic requirement for a comfortable life in
today's society. In view of this, some countries, including India,
have made it a fundamental right. This is certainly a move in the
right direction. Education in ICT and ICT-enabled education are also
becoming wide-spread. Part of the reason for this is the rapid decline
in the cost of hardware. At the same time, the high cost of software
is acting as a hurdle for further progress. Another factor that
prevents more wide-spread use of ICT is the fact that the interface is
not available in many languages, which bothers a lot of people.

Obscurity stops people and especially students to learn how things work,
software in particular. The right to use, know, change and share
technical knowledge
about modern artefacts is an essential human right in knowledge societies.



==Why Software Freedom is essential?==

Proprietary software does not allow community participation in shaping
the ICT to be used for education, and is not suitable for education
since their solutions treat students as consumers. Free software
community (sometimes called free and open source software community)
on the other hand produced GNU/Linux operating system and a
comprehensive stack of collaborative workspaces that enable students
during the last 25 years. Most of the free software workspaces are
made accessible for speakers of all languages of the world, including
physically challenged students. The software freedom granted to the
people (1. to use the software for any purpose; 2. to study how it
works; 3. to modify it and 4. to distribute the modified software) is
unquestionably the core source of the free software revolution that is
being witnessed.  Any software that grants these four freedoms is
called Free Software. These freedoms are essential for students to
learn how things work, and to share their experience, knowledge and
collaborate with others without legal encumbrances.

The software freedom makes it eminently suitable for any purpose,
especially for education. The software used in education has to be
freely available and accessible to all because education has to be
universal. Moreover, the software has to be available in the language
used by the community in that part of the world, however small the
community may be. This is normally not possible with proprietary
software because some communities could be too small to satisfy the
commercial interests of the company.

But the situation is different with Free Software. Since the source
code is available for study and modification by anyone, students of
computer science and software engineering are able to see code written
by master programmers and learn from them, just as students of
literature learn from works of great writers, or students of art or
cinema learn from the works of great artists and movie makers. This is
obviously not possible with proprietary software.

Any community that has people with reasonable software skills can
customise the interface to show the menu and other items in their own
language. They can also create fonts for the language if they are not
available. And they can localise applications to suit their culture
and environment.

Finally, the students who have computers in their homes can use the
same software they use in their educational institutions without
either breaking the law and using illegal software, or spending a lot
of money to buy the same software.

Thus, Free Software is undeniably the most ideal for use in all
educational institutions at all levels; for primary, secondary or
higher education. Proprietary software keeps people divided and
helpless, while Free Software empowers them.  Free software nurtures
the much needed creativity by encouraging us to critical thinking and
reasoning while proprietary software forces us to consume what they
package.

It is important for the graduating students to become entrepreneurs or
join the various agencies for employment.  Considering this
requirement it is essential that the syllabus in educational
institutions focuses on skills and not include any specific branded
applications produced by a commercial company.  Therefore, the
syllabus should be neutral and not mention any particular brand.

Just as the software requires to be free, it is essential that
learning and teaching resources including documentation, books,
journals, and other media should be released with a license (such as
Creative Commons by Share Alike) which grands similar freedoms for
other resources.  All these resources must also be encoded in an open
standard so that the exchanged documents are decodable in all
platforms ensuring interoperability.

==Therefore==
considering all the reasons mentioned above, we, the undersigned, call
on all educational institutions, policy makers, students, teachers in
all corners of the world to discard all proprietary software and use
exclusively Free Software.