----- Sandip Bhattacharya sandip@lug-delhi.org wrote:

You misunderstand the Hall of Shame "rhetoric". It is not about which site uses what technology to provider services. HoS is about not discriminating against users of these services. Critical websites like governments should be accessible by all, including users of FOSS software. That is all about our "limited" mission.

Thanks for clarifying. Got it now.

Whether a government site should proprietary technology or FOSS software is a different debate, and is not related to the Hall of shame effort.

Agreed.

BTW, I personally believe that FOSS software is not everything. You need to have FOSS content also. So even if we have FOSS software which is good, but not FOSS education material, what good would the software be to an education drive? Look around the education area, you would be a huge amount of teaching material already in place for these proprietary software. I don't blame the education drive too much right now for their decision. They can't help their students *now* by deploying FOSS and waiting for years for the teaching material to appear. The good thing is that there are many localized drives in India who are developing good teaching material. I believe Kerala was a pioneer in it, but I don't have any references to it right now. Once we have a worth 10+2 content in place, it would be difficult for any government to justify ignoring it.

So what exactly would/ should be taught as per the available study material

1) Word Processing or MS Word 2) Presentations or Powerpoint 3) Spreadsheets or Excel 4) ANSI C/ C++ or Visual C++ (usually Turbo C++) 5) Object Oriented Programming or MS .NET 6) SQL or MS SQL Server

there is a difference. For each there is a free alternative.

And good study material is aplenty. Generic concepts are already in place. I do blame the Govt Deptt. for lapse in their duties.