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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,