[Fsf-friends]
INDIA: Request to sign a petition favouring Free Software in the
campus
Frederick Noronha (FN)
fred@bytesforall.org
Tue Mar 15 05:19:14 IST 2005
Please sign this petition if you agree with it... it's an attempt to convince a
prominent technological university in Bangalore (VTU) to be opened to the use
of Free Software too.
http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?VTU-FLOSS_Campaign
Krishna Pagadala, San Jose, USA. I have benefitted highly from the Free
Software movement and the Freedoms it has provided. Specifically the Freedom to
learn from the source code has helped me in getting a high-technology job in
the US. I wish that all students enjoy the all the Software Freedoms.
Pramode C.E, IC Software: I would like to add that there are efforts under way
to develop innovative hardware experimentation platforms using GNU/Linux to
improve the quality of Physics (as well as Engineering) education; and the best
part is that it's being done in India. Please visit
http://www.nsc.res.in/~elab/phoenix/ to know more about the `Phoenix Project'
being developed by Ajith Kumar at the Nuclear Science Centre, India. The wealth
of high quality tools and the open nature of the platform is of immense value
to young engineers and scientists raring to unleash their creativity; the
lessons in freedom and sharing that students learn by using GNU/Linux will also
go a long way in shaping their character as caring and responsible human
beings.
ashidhar b desai ,6th sem E&C, B.V.Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering &
Technology Hubli,Karnataka,India ,FLOSS is an excellent alternative for the
existing commercial softwares..Academics(colleges and univ) is the best way to
promote and support "Free Software".It will be a great initiative if the univ
adopts it(it will become an example for other univ & institutes). News about
open source and gnu/linux stuff---Indian Inside . Lets get Liberated.LONG LIVE
OPEN SOURCE.
Praveen Arimbrathodiyil (National Instititute of Technology, Calicut) Fri Mar
11 17:34:50 IST 2005 We use GNU/Linux in our main Computer center. It saves a
lot of money of the college as there is no licence fee to be paid for each
users. Since the source code of the softwares are available many computer
science students do projects based on Linux kernel and other such projects. The
possibility of use of thin-clients (which our computer center use) reduces the
cost of hardware dramatically. It has proved to be beneficial to our college
and I urge you to chose Free Software for giving a better alternative for
students.
Debapriyo Sarkar. Final year student of BCA, Goa. As a student, I plead to
every university, to adopt, encourage and spread the use of Free/Libre Open
Source Software (FLOSS). The benefits are clearly far-more significant than
cost savings (which of course is a huge motivating factor). The quality of
software reviewed and worked on by virtually the entire developer community of
the world is definitely at least world-class if nothing else. It is possible to
save on costs with $0 priced closed source software often termed as freeware,
but the limited resources of the single developer or the couple of developers
behind the software makes future of such software bleak. Compared to that,
software released under an open source license, helps user as well as developer
involvement to happen as deeply and transparent as no other licensing model can
support. As the letter includes the following (stripped) statement "...Octave,
which is simulation software written by University professors. This usually
comes with the GNU/Linux Operating System." which clearly shows that professors
of universities elsewhere have contributed to the solution of making quality
software available to the students and colleges alike under a license that
welcomes further contributions to improve the project virtually endlessly. As a
personal experience, I often have used open source alternatives whenever
acquiring the proprietary packages meant depending on the lab assistant to
provide the CD for illegal copying or genuinely going out and shelling out all
those huge wads of cash for functionality that was already at my disposal with
added advantage of continuing development and a long-life (of the software). As
universities use and recommend use of open source software,rate of development
is bound to grow with more and more students using the same version of software
both at college and home (no limited cheap "student" edition which are "cheap"
imitations with myriad "limitations"). Also professors' contributions in the
form of bug reports, bug fixes, new functionality patches and their work in
increasing awareness about the benefits of using open source software would
help improve quality of free software to an enormous extent.
Vijay Kumar, Chennai, India. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html
.P.Sujeevan,Project leader, S2S2, Kerala .Here at kerala at school level more
than 50 of schools are still using GNU/Linux.Also SSLC IT practical examination
has successfully done under the linux operating system.Some schools are still
using the Linux terminal server systems.Next year aggressive work is planning
to implement complete linux environment in schools.http://s2s2net.netfirms.com
_____
_/ ____\____ Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa
\ __\/ \ India T +91.832.2409490 M +919822 122436
| | | | \ http://fn.swiki.net http://goabooks.swiki.net
|__| |___| / http://www.bytesforall.net http://www.bytesforall.org
\/ -----------------------------------------------------
Writing with a difference, on issues that really make the difference.
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