[GNU/LinuxInIndia] Some very interesting arguments up here... favouring FLOSS (long)

http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?VTU-FLOSS_Campaign

FSUG-Bangalore | RecentChanges
VTU-FLOSS Campaign
Please Sign This Petition

If you have any relevant points that could be added, and useful details, please 
include it at the bottom of the appeal. Don't forget to sign your name! Please 
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Respected Sir, an appeal from the world of Free Software

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(http://www.gnu.org/philosophy) 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 few 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 
Berkeley'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: Ethereal, 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.

* (6) VHDL : Xilinx v/s Alliance 5.0, gEDA

the Xilinx software for VHDL simulation is available for individual systems,the 
Xilinx lacks in VLSI CAD systems, but the Alliance 5.0 is an EDA VLSI CAD, and 
has set of tools which meets the needs of academics and gives complete tools 
for VLSI design including support for VHDL as well as verilog support. gEDA is 
another set of free software which helps in complete design of electronics 
system. 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,

Please sign this petition

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Start Here Please add you signature at the end of this list

1. Thejesh GN. Milwaukee USA. Former student of VTU [1BT98EC047]. March 01 2005

2. Rakesh 'arky' Ambati (Bangalore India) Fri Mar 11 11:19:57 IST 2005

3. 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.

4. Frederick Noronha, Freelance Journalist, Goa, supporter and user of Free 
Software. Because sharing is a great idea, specially when it comes to 
easy-to-reproduce knowledge products! Please see FN's FLOSS links for links to 
some of my work in the field of Free/Libre and Open Source Software.

5. Benjamin Rualthanzauva , Chennai

6. Sridhar Ratna, Final year CSE student of CEG, Anna University, Chennai.

7. 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.

8. shashidhar 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 tuff---Indian Inside . Let's get Liberated.LONG LIVE 
OPEN SOURCE.

9. 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.

10. Mairu Gupta, Ottawa (www.bluesprint.com)

11. Vivek Varghese Cherian, Bachelor of Engineering (Mech), former student of 
Kuvempu University, Shimoga, Karnataka.

Free Software helps us to study, modify and distribute the source code released 
under the GNU General Public Licence(GNU GPL) which is a copyleft license which 
will help the student community learn how operating systems and applications 
work better than closed source code implementations. Moreover sharing of 
software will make more responsible technocrats who value free sharing of 
knowledge over narrow profit motives.

You could also encourage students to release their project reports under the 
GNU Free Documentation Licence(GNU FDL), so that the entire student community 
can learn, modify and build up on existing projects reports submitted to the 
VTU under this license.

12. 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.

13. Suraj Kumar, Bangalore, India.

14. Vijay Kumar, Chennai, India. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

15. Prashanth Mohan, Second year CSE student of CEG, Anna University, Chennai.

16.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

17.S.Varun, studying at MIT Chrompet, Chennai, India.

18. Joe Steeve, ME CSE (Thiagarajar College of Engg., Madurai). Free Software 
is a _must_ at Educational Institutions. When reputed institutions like yours 
acknowledge Free Software, other institutions would take you are a role model 
and follow.

19. Raman Krishnan, BE Final Year CSE, CEG, Anna University,Chennai, India.

20. Krishnakumar G [2], Bangalore, India

21. Syed Mazhar Mahdi, Bangalore, India

22. Toji Leon. http://tojileon.blogspot.com

23. Suraj Kumar Nair, Palo Alto, California, USA

24. Raghu Kodali, Bangalore, India

25. Shishir Alva, Toronto Canada. Former student of VTU. March 13 2005

26. Vasudevan Thrikkazhippurath, Bangalore - INDIA

27. Fajar Priyanto, from Indonesia. Why spend money on things that have their 
superior subtitution? I support this campaign wholly. Pls visit my linux 
website at http://linux2.arinet.org

28. Dong Calmada, Philippines. Vice-President of Philippine Linux Users Group 
(circa 1994). Free/Open Source Software is a solution for 
developing/underdeveloped countries to level the playing field internationally. 
http://foss.peace.net.ph.

29. Bejoy Abraham Mathews, Trivandrum, Kerala, India. Network Engineer 
(GNU/Linux) at a company called US Technology. Even though I'm not a student I 
would love to support this movement for all the students willing to learn Free 
Software. I have struggled the time that I wanted to learn this great concept 
but there was no one to guide me. God make this great thing happen in 
Bangalore. I've started a group site for the people from Qatar(Gulf). If anyone 
is willing they could join in and pool in their knowledge. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qglug

30. Nesmel Hussain E&C Engr - _ If u can Open your minds so y not the Source ! 
_

31.Niteen kole Sr.system administrator ,I think it is one of the best option to 
go for linux,we have full network with five servers all working on linux ,with 
clients also working on linux,they are normal office people,we use open office 
,mails,printers ....... every thing is going fine for last seven years with 
minimum down time.

32. Sunil Mohan Adapa, Hyderabad. Alumnus of IIIT - Hyderabad. Cost is just a 
small factor compared to the other factors like freedom. If students use a 
proprietory software, they can only learn just that - to *use* a software. 
Where as students using a free software have the freedom to learn the internals 
and modify the software for their own needs. Let us just take an example. 
Operating systems is one of the main courses in any cirriculam. Let us say, a 
student gets and idea for a new scheduling algorithm and he wants to try and 
implement it. If the world were to be filled with proprietory software, he will 
have to write an entire OS to test his own schedular. But in case of free 
software, he can take one of the free kernels (Linux, Herd, BSD etc.) and add 
his own schedular. To learn, there is no choise but to use free software.

33. Arjun Jain CSE Engineer, RV College of Engineering - The amount of FOSS we 
had in our syllabus (5th sem ncurses graphics editor, 7th sem networking) and 
the freedom to choose the platform in the other projects like Data base project 
where we could chose b/w MySQL? and Oracle was amazing. It was helped us a lot 
and now that we are doing our internship in the real industry, we realize how 
much important it was. I request you to increase the FOSS content instead to 
decreasing it!

34. Seow Yoke May, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

35.Devesh

36.A. Chiremba Zimbabwe. I have not used Open/Free Source software but I 
anticipate to use it very soon. The workshops I have attended hosted by ITDG 
Africa have been an eye-opener.

37. Ramanraj. K. Chennai

Using Free Software and open standards is rather a very elementary basic need 
for Institutions in pursuit of knowledge. Non free software have serious 
artificial blocks that prevent understanding and learning. In fact, it is 
anti-social and immoral to be teaching or exposing students to non-free 
software.

The free software philosophy is even bringing in a sea of change, openness and 
honesty in the way curriculums are designed, research output is generated and 
published. It would be a very backward and retrograde step to even think of 
prescribing the use of non-free software in educational institutions. Please 
rectify the mistake as soon as possible, by rejecting non-free software, 
allowing full access to knowledge, skill and learning through free software.

38. Rahula Sharma, Programmer, India

39. Shashank Ashtikar, Team Leader, Pune, India

Free Software is very necessary in schools and colleges since free software 
facilitates students to study and understand the software, rather than just be 
the end users of the software without knowing its underlying implementation 
details. With free access to source code and ability to modify and share the 
source code students can learn how software works, test their theories by 
making changes to the software, distribute and redstribute the modified 
software within peers and spread the knowledge This will help students in 
becoming far more knowledgable.

40. Pradeep Kumar N, Student Programmer, RVCE, Bangalore Free software is 
essential for us. It helps curb piracy too...to some extent... COnsider our 
needs.

41.Hitesh K Maisheri, Govt. Engg. College, Thrissur. We have been using 
GNU/Linux in our college labs for quite some time now. There are many students 
(including me) who are reaping the benefits in their career with this initial 
set up of GNU/Linux at college. GNU/Linux combination is real great. It offers 
you many advantages and no disadvantages at all. FLOSS (FOSS) both movements 
are here to live longest. Cheers for all these movements !!

42. This is the right way to go!!! Gaurav, RVCE

43. Go India Go!!! Ajay Soni

44.Sandep Garg, Student Programmer, RVCE, Bangalore

45. India can win software race only with free software DHarmendra Gupta

46.Banwari Lal Sharma (Software Developer, Bhopal) -- Yes It should be done. 
After all Open Source/FLOSS is the Community which can diminish the MONOPOLY of 
organizations such as Microsoft. They are sucking the world in terms of License 
Fee and other Fees.

47. Shakthi Kannan, Software Engineer, Specsoft, Hexaware Technologies, Chennai 
(http://www.geocities.com/shakthimaan). The industry has been using GNU/Linux 
for a long time. By bringing it to the academia on a large-scale it will help 
them and the industry in research and development. I strongly support the 
cause.

48.Vinay.V (Friend and ex-classmate of Thejesh at BTL Institute of Technology, 
Bangalore)Villingen, Germany

49. Baishampayan Ghose Student, Shivaji University, Maharashtra

I completely / whole-heartedly support this campaign. I have used GNU/Linux and 
OpenOffice? whenever possible during my college. This helped me a lot when I 
got a job as a Embedded Systems Programmer at Siemens, Bangalore, which is 
using linux in many of its projects.

Currently VTU is letting the students select the software required for any 
particular subject. But this is not enough. The problem is that not much of the 
teaching fraternity in VTU know about available FLOSS tools. I would request 
VTU to direct their colleges to train their faculties in FLOSS tools.

50. Vinay Yadav, CTO, vinayRas Infotech, Nagpur (http://www.vinayras.com/) 
Linux is the best solution for our country. Govt should come forward to support 
this. Education should not be bounded by any boundary - It should be Open.

51. Keshav V, 6th semister CS Student VTU. recomendation of FLOSS in syllabus 
will definetely reduce the investment in software in colleges. Also the freely 
available source code makes the students to understand how practically the 
theoritical concepts are implemented, let it be memory management in OS or 3D 
transformation of graphics object in a graphics package.

52. Gabin Kattukaran, General Manager, Mechelonic Engineers Pvt Ltd, Bombay I 
think software lincensing issues are relevant to everyone from Universities to 
Colleges to Students to Corporates just as they are to Individuals. In a time 
when India is striving to become a IT Major, it would be extremely unwise to be 
locked down to closed source solutions that force us to wear blinkers and see 
the world only as the mega-corporates of the USA want us to. This is especially 
true for students in their formative years when the limitations imposed on them 
will shackle them down for the rest of their carreers.

53. Vaibhav Prakash, post-graduate dept. of Space Sciences, Pune. any software 
should be free(as in freedom).One should have all the rights to change the 
software according to his needs. free Software is like Science, Einstien didn't 
pay Newton when he modified the laws according to the modern needs!!!

54. Thanikachalam Ananthakrishnan, Mumbai. Software should be *free* (free as 
in free speech). It has ample advantages. More references from 
http://www.gnu.org/

55.Chetan Anand,CSE,RVCE."The Future is OPEN" - so goes a catchline of a 
worldwide software major which is now pioneering efforts in making FOSS popular 
as well as the adoption of FOSS as an industry wide standard.VTU, with its 
Vision 2020 outlined very clearly, now has to take the lead in becoming the 
first University in India to adopt,encourage and proactively support the Free 
Software Revolution,which will be an unparalleled pioneering step.

56. Zabil C.M, Bangalore (Alma mater NIT Calicut) I use Linux at work. The 
introduction to linux happened at my college, where we used linux for 
pratically everything. Now we have recently made the switch to linux at our 
workplace also. The benefits are inherent higher productivity, excellent 
community support, virtually all kinds of applications at absolutely no cost. 
For colleges and university Linux should be de-facto.

57. G. Sivakumar, Professor, Computer Science & Engineering, IIT Bombay. I 
fully endorse this petition. Along with CDAC and IBM, IIT Bombay is working 
towards a Resource Centre (OSSRC - http://ossrc.org.in/) that will help in such 
efforts.

58. Shailesh Mathur, System Administrator. We are using Linux at work for both 
servers and desktops. We feel more powerful when doing administration of Linux 
as it gives us complete freedom for making changes in any package according to 
our need and that also without paying anything to anyone. Whereas in Windows 
environment, we need to pay everytime, whether we are going for a new package, 
for its upgradation and even for their maintenance. Due to power of Linux most 
beggest companies have migrated and we have a good example of Om Logistics with 
us, who have saved around INR 200 crore per annum by migrating to Linux 
completely.

59. Anish Mathew, System Administrator, I have been using linux for the past 4 
years both at work and at home. I struggled very hard to learn the nuances of 
this flexible OS. No one was there to guide me except the online support from 
websites and mailing lists. Thanks to Free Software Foundation and the world 
wide developer/user community for the extraordinary support and development of 
good competitor for windows applications. Let the coming generation get the 
chance to learn and grow with this huge software community.

60. Ajay Pal Singh Atwal, Lecturer, BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab 
(http://www.bbsbec.org): We use GNU/ Linux and related software for teaching 
and learning and for our various servers for our internet proxy (squid), 
websites (Content Management Systems: Drupal, Post-Nuke, PHPNuke, PHP-BB etc), 
email (sendmail, qmail, squirrelmail, courier), filesharing (samba) etc. I 
personally use DevC?++ (a GNU GPLed S/W) for teaching Windows Programming, and 
ethreal and tcpdum for teaching Computer Networks. I am very much satisfied and 
recommend the use of GNU GPL software.

61. Sameer Niphadkar, BE-CSE KJSCE Mumbai and SCLP Novell Inc : I have been 
using and advocationg to use GNU/Linux for the last 5 years now. I am myself 
very much satisfied by the performance of the OS as well as other FLOSS 
products. It would really be a positive step if the government and particularly 
the academicia adopts Free Software.

62. Ajit N. BE-CSE (RCETM, Madurai,TN) Using GNU/LINUX nurtures the engineering 
spirit. It is an industry grade operating system.It allows the user to learn 
about Operating systems and computer programming. Free software development 
projects enable a student to gain hands on experience in developing software. 
The guidance available is plenty and the Industry is already moving along the 
Free(as in Freedom) software way. It would be very helpful and a matter of 
pride to the students of this university if they are allowed to practise their 
trade in GNU/LINUX instead of the technically inferior, socially disruptive and 
market greedy MS WINDOWS and other restrictive licensed software in general.

63. Aveek Bhattacharya, BE Electronics, Final Year (RVCE Bangalore). I believe 
GNU/Linux is the epitome of the spirit of engineering. It allows you to tinker 
with the OS internals, as well as understand how it works. Besides, Free/Open 
Source software is generally available for a large variety of platforms, 
including MS Windows. A first step would be to move from commercial packages, 
costing quite a lot of money, to equivalent Free/Open Source software packages, 
while retaining the OS. This phased transition allows the system 
administrators, faculty and students to get familiar with the software. 
Incidentaly, I run only GNU/Linux on my PC.

64. I insist using free softwares at centres, which also helps the student in 
his career and work place to use free softwares which also reduces his 
individual expenses

65. I have benifitted from open source. I am a student and i cannot afford to 
pay exhauburant sum for a propritery software. Please sir do consider open 
source/free software also in our curriculum. 
Jenkin(http://holyghostexpress.com)

66. V. Sasi Kumar, Scientist, Centre for Earth Science Studies, 
Thiruvananthapuram. Proprietary software prevents society from taking full 
advantage of this wonderful technology. It could seriously threaten our freedom 
in other aspects of our lives also, in its attempt to prevent people from 
freely copying and using the software. Free Software empowers people, helps 
society make full use of IT for its benefits.

67. A.Sivakumar B.E. CSE (KLNCE, Madurai). 68. Terry Machado,Scientist, Centre 
for Earth Science studies, Thiruvananthapuram

69. Shiju Paul N., Quality Controller/Electrical Engineer, ASC, Riyadh, Saudi 
Arabia. I think our public institutions need not act as the marketing personnel 
of any particular company.

70. Zaheer Mohamed K., native of Kochi, Kerala, currently pursuing M.Tech 
Automotive Engg. at VIT, Vellore, Tamilnadu. Strive for Software Freedom! Go 
for the GNU/Linux OS and Get GNUing!

71. ND, IMHO - FOSS completely fulfils the definition of democracy - of the 
people, for the people, by the people! Today the support you can get for FOSS 
is terrific - comparable and sometimes even better than most paid software. All 
you need is to join good FOSS groups on the internet - and the FOSS supporters 
are more than willing to help with your queries/problems. I support FOSS - & I 
feel everyone should too!

72. Hemanth.G, student (ECE- 6th sem) BTLIT, bangalore- FOSS has provided an 
every alternative tool for most liscenced tools, in a college like ours we have 
seen the difficulties in labs, any slight problems in the liscenced tools the 
company has to come and rectify till then no labs, in case of opensource tools 
any student well worsed with the tools can rectify it, using liscenced tools 
mean a less no of systems with the tools installed, that means the whole batch 
has to work on limited no of systems, no freedom in lab to experiment your 
ideas due to time constraints that others are waiting for their turn. my PC 
runs only GNU/Linux and tools i use are mostly Open source tools.

73. Arun K. Khan, B. Tech (IITM, 1979), M.S. (Univ. of Illinois, 1981). I have 
been using Open Source Software (GNU tools and Linux) since 1994. I have 
implemented Linux solutions in the Small/Medium Enterprise market with 
satisfied clients. While *big* enterprises have taken advantage of this 
technology, most small/medium businesses shy away from adopting Linux in their 
IT department with the excuse "It is hard to find trained Linux 
developers/administrators." I firmly believe that educational institutions such 
as yours can play a very *significant* role by introducing OSS/Linux related 
courses and *remove* this major "road block" excuse to Linux adoption. I 
strongly urge educational program directors to introduce this technology into 
their curriculum. From a business perspective, if one can find an OSS/Linux 
Administrator/Developer as easily as the guy who can write VB programs or 
develop sites using FrontPage?, I am sure he/she would be more receptive to 
OSS/Linux solutions. Besides, not having to pay for licenses would be a thick 
icing on the cake. The other significatnt advantage of OSS/Linux is that 
students have access to source code and can experiment with their ideas and 
gain insight into concepts of software design. For a country like India, the 
more qualified/trained OSS/Linux graduates we have, the better it will be for 
the software development industry, e.g. coming up with new concepts in s/w 
desgin, in the country. Thank you.

74. Sanjay Arora, Managing Director, Transcontinental Impex Pvt. Ltd, Amritsar. 
I am owner of a North Indian SME. I am using Linux/FOSS Software since last six 
years. As a businessman, I don't give in to emotional issues, such as trying to 
promote anything due to idealogy. Franky, FOSS makes Economic Sence. Today I 
use a FOSS Intranet, an Extranet, Inhouse E-mail Servers and many other FOSS 
Softwares. Had I used expensive propritory systems, it would have broken the 
back of my IT deptt. To me, FOSS means empowerment. However, we need talent to 
augment implementation of FOSS Systems. That's why I whole-heartedly endorse 
this issue. As a nation, we cannot afford to ignore this issue.

75. Nijanand Mathur,Software Engineer,Hyderabad( Ex- Student of VTU,2003 batch)

76. Rashid Kunhi R.H.C.E.

77. Toby Joseph, B.Tech(IT) India simply cannot afford the licensing costs 
associated with proprietary software. The only solution is to use free 
software, which is no way inferior to proprietary software, if not superior. As 
a technologist, haven't you yet noted the fact that the students who use Linux 
are more well versed with operating system concepts and the programming 
language C/C++? Is that such a bad thing to be avoided? Please encourage the 
use of Linux and other free software and ensure that VTU sets an example for 
other engineering instutions and universities throughout the length and breadth 
of the country.

78. G Karunakar, Project Coordinator, IndLinux?.org ( http://www.indlinux.org ) 
. Students should not be just users of software, they should creators. Even if 
they are not in Computer Science stream, there is a lot they can do with 
computers. Using free software, makes a big difference here, it helps them 
learn how things work and allows creativity , to make useful derivatives out of 
existing software. Also it helps a lot in skill building, since one can go 
through well written code of others & learn from it faster, all live software 
than just dummy demo ones. It would also help them learn to think different, 
and not just follow the usual route of just study to get a job. Being in free 
software world gives you more than just a job.

79. Ajith B. Use of FLOSS in educational institutions makes a lot of sense - 
lower costs, flexibility and above all, it allows the students to learn from 
the source code.

80. From Richard Stallman <rms at gnu.org>: Schools of all levels should insist 
on Free Software, because proprietary software prohibits learning and builds 
dependency. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/schools.html

81. Anand Babu (http://freedom.freeshell.org): "Learn, Improve and Share" is 
very fundamental to the education system. With proprietary software, students 
can only learn how to use it but can never learn how it works, can never 
improve it or share it. They need free software. Visit http://www.gnu.org for 
more info.

82. Ragavan S -- India would do well to take a leaf out of Brazil's notebook in 
adopting and encouraging the use of and contributions to free and open source 
software. Educational institutions need to play a leadership role in helping to 
raise awareness of free and open source software.

83. Rohit Patil, California, USA: The petition and comments above spell it out 
clearly. Here're my comments - FOSS (Free Open Source Software) is good for 
India, period, and the VTU adopting it would be a step in the right direction. 
I wish we had access to this software and documentation when I was in college, 
besides access to some useful/helpful lab assistants of course! I hope this 
Open Source trend spreads to the rest of the scientific fields as well, 
especially energy research, bio-technology, and the medical and pharmaceutical 
industry, at least to some extent. Technology is pretty much useless if it 
doesn't reach the common man, and it's not reaching the common man as of now, 
not in India, and not in the rest of the "developed" world either. Extremely 
greedy monopolies aren't good either; most of them are into making money for 
themselves with very little to zero contribution to the field, which has 
brought us to the state we are in today - hogging off off research done by very 
few in the in the 19th & 20th (until the '70s and '80s) centuries, and hyping 
up the rest (remember the dot com fiasco and the mess the Wall Street & Co. has 
created?). FOSS allows people to go after how-things-work instead of accepting 
this-is-how-it-works-take-it-or-leave-it. FOSS allows people to make it work 
better instead of this-is-how-it-works-take-it-or-leave-it. FOSS reduces 
software piracy => less pressure from the "developed" world on such matters. 
And FOSS doesn't cost a paisa! All it requires is the right attitude. FOSS IS 
the right attitude.

84. Nagarjuna G., Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of 
Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India (Free Software Foundation of India, 
nagarjun at gnu.org.in): Schools and colleges are social and cultural 
institutions helping in the process of social inheritance from one generation 
to the other. It is therefore required that knowledge transmission must be kept 
free from any proprietary agencies. Free software development, like sceintific 
development, happens as a cultural and social process. All knowledge must be 
encoded in an open standard and must be kept away from the evil proprietary 
agencies. Educational institutions are mightier and have a more important 
social role to play than any multi-national agency, therefore they should not 
be subjugated by the selfish corporate agencies. It is a pity that a govt 
organization tries to engage in private contracts with a multi-national agency 
whose motivations are clearly to further only their business. Let us recall 
that education is a state subject, and not a corporate subject. People who are 
trying to make room for such agencies are slapping on the face of independent 
India. Let us defend our swatantram. Please revoke this MOU and keep education 
free. http://www.gnowledge.org/.

85. Laxminarayan Kamath Ammembal., Bangalore, India : I believe, Free Libre and 
Open Source Software and the *ideology* behind it being implemented in 
educational institutions is one of the crucial tasks for India in order to 
reach our beloved President's vision "2020". And my request goes not just to 
the Vice-Chancellor of the VTU, but to every person involved in the development 
of the nation, be it education or otherwise, to accept and uplift the spirits 
of FLOSS as a means to help develop this great nation, and truely stand on its 
own feet. Till now, It has shown lots of promise to me. But I suggest you dont 
wait for others to, but, set an example, yourself.

I can say being in the FLOSS world has helped me realise my responsibilities 
towards the society. It has taught me true Social Science, in a practical way. 
And I would like to emphasize an important point: There is a huge difference 
between *just using* Open Source Software and being involved in it as a part of 
the FLOSS community. Again, getting involved is a state of mind. It may be that 
we still *use* the software, but having the "involved" state of mind helps a 
lot.

I always was sad that current education standards completely lacked moral and 
practical social science. But it has come from an unlikely source - the world 
of software development in the form of FLOSS!

86. Vimal Joseph, Kochi, Kerala.

87. Chandrashekhar Mullaparthi, India. I fully endorse the use of Free and Open 
Source Software in schools and universities.

88. Aaditya Sood, Bangalore, India. Whole heartedly for free software!

89. Atul Chitnis, Bangalore, India. Goes without saying that FOSS is the only 
way to learn about software. Learning about software by using proprietary 
software is like learning to drive a bicycle by reading a book.

90. Arpit Sud <arpit04 at gmail dot com>, BE ECE Thiagarajar College of Engg., 
Madurai. You must lead the way, so that others will follow suit. Adoption of 
Free Software in schools and colleges is favourable to both the administrators 
and the student community.

91.Madhavi Ramarao

92. Vaibhav Bora, Bangalore Great institutes like the IITs are majorly into 
Linux and free software. I really don't know what is stopping so many colleges 
today to go for more expensive proprietary software which actually curtails 
learning by abstracting so much.

93. Guys the market in in open source lets go for it - Murali Sriram

One more suggestion, please make this petition to all the universities in India 
and the world.

94. Mahesh T. Pai, Advocate, Ernakulam. It is important that students learn to 
use Free Software, because Freesoftware gives them freedom, and frees their 
minds from the clutches of vendors who seek to lock in minds of future 
developers and users.

95. Sayamindu Dasgupta, Developer and student - Institute of Technology and 
Marine Engineering (under the West Bengal University of Technology)

96. R.Balasubramanyam - Bangalore University
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