[kanchilug] Petition: Request to drop proprietary software from the free laptops by Tamil Nadu Govt

Shrinivasan T <tshrinivasan@xxxxxxxxx> · Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:21:54 +0530

http://www.fsftn.org/tn-students-laptop-petition

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alagunambi Welkin <alagunambiwelkin@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 9:50 AM
Subject: [FSFTN] Petition: Request to drop proprietary software from the
free laptops to be distributed by the government to students of Tamil Nadu
To: mailinglist@xxxxxxxxx

Dear Friends,

The Government of Tamil Nadu have decided to implement the scheme of free
distribution of laptops to students studying Government and Government
aided Schools and Colleges, and released a tender to procure 9,12,000 of
laptops for the same.

By the tender reference: ELCOT/PID/ICB/LTC/PI/2011-12, government wants
Proprietary Software to be installed.

The decision to include Proprietary OS in the laptops will have a huge
impact both on cost and effectiveness of its use in education. There are
9,12,000 laptops being ordered for distribution. Assuming a basic cost of
Rs1,000/- per system for the OS license, we find that it will cost the
exchequer a whopping 91.2 crore. Incidentally the anti-virus software (the
'twin brother' of MS Windows) is offered as part of the package for just 1
year. This implies that the student will have to either pay to renew the
license every year or use a pirated version. Given the weak financial
situation of a vast majority of students, especially in rural parts of the
State, it is most likely that they would would opt for latter, a highly
unethical and unsafe practice. There is also a question mark as to how and
where students are expected to renew licenses or anti-virus software.
Besides, Microsoft provides support for its products only for a stipulated
period; there is no comment on how students would get the assistance once
the product is officially withdrawn from market.

It is well known now that GNU\Linux can perform all the functions any
proprietary OS can do and much more. Most of these laptops will be used
mainly to read/edit word documents, browse the internet, multimedia
purposes, etc.. All these functions can be accomplished with ease by the
available GNU\Linux distributions. Many more educational software are
produced by the FOSS community in GNU\Linux platform than any proprietary
companies. It is worth mentioning that there are even GNU\Linux
distributions available for educational purposes which are packed with lot
of software packages required for eduction.

So, please sign the petition to give free open source software for the
younger generation of Tamil Nadu.

http://www.fsftn.org/tn-students-laptop-petition

--
Alagunambi Welkin
Executive Committee Member
Free Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu.
Part of - Free Software Movement of India.

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  Regards
 Shashank
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-- 
Regards,
T.Shrinivasan

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[kanchilug] Petition: Request to drop proprietary software from the free laptops by Tamil Nadu Govt

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