Let Anna university syllabus committee read this before revising its engineering syllabus!

Dr. Kalam - The Strong Supporter of Open Source Software over Proprietary Solutions:
Dr. Kalam continues to take an active interest in other developments in the field of science and technology as well. He is a supporter of Open source software over proprietary solutions and believes that the use of open source software on a large scale will bring more people the benefits of information technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Kalam

Kalam: Why we need Open Source

The most unfortunate thing is that India still seems to believe in proprietary solutions. Further spread of IT, which is influencing the daily life of individuals, will have a devastating effect on the lives of society due to any small shift in the business practice involving these proprietary solutions. It is precisely for these reasons open source software needs to be built which will be cost effective for the entire society.
"In India, open source code software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people."

- Dr.A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, President of India, May 28, 2003

Kalam, Stallman discuss open source software

NEW DELHI, JAN. 31, 2004.

The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, last Thursday played host to two radically divergent poles of the global software industry. The first to meet the President was Richard Stallman, the leading light of the free and open source software (FOSS) movement.
Ironically, the people waiting in the Presidential anteroom for the interaction to end were people from Microsoft.
Dr. Stallman has devoted his life to countering Microsoft's policy of selling software that cannot be changed because its code is kept a secret. It also cannot be shared because of licensing restrictions. Dr. Stallman gave up a cushy teaching job in a prestigious American university after he perceived that "computer colonisation'' was spreading rapidly. "There were only two options. Either I stopped using computers or I help everybody to escape. I chose the latter,'' he said.

By taking to FOSS, India would be able to cut down on the outflow of foreign exchange which was going to become very large in the near future. So far, Microsoft licences were not being forced on individuals, but in the coming days, proprietary software companies would make it impossible for individuals to make copies clandestinely.

Read more here http://www.hindu.com/2004/02/01/stories/2004020104231000.htm

Go For Open Source Code, Kalam Tells IT Industry

The open source software movement in the country on Wednesday received a shot in the arm with President APJ Abdul Kalam goading the Indian IT industry to look at open source code instead of depending on proprietary solutions.

There was a need to develop language-independent search engines so that those working in Indian languages are not deprived of the vast databases and knowledge, he pointed out. “Think different,” was the President’s message to the IT industry. Instead of being proud of working for 260 Fortune 500 companies, Indian industry should dream of being among the 260 Fortune 500 companies, he said. The Indian IT industry should be a $100 billion industry in eight to ten years, he added.
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/go-for-open-source-code-kalam-tells-it-industry/75949/

Kalam backs `open' software initiatives

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam used his speech in Pune last week, at the dedication function of the International Institute of Information Technology (I{+2}IT) to express his concern that so many sectors, including government and education, were still dependent on costly proprietary software packages, calling it a "most unfortunate thing'' and adding: ``In India, open sourcecode software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people.''

He also reminded the IT industry of the importance of Indian language computing solutions: "We must have (Indian) search engines, word processing tools, optical character recognisers, speech recognisers and machine translators''.

Dr. Kalam's remarks on open source which were apparently triggered during his walk around the I{+2}IT, when he saw most PCs running Windows and similar software, have been quickly picked up by IT news services abroad: The U.S.-based CNET yesterday carried a dispatch which highlighted a remark the President made in his Pune speech about his interaction with the Microsoft Chairman, Bill Gates, when the latter visited India in November last. It was picked up the same day by Business Week: "While walking in the Mughal Gardens we were discussing the future of information technology including... software security.... I made a point that we look for open source codes ... our discussions became difficult since our views were different''.

This was about as candid as an Indian President has ever been about his interactions with one of his high profile guests. Dr. Kalam's strength of conviction and clear perceptions about the nation's techno-road map may perhaps explain his bold statement in an area where the Government has hitherto been quite ambivalent.

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2003/06/01/stories/2003060100701100.htm

----------
In this post i have tried to collect some pointers about how Dr.A.P.J.Abdul kalam has supported the free software concept!
If you like Dr. A.P.J.Abdul kalam, then you have to use/contribute to free software!

NRCFOSS - Are you there ?

What is it?

NRC-FOSS stands for National Resource Center for FOSS. Which is a joint initiative between Anna University Chennai (:o) and C-DAC chennai.It is Funded by Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Govt. of India.


You wanna more about them go here .

What's their Job?

They are telling, Lack of Manpower in FOSS is one of the major reasons for the Industry not venturing seriously into this area.

(LOL if you keep signing MOU 's with Microsoft for providing students with their free crap then how the manpower in FOSS will increase? See the picture VC is signing the MOU with Microsoft eagerly :P )

So,
They are proposing two plans to improve the manpower in FOSS.

1.The Formal Way:

"Training teachers of Engineering Colleges and equipping them to offer FOSS Electives and student projects in their colleges at the UG/MCA levels as part of the curriculum so as to ensure that large numbers of Engineers and MCA s are produced every year with exposure, training and skills in the FOSS area." (oh really then?)

"In Phase-I extending to the first two years, this would be taken up in Tamil Nadu alone, where 100 teachers from 50 Engineering Colleges would be selected to get trained at the NRCF in teaching and guiding UG (CSE) and MCA students in FOSS. The NRCF, in consultation with the Industry and the Anna University, would develop syllabi for two curricular Electives, and the 100 selected Teachers would be trained in teaching these Electives to the BE/MCA classes during the penultimate semester and the semester prior to it."

(Brother, there are now more than 350 affiliated engineering colleges in tamilnadu alone, you trained them two years back..do you think they are still in teaching profession?

The first training program was conducted in June '2005
http://www.au-kbc.org/nrcf/partinst.htm

List of teachers attended FOSS TTP ( 6th to 18th June 2005 )
http://www.au-kbc.org/nrcf/ttcp.htm

Can NRC-FOSS prove that, any of these colleges using FOSS today at least ?)

Their comedy calculation: [:D]

"It is expected that each of these 50 colleges would offer these electives to a class of at least 60 students every year, so that a minimum of 3000 engineering graduates with FOSS training would be produced every year at the end of this phase. "

( அட பாவிகளா? Do you know in the academic year of 2006-2007 only one college among affiliated colleges took FOSS as their elective and the same college haven't took the elective in 2007-2008 due to unavailability proper books, )

NRC-FOSS people , can you publish the number of colleges who took FOSS as an elective in the past 4 years?

What a pathetic story huh?

One day i visited their irc channel #nrc-foss-edu in irc.freenode.net

And asked them "Students of government schools are using open office in their higher secondary education, but when they come to anna university affiliated college why they are forced to use Microsoft office?"

The answer is: silence

me again,
When anna university will give importance to FOSS ?

Finally a guy called lawgon (?) broke the silence and replied irresponsibly "Who knows?"

I guess he is one of them [:(]

If Anna University and NRC-FOSS really cares about FOSS introduction, then why the new syllabus regulation 2008 still recommends proprietary software?

This is clear evidence for everyone to understand that Anna university has never cared about introducing Free / Open software in regular curriculum replacing proprietary software.

Mr.Uma shankar IAS helped TamilNadu Government and Schools to move towards FOSS, hmm who is for anna university?

இந்த பூனைக்கு மணி கட்ட போவது யாரு?

Do it now:

Let NRC-FOSS stop playing the FOSS Elective Drama and ask Anna University
to propose the use of FOSS based software in Computer Labs and also to remove
all Proprietary Software proposed in Lab Requirements.

Rants and Laughs #1

How Anna University promotes Proprietary software in education:

Advertiser: Anna University

Course: B.E.(CSE)-Computer Software Education

Duration of Training: 4 years

Total Cost of Training:Calculate for 8 semesters which would come around few lakhs

Additional Cost: Placement Training, Carrier training ,Language skills training and other miscellaneous costs.

Software's Taught:

First year: Microsoft Office,Windows Xp

Second year : Microsoft Visual studio and others

Third year & Final year: Microsoft C# and .NET,Rational rose

List of additional software include:

1.Microsoft windows Xp

2.Turbo and borland C /C++ including IDE (we use 64bit CPU and install 32 bit OS and run a 16 bit application to create 8 bit integer addition program)

3.Microsoft Office97/2000 (if possible Office 2007)

4.Visual C++

5.Rational Rose

6.Java 1.3v(Notepad only)

7.Oracle 8i RDBMS

8.Adobe photoshop and Flash

9.Filters and Transitions in Internet Programming lab which are *Only* supported by Internet Explorer


All software mentioned above should be properly purchased using 'Academic Partner' program every year by the Franchisees.


Head Office: Chennai

Branch Offices: Trichy, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli

Franchisee: Nearly 355 study centres throughout the state of TamilNadu.

Certification: Certificate provided by Anna University

Certificate Name: Anna University Certified proprietary software Application Developer.

Make Anna University Syllabus Vendor Neutral

The Anna university syllabus touches the lives of most Engineering students in TamilNadu.And the current syllabus both explicitly and implicitly mandates specific brand names.We believe that this benefits monopoly software vendors and leads to a technology dependence that is not healthy for our country in the long run.

All we are asking for is that brand names should not be mandated because:

The education system must teach *principles* and not *products.* For example, we should teach "word processing" and not XYZ brand of word processor.

The Anna university syllabus can be examined here.

They are forcing the students to learn Microsoft Visual C++,MFC. This implicitly forces the colleges and students to use the operating system provided by the same monopoly vendor Microsoft.(for more details look at the subject with code cs1253 and cs 1255 in the above link)

The university also specifies the list of softwares that should be used in the laboratory to train the students:

This include:

1. Adobe Photoshop

2.Macromedia Director

3.Macromedia Flash

4.Macromedia Dream Weaver

5.Rational Rose

6.Microsoft Visual studio

7.Oracle

8.Microsoft .NET and more

Please don't teach us products and make us addicted to the dangerous drug called proprietary software.

Inspirations and references:

http://osindia.blogspot.com/2009/01/making-cbse-syllabus-vendor-neutral.html

http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Syllabus_Review

Why colleges should exclusively use Freesoftware?

Richard Stallman is the father of Freesoftware.I am republishing one of his essay here on why schools should exclusively use Free software...

Here we go:

By Richard Stallman,

There are general reasons why all computer users should insist on free software. It gives users the freedom to control their own computers—with proprietary software, the computer does what the software owner wants it to do, not what the software user wants it to do. Free software also gives users the freedom to cooperate with each other, to lead an upright life. These reasons apply to schools as they do to everyone.

But there are special reasons that apply to schools. They are the subject of this article.

First, free software can save the schools money. Even in the richest countries, schools are short of money. Free software gives schools, like other users, the freedom to copy and redistribute the software, so the school system can make copies for all the computers they have. In poor countries, this can help close the digital divide.

This obvious reason, while important, is rather shallow. And proprietary software developers can eliminate this disadvantage by donating copies to the schools. (Watch out!—a school that accepts this offer may have to pay for future upgrades.) So let's look at the deeper reasons.

School should teach students ways of life that will benefit society as a whole. They should promote the use of free software just as they promote recycling. If schools teach students free software, then the students will use free software after they graduate. This will help society as a whole escape from being dominated (and gouged) by megacorporations. Those corporations offer free samples to schools for the same reason tobacco companies distribute free cigarettes: to get children addicted (1). They will not give discounts to these students once they grow up and graduate.

Free software permits students to learn how software works. When students reach their teens, some of them want to learn everything there is to know about their computer system and its software. That is the age when people who will be good programmers should learn it. To learn to write software well, students need to read a lot of code and write a lot of code. They need to read and understand real programs that people really use. They will be intensely curious to read the source code of the programs that they use every day.

Proprietary software rejects their thirst for knowledge: it says, “The knowledge you want is a secret—learning is forbidden!” Free software encourages everyone to learn. The free software community rejects the “priesthood of technology”, which keeps the general public in ignorance of how technology works; we encourage students of any age and situation to read the source code and learn as much as they want to know. Schools that use free software will enable gifted programming students to advance.

The next reason for using free software in schools is on an even deeper level. We expect schools to teach students basic facts, and useful skills, but that is not their whole job. The most fundamental mission of schools is to teach people to be good citizens and good neighbors—to cooperate with others who need their help. In the area of computers, this means teaching them to share software. Elementary schools, above all, should tell their pupils, “If you bring software to school, you must share it with the other children.” Of course, the school must practice what it preaches: all the software installed by the school should be available for students to copy, take home, and redistribute further.

Teaching the students to use free software, and to participate in the free software community, is a hands-on civics lesson. It also teaches students the role model of public service rather than that of tycoons. All levels of school should use free software.

1. RJ Reynolds tobacco company was fined $15m in 2002 for handing out free samples of cigarettes at events attended by children. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/features/health/tobaccotrial/usa.htm.

Why Proprietary Software when there's more in FOSS ?

Every creation in this world has a mission to do. No one is created to do nothing.

You may ask us the following questions:

1.Is this blog an official blog of Anna university?
2.Why you created this blog?
3.Who are you?
4.Well why should i believe you?
5.How can i help you?

Answers:

1.Is this blog an official blog of Anna university?

NO.We are not Anna university

2.Why you created his blog?

If you are student of one of the Anna university affiliated college ,you should be familiar with the syllabus of it.They teaches engineering students following proprietary software's Micro$oft office(first year),Oracle(RDBMS),Micro$oft Visual C++(Visual Programming), Micro$oft.NET(C# and Dot net), Rational Rose(Case tools),Adobe photoshop(Graphics and multimedia),and many more.
Well Most of the colleges buy/crack these softwares and use them in their laboratory.

The syllabus makers of annauniversity are totally ignorant to the Freesoftware.
To escape the criticism of people from freesoftware movement,they have introduced free software as an elective.Well who in the world cares about electives? In most of the colleges Students are never allowed to choose electives hod's and staffs choose them? Last year only one college choose FOSS as an elective!

This blog has been created to make the people of tamilnadu realize the dangers of non-free software(proproitery software) in education and tell anna university to change.

3.Who are you?

Its not 'you'. In the world of free software its we. We are students of annauniversity, industries who support free software, people from Linux user groups.

4.Why should i believe you?

You should believe you because we are telling you the truth.It took us more than 200 years to realise that we are ensalved by british.Please don't take those much years to realise the slavery created by proproitery software.

5.How can i help you?

You can help us by using/supporting free software.If your college/school is using proprietary software, then ask them to switch.Tell them what you got from free software.

Happy hacking :)