Friends, Today's newspaper says that the state government is discussing with Microsoft for collaborating in education, e-governance and what-not. This is supposed to bring transparency into governance. But this discussion itself appears very opaque. It is not at all clear what is wrong with the present system that uses Free Software in education. And it is strange that they think that Microsoft can bring transparency into e-governance. The result will be that the government will pay tons of money to the company as licence fees since all schools will have to migrate back to Windoze et al. Moreover, all teachers will have to be retrained, textbooks will have to be rewritten, and worst of all, it would be virtually impossible to bring Free Software back not only into schools but also into higher education. It is to be remembered that many, if not most research labs in India use GNU/Linux for their scientific computation and most advertisements for positions in these labs ask for knowledge of GNU/Linux and some scripting languages. So, will this mean that our students won't find it easy to apply for these positions? Finally, the national education policy itself speaks about encouraging Free Software and sharing. So where is the need to go to Microsoft now?
Friends, we need to do something about this. I know that with this government, it won't be easy to push for Free Software, but we certainly cannot remain silent spectators to this looting. It would be good if someone can start a representation to the government and post it to the group or a wiki, so that others can work on it as we used to do and send it to the Chief Minister, Education Minister and others. And, perhaps, we can start a media campaign too. Ideas welcome. Best, Sasi -- V. Sasi Kumar Free Software Foundation of India http://swatantryam.blogspot.com -- "Freedom is the only law". "Freedom Unplugged" http://www.ilug-tvm.org You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ilug-tvm" group. To control your subscription visit http://groups.google.co.in/group/ilug-tvm/subscribe To post to this group, send email to ilug-tvm@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to ilug-tvm-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For details visit the google group page: http://groups.google.com/group/ilug-tvm?hl=en
