> > > Today, myself and Mr. Balamurugan setup a 25 seat FOSS lab for Vellalar > College of Engineering and Technology, Thindal, Erode District, ( > http://www.vellalar.com/Engg/index.htm) for the department of MCA using > Fedora-13. > > For any feedback, pl. contact Prof. L.M.Palanivelu / HOD-IT regarding the > FOSS Lab implementation. > > First of all, i welcome this initiative of setting up exclusive foss lab. I have few thoughts to share here..
- Setting up a foss lab should NOT be an end in itself. Is there any result oriented projects planned? - FOSS should NOT be confined within a lab. Rather, we should explore how we can use foss applications for day to day use of the college life. eg: intranet mail servers, intranet wiki, intranet forums, intranet blogs, a knowledge repository,, Please excuse me, if these are already done in your college. (In my observation most colleges dont even have an intranet mail server). - There should institutional mechanism, where the department consistently works on a FOSS project, irrespective of students studying. ie, students should learn and contribute for the project, and when before he gets passed out, he has to train the incoming students.. by this way, we can generate continous pool of resources to work on any FOSS related projects. - There are many issues where Linux based machines could not be integrated to a windows network. (this is one of the reason why windows servers are preferred over linux).. Colleges can work on these issues with colloboration from corporates. These are just my thoughts.. although there are so much awareness created in indian colleges, there is no visible FOSS product coming out, bcoz, we lack product development skills. Knowing a technology is different from developing a product. Unless we aspire to develop products (either for research purpose, or for requirements of our society), we could not have the required leap in FOSS movement in india. Regards, Senthil _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
