*http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/issues/engineering-students-locked-into-microsoft-office/article4640546.ece*
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Engineering students locked into Microsoft Office
Come June 30, over 80 lakh college students all over India would have
little choice but to use Microsoft Office 365 in their college
computers, locked by a government contract that may well be more
expensive than the use of an open source equivalent in the long run.
The decision by the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE)
will limit engineering students to a particular product at a time when
their exposure should be widened, say experts. It also forces college
administrations to adopt one technology instead of giving them the
flexibility to install whatever suits their students’ needs best, they
said.
Efforts to contact Microsoft were unsuccessful until Sunday night.
In open source, the core of the technology is available without charge
as free download. Open source requires no initial investment, with many
vendors offering support and maintenance at half the price charged by
proprietary software vendors.
The AICTE, which serves more than 11,500 technical colleges and
institutes across the country, had awarded Microsoft a contract last
year that let the AICTE implement the company’s cloud email and storage
offering, which centralizes email storage and provides for a simpler and
potentially less expensive solution.
A recent notification by the AICTE states that all institutes must
compulsorily install and use Microsoft Office 365, a productivity suite,
which has little to do with the functioning of the cloud-storage service.
There is no free, open-source cloud-based offering, and Microsoft’s
product, priced at zero initial cost, fulfills that need. Dr. S.S.
Mantha, Chairman, AICTE, announced, “Office 365 will enhance our day to
day communication, collaboration, and monitoring of the colleges we
oversee... This will help us promote and propagate innovation across all
11,500 institutions.”
The AICTE notification that announced the mandate says the project needs
to be completed by June 30, 2013.
Open-source software such as Linux has become popular among college
students in recent times as its zero-cost approach promotes inclusivity,
with former President Abdul Kalam stating “In India, open source
software will have to come and stay in a big way, for the benefit of our
billion people.”
Addressing what he called a popular misconception about the availability
of support for open-source installations, Raghavendra Selvan, an
assistant professor at an engineering college in Bangalore, clarified,
“Once you have installed such a product, there are companies that will
charge you just for maintenance and support.” Red Hat is an example of a
large enterprise that caters to just this need.
If the government would consider an open-source alternative, it wouldn’t
be the first time. In early 2011, the state government of Kerala
deployed an open-source enterprise-resource planning (ERP) package named
Fedena to assist over 15,000 schools and 70 lakh students.
Mr. Selvan suggested the government could use the Fedena model, and
added, “The office suite is not necessary. Using Office 365 would only
limit students to Microsoft's perspective and stand in the way of
serious open-source research in rural colleges,” he added.
Keywords: Engineering colleges
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college computers
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open source software
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AICTE
<http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/issues/engineering-students-locked-into-microsoft-office/article4640546.ece#>
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