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FOSS in Government Curriculum for Printing Technology
By BIS Correspondent

Chennai, Jan. 9. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has been officially included in the curriculum for the Diploma in Printing Technology, to be approved by the Government`s Directorate of Technical Education in Tamil Nadu, South India. The new syllabus is to be implemented in all polytechnic colleges in Tamil Nadu from June 2008.

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Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has been officially included in the curriculum for the Diploma in Printing Technology, to be approved by the Government`s Directorate of Technical Education in Tamil Nadu, South India. The new syllabus is to be implemented in all polytechnic colleges in Tamil Nadu from June 2008.

The case for including FOSS, along with proprietary software, in the syllabus of polytechnic colleges was convincingly argued by Fr. P. T. Joseph SDB, Vice-Principal of SIGA Polytechnic College, who is a member of the Government`s Syllabus Committee, headed by Mr. V. N. Subbarayan. ``The Government should not be seen as promoting only certain proprietary software companies,`` Fr. Joseph argued. ``It should welcome FOSS as an alternative`` for students in its institutions, he said. The new syllabus was finalized during the meeting of the Syllabus Committee that took place at the Salesian Institute of Graphic Arts (SIGA) Polytechnic College in Chennai on 3-4 January.

The syllabus committee had representatives from reputed companies and government institutions. Prof. Dr. Rajendrakumar Anayath, Head of Heidelberg-India`s Print Media Academy -- a special invitee at the syllabus committee meeting -- was impressed by the syllabus. ``I find here topics that I studied from undergraduate to doctorate level,`` he commented. Mr. R.C. Daga, President of the Madras Printers and Lithographers Association affirmed that the syllabus was good enough to meet the printing industry`s demand for next five years.

The Salesians of Don Bosco have been in the forefront of technical and vocational education in India for many decades now. With over 120 technical institutes, they are regarded as the largest non-government organization in the field of technical training in India. The Salesians technical institutes mostly concentrate on the middle and lower levels of technical training, where most students are from the poorer sections of society. They believe that promoting the use of Open Source Software is, as the Rector Major Fr. Pascual Chavez puts it in AGC 390, `a way of moving towards democratization of information and culture,` and of overcoming the `digital divide` between the rich and the poor.

The recent three meetings of Salesian Communicators in Sao Paolo, Cebu and Hyderabad have all spoken about promoting FOSS. Salesian Father Julian Fox has even authored a book on FOSS, Digital Virtues, which proposes the cultivation of `a series of little virtues in the way we choose software, the way we use it, and the way we help shape the textual community around the message we proclaim.` It is worth noting that one of the decisions of the recently held BOSCOM-INDIA annual assembly in Hyderabad was to promote the use of FOSS in all the Salesian provinces of India.

Many individuals and organizations, including governments, worldwide have begun testing open-source software to cut costs and eliminate dependency on individual companies. The Dutch government, for instance, has set a soft deadline of April 2008 for its agencies to start using open-source software -- freely distributed programs that anyone can use and modify.

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