Calicut Regional Engineering College started functioning in 1961 and in 2011 it was completing 50 years in 2011 . Golden jubilee celebrations were on the way. A committee was constituted for organizing year-long activities. I was drafted into the committee for the conduct of seminars. As I was to superannuate by the end of April 2011, my role was nominal. But as a parting gift to institution which was my life for over 40 years, I thought of doing my bit sufficiently early by organising a seminar as early as possible.
In the course of these write ups, I
have emphasized on more than one occasion that professional
education cannot be confined to the class
rooms and laboratories alone. Just as sports and games are important
for developing physical capabilities, professional society
activities help the youngsters in learning more by
interaction with peers and friends and of
course in developing leadership qualities.
With this in mind, I was involved in the
activities of several professional societies like Systems
Society, IEEE and Institution of Engineers etc. I had a preliminary
discussion with my close colleagues and student friends
about conducting a national seminar and a work shop on
Free Software in Education.
Do not confuse free software with
the software that can be
downloaded from the internet as ‘freeware’,
i.e. software without paying anything.
The ‘free’ in Free Software refers to
the freedom in using the software. Free
software movement is an idea conceptualized and spread by
Richard Stallman in 1983 at the end of
his GNU project
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(M.I.T). This concept is against the
proprietary software supplied by Microsoft,
Apple etc where the user has no
access to the source code of
the program written by the developers. The
proprietary or monopolistic software is given as a
package. If the software malfunctions in anyway,
only the original developers can modify the source
code, if necessary. Those who use these
must be prepared to update their software with ‘patches’
supplied by the developer. On the other hand , Free
Software can be downloaded free along
with its source code by users, can
be modified by them and
the modified program, if useful, can also be
shared with other users. These three freedoms,
to download, to modify and to redistribute without any profit motive are
embedded into free software movement. Richard Mathew
Stallman while working as a research associate in
M.I.T was developing an operating system GNU and he
wanted this operating system to be
available to anyone interested in
using it without any cost. As a Research Associate in M.I.T, when his
supervisor told him that what he developed under the
project will be the property of M.I.T, he
resigned the job and developed this as his own
and made it available to all who wanted to use it.
His Free Software Movement has
now grown all over the world as FOSS ( Free and
Open Source Software) movement. Sometime in
the late 80s, a few students( Dilip Vamanan and Vamadevan
as leaders ) came to me to
start some of
the FOSS activities with IEEE when
I was the student branch counsellor in R.E.C. Calicut and
ever since they had been conducting an
annual function with interaction
with Free Software leaders in India.
Richard Stallman used to visit India at least
once every year and we wanted to bring him to
Kozhikode if possible this year.
With support from Computer
Society of India Kozhikode Chapter,
Institution of Engineers Kozhikode Local Centre,
Chamber of Commerce Kozhikode and
our FOSS group in N.I.T Calicut, we
decided to conduct a National
Seminar on Free Software followed by
a two-day workshop on Free Software in
Education for teachers of
engineering colleges. Prof. Achyuthan, (IEI) Sri. Nithyananda
Kammath(Chamber of Commerce) and Sri. S.D.Madhukumar and A.Rajagopalan(Computer Society
of India) were all helpful in the
organization. Sri. Pradeepkumar.MLA was ready to
give full support for the conduct of
the inaugural function in Kozhikode Tagore
Centenary Hall. IT Mission
Kerala supported this seminar.
Most of
the software packages available in the
proprietary software like Windows are available in Free
Software also as well as equivalent. For example, for MsOffice, FOSS provides Open
Office, for MATLAB , SciLab and so on. As Free
Software is not a profit-oriented organization,
there is no advertisement and since programmes
are UNIX or GNU based, some extra effort is
required in learning how to use these. In fact,
using Free Software, our private colleges can save
a lot of money spent in purchase of
software. NITC Computer
Science department has set up all
the
laboratories using the free
software several years back. One advantage of
the free software is
that the threat of virus is absent.
The purpose of
the workshop following the seminar
was to introduce the teachers in engineering colleges in the Southern part of India and make them aware
of the wonderful opportunities
available.
The inaugural function of
the National Seminar on Free
Software in Engineering Education was held for
the first time as a public function
in the biggest hall in
Kozhikode city, Tagore Centenary Hall which can
accommodate about 3000
or more in audience. When our MLA
Pradeepkumar suggested this venue, we were sceptical
whether we will get enough people
to fill even half of the hall.
We had
also arranged a small exhibition
of free software outside the hall. However, to our
pleasant surprise, the public
participation was far ahead of
our expectations. Large number of school and college students,
parents and members of the public participated in the
event. Believe it, the hall was almost 2/3 full.
The dignitaries who
participated were Prof. Achyuthan, Sri Sathish Babu,
Nithyananda Kammath, Pradeepkumar MLA, Sasikumar etc. We had
a video message from the Chief Minister
Sri.V.S.Achuthanandan for the event. Sri Satish Babu, CEO of ICFOSS,
Technopark TVM was kind enough
to accompany our distinguished visitor, Richard Stallman
who was travelling from Palai after attending a function
there. I was there to receive him
at the railway station. As soon as we got
introduced between ourselves, the first thing
he wanted to do
anxiously was to talk to his
wife in Australia to confirm some programme in
Italy next week. Fortunately, my
mobile proved to be useful for the
purpose and he was a different man once this was done. As
he was such a big man, we
were expecting him to speak for about half an
hour or so. But he gave a beautiful speech for
about an hour and further interacted with the audience
including our students from NITC and other
colleges. Even some members of the public had something
to ask him and patiently he answered all of
them. We wanted to conclude the function by
8PM but it went on till 9PM. Finally, as
Coordinators, we had to intervene to
conclude the question answer session.
Without any hesitation, we could state that it was a
fitting beginning for our golden
jubilee celebrations.
Following inauguration,
we had the workshop on Free
Software in Education at N.I.T Campus. We had
more than 40 participants registered from
different colleges from
Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Unfortunately, the participation
from Kerala engineering colleges was a
bare minimum. Strangely, this was after my
sending personal email
messages to the principals of more
than 100 colleges in Kerala. To tell you the fact, I
got one reply from the 100 odd emails I sent.
Of course, it was an auto-reply which said Principal will
reply to you soon. Unfortunately, he never replied. In
general, we regret to state that
the response to such academic activities
from teachers of
our Kerala engineering colleges were
like this. I do not think
the situation now, in 2022
also is not very
much different. Only silver lining is the cooperation extended to our
IEEE activities by about 30
or more institutions all
over Kerala. With more than 150
engineering colleges in existence, this hardly
20% , but this is the truth, the hard
truth.This is Kerala !
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