State,Microsoft pact runs into trouble

Dr Nagarjuna in his letter said that he wanted to know if the curriculum being covered at these academies cover products other than those owned by Microsoft Corporation and include Open Office,Fire Fox and the scope of expense coverage by MS and the government. He further said that with FOSS,teachers could be free to make copies and distribute them to ‘prevent being compelled to spend considerable amounts procuring proprietary software’.

Foss can be modified by anyone instead of being forced to go through only vendor. “India is an educated country and we can make our own curriculum. The world is doing a mistake and hence there is need for academicians to correct. We need neutral scientific concepts and don’t need to deal with specific brand,” said Nagarjuna.

He said that the state could learn from Kerala which was one of the best examples in the world using FOSS for education along with other states like Gujarat,Assam,Orissa. An education department official said,“I cannot comment on the matter at present. A meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday and we will see what comes out of it.”

At a press conference on August 18,Rajan Anandan,managing director,Microsoft India Pvt Ltd. had said that the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the state would include expanding capacity among educators at school cluster level,training around 6000 educators who would train others in their respective cluster,building and connecting communities through Live@Edu initiative for all teachers and students,building IT readiness among youth through DreamSpark- MS developer software tool access for around 50,000 students.