Paavai FOSS Club – Resource Center with 2 Star Status

Paavai Institutions is the “Resource Centre” for the Spoken Tutorials – promoted by IIT Bombay Spoken Tutorial in association with Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) as part of its Mission for Education – Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

In the month of November, 2011, we started conducting FOSS(Free Open Source Software) courses from IIT Bombay Spoken Tutorial. We started the courses namely Linux, Latex, Scilab, Python and PHP MySql. Initially only the hostel students responded to do the course after the college hours. Once the first batch of students learnt Linux-Ubuntu, they appeared for the on-line exam and received certificates from IIT Bombay Spoken Tutorial. The courses started gaining a momentum. We started more batches and more students got benefitted by the above said courses.

The great support from the Spoken Tutorial team, IIT Bombay Spoken Tutorial made us continue our journey in FOSS and our institution got 1 Star status in the year 2012. The FOSS movement steadily attracted the interests of all and more students started to learn the courses in batches and more than 300 students were certified in the above said courses. During December 2012, the courses were undertaken by our faculty members and they found the power of FOSS. Through the institution, we applied for migration from Matlab (Simulation software used in simulation like, Digital Signal processing) to Scilab (Science Lab which is equivalent to Matlab) and we are planning to use Scilab for the lab experiments.

Spoken Tutorial, IIT Bombay Spoken Tutorial and granted us the status of Resource Center in the year 2012 as we showed remarkable progress in FOSS. We started spreading FOSS to the society. We have conducted FOSS workshops to the government school students and they learned the software enthusiastically. Now we have been appreciated and recognized by IITB Spoken Tutorial, we are givenResource Center – 2 Star status which is an honour to our institutions.

As a result of all these efforts leading to a commendable progress we have planned to start a community for FOSS in our institutions. We have planned to start PAAVAI-FOSS in our institutions. At this juncture, one needs to seek a few questions. They are:

• What is FOSS?
• How can we achieve software freedom by using FOSS?
• When was PAAVAI – FOSS started?
• What are the activities of PAAVAI – FOSS?
• How can one Join and contribute?
• What will be the benefits for students?

The acronym of FOSS is Free Open Source Software.
There are two terms Free and Open Source in FOSS. ‘Free’ is meant for Freedom. As we need freedom everywhere, we need Software Freedom too. Open mainly points to Open Source Code of the program available for others. So a free source code which is available for analysis.

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. Hence, FOSS provides you the Freedom to

• Execute the Software
• Study how a program works
• Redistribute copies
• Modify / improvise
• So you may get the software at no cost but as per the license you can run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

Spoken Tutorial IIT Bombay Events:

	A recognition by Spoken Tutorial Project …Click for News
	Inauguration of Paavai FOSS Club Inauguration and a special lecture on FOSS to be held on 12.02.13 …Click for News
	An Awareness programme on Open Source Softwares held from 17.01.2013 …Click for News
	Pilot workshop on Libre office conducted for the students of Government Schools held from 11.01.2013 …Click for News
	Workshops for Faculty Members held during December 2012 …Click for News
	Awareness Camp on IIT Bombay Spoken Tutorial, Tutorial Courses on Open Source Softwares held from 9 to 10 November 2012 …Click for News