Open Source Software in India
In modern times, India has accomplished miracles through the power of collaboration. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has the potential to accomplish yet another set of miracles in automating government and industry, and producing affordable education for all. Being a developing country, everyone in India doesn’t have the purchasing capacity to afford copies of proprietary software. Several revolutions have taken place in India in the past few years such as the Green Revolution, the White Revolution, the Gray Revolution and many more. OSS is destined to bring in another one, perhaps the gold revolution. OSS is a boon for the Indian export market. Many progressive minded state governments in India shows immense support towards the Open Source movement. This is very much evident through the OSS migration movement in the states of Kerala and Maharashtra. The state of Maharashtra and Kerala have separately demonstrated the cost effectiveness of applying OSS, including database technologies, Many Indian industries have also switched to Open Source. The most well known example would be LIC or Life Insurance Corp. of India which completely switched its network, servers and client workstations to RedHat Enterprise Linux, with commercial support from Red Hat itself. India being a multi-lingual country would benefit the most from OSS.
Kerala as a Professional education hub
Kerala is considered to have a rich long tradition of democracy, equity and public action. The Gods Own Country is the best model to site as an example of a knowledge society. In the recent past the State has transformed its focus on the free software revolution. Thus we can proudly say that we always exhibit our tradition of valuing knowledge to be the most important treasure. Keralites are best known for their hard work and sensibility in other parts of the world. Free software revolution blends very well with the progressive attitude of people in Kerala.
Management education is one of the latest disciplines to be added on the academic map worldwide. MBA curriculum includes subjects drawn from various disciplines such as Economics, Law, Accounting, Finance, Productions, Marketing, Labour Relations, Information Technology. However as experience accumulated, business education curriculum should sharply focused not only on functional areas of management but also must redesign their curriculum to meet the challenges of globalization and prepare MBA’s with the understanding of information technology. B-school must be responsive to the changing environment, they should be pro-active not reactive to the needs of industry and government.
There have been a few instances where the Free Software community was able to influence decision makers to choose Free Software over proprietary in the state of Kerala. There were efforts put forth by both individuals and the community at large for this noble cause. An example which can be cited is the implementation of a network by the Public Works Department and that of the introduction of IT education in schools.
