Agenda
1.Open Standards and actions by the FOSS community: Follow up on the Department of IT's draft policy on open standards. It appears that some proprietary software vendors are blocking the policy.
2.FOSS in Education What the FOSS community can do in
- a) School Education
- b) Higher Education
3.Software Patents and other legal issues
- a) Take up pre and pre grant opposition for selected cases
- b) Take up the issue of Draft Manual which deviates from the Patent Act
- c) Take up cases with the Competition Commission, which are restrictive trade practices and are monopolistic.
4. Open formats and open standards
5. Legal issues
6. Building political consensus around FOSS as India's best bet for development.
Venue and Date
- 4th July (Saturday) 2009
- meeting is in the Committee Room of School of Social Studies (SSS) in JNU.
- The meeting starts at 10.30 AM (not 10.00 AM) and will go on till 4.00 PM.
- Lunch will be served in the meeting.
Mailing List thread : http://lists.fosscom.in/pipermail/network-fosscom.in/2009-July/000316.html
Minutes
Discussion items
Background and update on the Bangalore meeting was shared. Please refer http://fosscomm.in/Tasks which has details of these Bangalore meeting items
Open standards Policy document
The proposed Open standards policy will be applicable on all E-governance projects of DIT. It is a good policy document - stresses royalty free and a single standard and hence in the public interest. Nasscom has opposed the draft and suggested multiple standards that could be based on royalties and has claimed this is the industry view point. However there is no evidence of any industry consultation on this issue. Action: Organizations should write to IT Secretary and also to bodies such as NASSCOM asking how they have taken this stand. Also Businesses should write saying that the stand of Nasscom does not represent their views. 7th/8th July date.
Media interface – Jaijit
Legal issues
a) Monopoly and Competition Commission, Consumers Court
# Need to get into concrete action. Notice (template) to be drafted to Government / public websites which can be opened only using Internet Explorer – CIS (Pranesh)
# Prepare groundwork note on monopolistic and restrictive practices in the IT sector – ALF, CIS and ITfC
# Anti competitive practices in IT sector can be looked at as CC does policy and advocacy. What we can do? Third World Network (Gopakumar) to share thoughts on this
# Government gives money to IITs and Government Bodies like NRC-FOSS (AUKBC, CDAC and IIT Bombay). Does it reach out to the community. Can we put in efforts towards this. Knowledge Commons (Andrew) to share thoughts/ideas on this
ICT in education
Four channels of content:
Gyndarshan
IGNOU, NCERT (content available, but not available on CC)
Exclusive agreements like Kendriya Viyalaya – Microsoft making the curriculum
. Technical Quality Improvement Program (Sanjeev/IBM) – opportunity for reaching out to second rung colleges
IIT Roorkee, Prof. JD Sharma, open source in education can be routed though them. Prf. Sridhar Iyer volunteered IIT Bombay's help.Info at www.sakshat.ac.in (registration may be required. Form a consortium, collaborate with reputable academic institutions to file grant applications).
CBSE syllabi is already vendor neutral. Need to advocate vendor neutrality with other boards, NCERT, MHRD (Kendriya Vidyalaya), State boards / SCERTs etc
NCERT has developed an OS based on FOSS
Can we develop capacities for teacher training and software installation/support, develop syllabi and content in FOSS etc. Also we need to educate parents, students on the advantages of FOSS.
Kerala experience in FOSS - IT@Schools has become a mature program. Based on FOSS and FOSS applications (moving on to IT enabled learning from IT literacy), building teacher and students capacities. Syllabi available (English). Teacher training help books also available
SPACE will Organise a FOSS in education conference to highlight Kerala experience.
UNESCO expressed willingness to participate in and support FOSS in education work. They are also keen on organizing a 'FOSS in Education' conference to understand the work kerala has done and how other states can learn from it.
We need to write case studies (Kerala) – ITfC (Guru), SPACE will help
Karnataka – FOSSCOMM members in karnataka (Moving Republic, ITfC, User Groups etc) formed a consortium & working with education department to train teachers on FOSS
Teacher training using the classical cascade models (material for teacher training and for training the trainers) is successful while the model of using private vendor faculty to train teachers has not worked.
Training approach
We need to train the master trainers in the district institutions (DIETs). Use the familiar cascade model to then train the teachers through the trainers. Need to have it complement it with ICT support to training (help line, ICT support to refresher training)
Gujarat - decision to move to FOSS- need to work on capacity building like Kerala/Karnataka
Generic - We need to create local groups of organizations that can provide support to state governments to implement movement to FOSS Red Hat has done a study of Kerala (through IIM-B) on economic benefits. Venky to share
ICT Policy
FOSSCOMM needs to engage with the policy space
ITfC can provide base material and support
Content licensing
National Mission for literacy
Constructivism as a base principle for allowing derivative works
NMEICT - copyright held by government? Will it allow remixing of content to create derivatives
Public data policy (President first 100 days announcement – PMO is coordinating this activity)
Creative commons is an implementation of copyright law.
All publicly funded material should be made available in the public domain (debate on 'public domain' in India – USA has a public domain Action items
School education – ITfC (Karnataka)
ICT Policy in education – Rajan Varada with Jaijit
Delhi ICT in schools, to work with them on implementing FOSS In schools which MCD has chosen– Jaijit with ilug - Delhi
Open Content
Political support to FOSS
FOSSCOMM Structure Discussion Report in Mailing list