Workshop on free software

With usage of software becoming a part of life for almost all purposes, the giants in software development are commercially exploiting the users. This has paved way for a demand on creation of free software, and several organisations are actively espousing it.

In this backdrop, Swecha, an organisation affiliated to Free Software Movement of India (FSMI), has organised a 15-day workshop in Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT) for budding software engineers from across the country. The idea is to provide students with an opportunity to contribute towards the society by way of contributing towards free software.

The workshop was inaugurated by Y. Kiranchandra, FSMI General Secretary at CBIT and distinguished guests including K.Gopinath of IISc. Bangalore; V.Balasubramanyam, Member of Legislative Council, A.P.; K.S.Rajan of IIIT- Hyderabad; B.N.Reddy, Chairman, CBIT and L. Pratap Reddy of JNTU Hyderabad shared their views.

The experts stressed on the importance of students contributing towards the development of free software as it would not only allow students to exercise their creative faculties but also will help society to free itself from the clutches of proprietary softwares. They also said that developing free softwares will also help create local content which will be beneficial to the local communities.

More than 600 students will have intensive hands-on-training sessions on several free software tools and technologies in the domain on Multimedia, CMS, and Software Carpentry during the course of the workshop. They will also experiment on the concepts that they learnt during the workshop by writing software codes.

Guest lecturers by Richard Stallman, an American free software activist who initiated free software movement, Eben Moglen, Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center and noted journalist P.Sainath are also planned during the workshop.

Nemmani Sreedhar