First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference

Posted Aug 20, 2005 4:11 UTC (Sat) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link]

Actually, what I am saying is that you probably aren't in a position to judge either the IITs or the IISc, based on published policies. It isn't the institution that "pushes" FOSS, it is the users. The institution just uses what users want.

In the case of the IISc and the IITs, the use of FOSS technologies and products is tremendous, as it is in most academic institutions in India. In fact, it is because of this that India carried the tag "Unix county" since the 1980s.

The best thing an institution can do is *not* "promote/push/advocate/enforce FOSS" - the best thing it can (and should) do is simply to get out of the way when users want to use/adopt something. BTW - the same applies to governments.

And the IISc and IITs have been pretty good at that.