Summary: The India Council for Technical Education gives Microsoft total control over students, even in schools that adopted Free (as in freedom) software

Several years ago we wrote about BECTA in the UK (it got shut down since then), noting that Microsoft had been using it to covertly infiltrate British schools, turning children into clients at taxpayers' expense. In India, something similar to it was already on the chopping block, but it got lucky. As Pogson explains in his post about the latest scandal: "In 2009, the government of India threatened to close down this organization. After some reforms they were allowed to continue. Perhaps this move will prompt further reform, like getting rid of the folks who made this decision."

Well, the India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), which we wrote about in [1, 2], has hardly changed. And as noted before, its main function seems to be contracting multi-nationals to take the money and the minds of Indian people, who need not depend on foreign companies (India has bright software developers). Well, as Saurav Modak pointed out:

Closed source apps like Windows Skydrive, Outlook and Microsoft Office 365 have no accessible source code and are developed and managed by large companies for their vested interests. Implementing on them in colleges will mean that teachers and student cannot see and edit the source code to their liking, and will have to fully rely on Microsoft for support and service. This will lead to vendor locking. Also, proprietary software is costly and implementing this project in a big country like India will lead to waste of several thousand dollars.

We already alluded to this the other day.

It is not just a case of promoting proprietary software and dependence on a criminal organisation with a long proven record; fog computing, or 'cloud', makes it far worse for many other reasons. Time for India to abandon the people behind this atrocious decision? It would be long overdue. Microsoft recently came after probes for bribing officials sand here too it is likely to have happened. It's just how Microsoft does 'business'. ⬆

"I have lost my sleep and peace of mind for last two months over these distasteful activities by Microsoft."

--Professor Deepak Phatak