Bonum Certa Men Certa

TCS (India) Wants to Turn Students Into Monopoly-Generating Apparati

TCS Logo ('PATENTS')



Summary: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is trying to collect patents for itself, using students

SOMEBODY from India sent us the following mail from IIIT. The company in question, TCS, is partly responsible for Microsoft's abuse in India.



A concerned recipient of this message has called it "TCS's attempt to own knowledge...

"Similar to Microsoft's innovation seeking project competitions. It will come under endowments and i think TCS might get a tax exemption too if it is considered as a charity work. While, they can obtain patents and sole licensing rights on the outcome of the research."

Here is the message in full:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- To: research@iiit.ac.in Cc: IIIT Faculty <faculty@iiit.ac.in>

Dear PhD students,

Here is an announcement for the TCS Research Fellowship. We received it quite recently. The deadline given is tomorrow. So please act fast.

This is open to PhD students who will be joining this coming year or who joined in the last 12 months from our side.

If you are interested in applying for it, please prepare all materials as given in the attached document and send them to me. I don't have any more details and can't answer any questions intelligently.

Act fast!



This mail contains a Microsoft Word attachment, which we put below as text.




TCS Research Fellowship

Proposal:

We propose to establish TCS Research Fellowships, as a follow-up to the formal declaration of the same by Mr. N. Chandrasekaran, CEO / MD of TCS at Sangam 2009, the TCS Annual Academic Meet, to enhance the talent base in the country. TCS would sponsor an annual intake of 40 research students for a PhD programme in computer science, across India, for five years, starting 2010 – 2011 (making it 200 in the plan period).

The TCS Research Fellowship Details:

Period: For a maximum of four years or submission of thesis for PhD, whichever is earlier. TCS may accept extension of fellowship to fifth year, under exceptional conditions, under its discretion.

Stipend: Rs. 18, 000 per month for the first two years and Rs.20, 000 per month for the next two years (Stipend amount can be revised in later years, at the discretion of TCS, to maintain the prime position TCS Scheme, among the other schemes in the country).

Other Incentives:

1.Support for the TCS Research Scholar to participate in one International refereed Conference, held outside India, during the period of four years, where he has a paper to present, he being one of the authors of the paper. The support would cover travel, conference registration, accommodation and living allowance as per the norms of TCS. 2.Support for the guide of the TCS Research Scholar to participate in one International Refereed Conference, held outside India, during the period of four years, where the guide has a paper to present, TCS Research scholar being a coauthor, but not participating in the conference. The support would cover travel, conference registration, accommodation and living allowance as per the norms of TCS. 3.Support for the TCS Research Scholar to participate in two International / National refereed Conferences, held in India, during the period of four years, where he has a paper to present, he being one of the authors of the paper. The support would cover travel, conference registration, accommodation and living allowance as per the norms of TCS. 4.One time contingency grant of Rs. 1 Lakh to the institute for every student enrolled as TCS Research Scholar to meet any incidental expenses related to the project by the student, as approved by his research guide.




5.Visit(s) & Interaction(s) of TCS Research Scholar to TCS Innovation Laboratories based on projects needs, as judged by TCS Innovation Laboratory concerned.

The Conditions:

1.Upper age limit – 28 years as on admission into fellowship 2.The student should have first class education career right from SSC. 3.The scheme is open in the following broad areas of study only. a.Computer Engineering b.Computer Science c.Information Systems d.Information Technology e.Software Engineering

4.The scheme is open for the students who have been found to be eligible for admission to PhD in an institute. The scheme is open only for fresh PhD student admissions and not for students who are already admitted. 5.Students have to be registered as full-time students in the institute/ college where the PhD registration is sought. 6.The fellowship can be terminated by TCS, with one month notice, based on performance review report and also for any violation of any operational rules applicable to all the research students of the institute. 7.TCS reserves the first right of refusal to be an exclusive licensee for a period of 2 years, for any patent filed by the academic institution resulting out of the research work. If TCS does not exercise the right, the institution can go ahead on its own. TCS reserves the exclusive right to market & sublicense to its customers the outcome of the research work carried out under this scheme. 8.CTO organization / TCS Innovation Laboratory will look for opportunities of collaborations with the TCS Research scholar / institute, even beyond the period of internship. 9.Applications will be submitted in the following format: a.Letter of application from the student b.Letter of support from the institute c.Research area write-up – should include a short review, broad problem statement, proposed scope and focus d.CV of the student – education, grades obtained, honors, publication list, work experience (if any) e.CV of the proposed guide 10.Applications will be received twice every year, deadline 15th July and 15th December and the results will be announced within one month. 11. The fellowship may be taken in addition to the PhD scholarship that the student receives from other sources, provided that there is no violation of rules.








Selection of candidates:

The key elements for selection:

a. Candidate’s credentials b. Institute’s credentials for the selected field of study. c. TCS’ interest in the selected field of study. d. Academic Research Guide’s credentials

While the institute should select the students for this programme, TCS reserves the right to admit some or none of the students recommended by the institute. Further, TCS reserves the right to conduct an interview of a student(s), if it deems necessary for the selection for the scheme. In such cases, interviews will be conducted in one of the Innovation Labs of TCS and candidates should travel to the designated Lab for the interview. To-and-fro 2nd A/c rail fare from the Institute to the place of interview will be paid to each candidate called for the interview.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
 
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards
This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family
Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware
They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME is Worse Today (in 2023) Than When I Did GTK Development 20+ Years Ago
To me it seems like GNOME is moving backward, not forward, mostly removing features and functionality rather than adding any
HowTos Are Moving to Tux Machines
HowTos (or howtos) are very important in their own right, but they can easily distract from the news and howtos are usually quite timeless or time-insensitive
Proprietary Panda: Don't Be Misled by the Innocent Looks of Ubuntu (and Microsoft Canonical)
Given the number of disgruntled employees who leave Canonical and given Ubuntu's trend of just copying whatever IBM does in Fedora, is there still a good reason to choose Ubuntu?
Debian GNU/Linux is a Fine Operating System, But What if People Die Making It for Somebody's Corporate/Personal Gain?
Will companies that exploited unpaid volunteers ever be held accountable for loss of life, caused by burnout, excessive work, or poverty?
Links 24/09/2023: 5 Days' Worth of News (Catchup)
Links for the day
Leftover Links 24/09/2023: Russia, COVID, and More
Links for the day
Forty Years of GNU and the Free Software Movement
by FSF
Gemini and Web in Tandem
We're already learning, over IRC, that out new site is fully compatible with simple command line- and ncurses-based Web browsers. Failing that, there's Gemini.
Red Hat Pretends to Have "Community Commitment to Open Source" While Scuttling the Fedora Community (Among Others)
RHEL is becoming more proprietary over time and community seems to boil down to unpaid volunteers (at least that's how IBM see the "community")
IBM Neglecting Users of GNU/Linux on Laptops and Desktops
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Personal Identification on the 'Modern' Net
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Not Your Daily Driver: Don't Build With Rust or Adopt Rust-based Software If You Value Long-Term Reliance
Rust is a whole bunch of hype.
The Future of the Web is Not the Web
The supposedly "modern" stuff ought to occupy some other protocol, maybe "app://"
YouTube Has Just Become Even More Sinister
The way Google has been treating the Web (and Web browsers) sheds a clue about future plans and prospects
Initial Announcement of GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix) on September 27, 1983
History matters
Upgrade and Migration Status
Git is working, IPFS is working, IRC is working, Gemini is working
Yesterday in the 'Sister Site', Tux Machines (10 More Stories)
Scope-wise, many stories fit neatly into both sites, but posting the same twice makes no sense logistically
The New Techrights Will be Much Faster
A prompt response to FUD is important. It's time-sensitive.