FOSS Awareness Campaign in Schools

Mar 2007

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software whose source code is openly published, which is usually available at no charge, and which is often developed by voluntary efforts. This report highlights the achievements of the ‘Free and Open Source Awareness Campaigning’ conducted in different schools in Kathmandu valley.

It must have been just a bubble of thought in someone’s mind years back, but today the open source revolution has indeed become a reality, embracing the whole globe and creating rather a phenomenon. With IT booms taking place in the neighborhood, Nepal does not come under an exception. To stand against the billows of these accelerated growths, Nepal has to produce versatile manpower adept in utilizing resources of both worlds: open source as well as its counterparts.

Though open source has proved to be very successful in the many parts of the world, it yet remains to dig its roots in Nepal. One of the major causes of this fact seems to be the lack of awareness. Hence, this campaign targeted the school as well as college students making them aware of the 'Free and Open Source softwares'.

As a major phase of the campaign, 10 schools within Kathmandu Valley were visited. The campaign included Government as well as Private schools. Presentations were given to class 8, 9 and 10 in most schools and in some schools, presentations were given to the college going students. The schools were also provided with 5 live CD's of five different Linux distributions and 1 CD containing FOSS for windows. Questionnaires were also distributed to the students as well as the teachers present during the presentation. The body of this report explains the outcomes of the campaign based of the data collected.

Any discussion of Open Source Software must include comparisons and contrasts with proprietary software. Microsoft is the world’s leading software company, and their products now dominate the office and home markets. They also have a strong presence in the server market, especially for small and middle-sized systems. When we comment about Microsoft in this report we are seeking a comparison with the industry leader; no criticism of Microsoft as a company, or any of their products, is intended or implied.

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