Introducing FOSS Culture at Universities

SeaGL 2020 Nov 13 at 11:30

Name - Suraj Kumar Mahto
Major - Information Technology (2018-22)
University - BIT Sindri, Dhanbad, India
Location - Ranchi, Jharkhand, India
Timezone - GMT+5:30
FOSS Experience - GNU/Linux user since from 2+ years. Individual Contributor at KDE(Web)

Hello everyone, this is Suraj Kumar Mahto from BIT Sindri majoring in Information Technology. I have just completed my sophomore year. I am one of the leads in a developer club in my college. Since our advent as a developer club, we have started up numerous initiatives to inculcate Open Source as a culture in our institution. So I would like to express my experience and opinion on that.

Some keynote points that should be discussed in such sessions are:

• INTRO SESSIONS : How would you introduce Open Source to a freshmen? Most of the freshmen in college have a quite vague knowledge about Open Source technologies especially when they are heavily surrounded by Proprietary softwares from early school. Students can be explained in layman terms about the ‘Free’ and Open Source as a recipe as described by Richard Stallman and FOSS can be described as a recipe which can be improvised and shared while still having the original recipe with you inducing a type of free culture. Free as if Freedom.

• TROUBLESHOOTING - The major hurdle new users face the general procedure on troubleshooting. How they should proceed on various issues.

• SEARCH ENGINE USAGE- Using a search engine is considered an art. Students can be introduced to this art.

• LINUX INSTALLATION FESTS - Engage & Enquire

  • Students will be provided bootable devices and live help sessions to install GNU/Linux.

  • Fun awareness events to engage and inform participants about the FOSS history.

  • Talk sessions by prominent speakers in the Open Source field.

  • Encouraging the students to use GNU/Linux as a daily driver.

• MONTHLY FOSS JAM SESSIONS

  • Monthly meetups to showcase Open Source projects and discuss upon that.
  • Support groups to provide help 24*7 for the new users.

• AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

  • Encouraging the use of Open Source Softwares as their daily driver.

  • Explaining the pros of using FOSS technologies over proprietary ones like privacy, active community support etc

  • Implementing these over Faculty as well as students.

  • Explaining students about various open source programs such as GSoC, Rails Summer of Code.

Presenters

Resources

• Video Recording