Fr. Conceicao Rodrigues College of Engineering - [CRCE]

Proprietary commercial software involves significant cost, annual expenses, restrictions on usages and licensing terms. Sometimes learning outcomes are limited or administrative work suffer due to restricted modifications to be done in commercial software as per the need. College identified that solution is creating an ecosystem for promoting use of open source tools and also in-house development of software’s for academics and administrative purposes. Even though open source tool provides cost saving but it is a matter of liberty. The freedom to run the program, the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.

One of the most important benefit of using open source tools and in-house development of tools is that one can make more transparent decision-making processes creating more sense of ownership in the stakeholders. Hence processes need to be clearly defined before development and subsequent deployment of the software. Feedback from every stakeholder is required to be taken often.

Special training programs are required to be organized before using open source software’s in the laboratory e.g. training on Scilab need to be given before using Scilab in mathematics course.

Open source culture is geared toward transparency, openness, and encouraging participation from diverse contributors. Many organizations are currently transforming their infrastructure by moving into open cloud platforms such as OpenStack. In many cases it is because of good ROI. Hence culture of collaboration and team work is essential for use and development of institute level software modules.

Fr. CRCE is having an infrastructure of 600+ computers. Most of the computers have open source Linux operating system installed on them. College encourage students to use open source software and tools for their laboratory work and projects.

Open source software’s such as Libreoffice, OpenCV, PyTorch, OpenNN, TensorFlow, LaTeX, Octave, Scilab, GCC compiler, JDK, Eclipse, Umbrello, GNU plot, python compiler, packet tracer, NS2, Apache Hadoop ecosystem etc. are available to perform laboratory experiments. College also has a cloud set-up on the Linux operating system. The list of open source software on campus is still growing. Faculty are trained on using Latex for writing and publishing research papers. While developing projects as academic requirement or to take part in project competitions, such as e-yantra (IIT, Bombay) project groups are mentored to use open source Technologies.

Open source technologies allows the developers to modify the code as per the need without any restrictions. Open source technologies are also OS platform independent. Software’s could be tailor made as per the necessity of institution or department. Open source has a great chance of success that can deliver a great value. Open source technologies are reliable and virus free. Hence there are many applications which institution require are developed in-house using open source tools. Following are the examples of applications developed:

Most of the commercial software’s available in the market for academic engagement and also governance in higher education institutions are developed by multinational companies. This culture of open source will create confidence among students to develop in-house applications.