On October 28, 2016 an E-Circular was posted in Pondicherry University website with subject "Free MS Office Apps - Reg." The circular states that Microsoft Corporation has introduced MS Office through online and it is completely free. The circular was referring to the so called cloud version of MS Office.

This is basically Software As A Service model of Cloud Computing, where the actual software (in this case MS Office) will be installed on others computer (typically a server controlled by Microsoft in this case) and the user can use this software only through Internet.

The Problem

In other words, the users computers become dummy in a sense, the users lose control over the application and their files. Usually we install software in our computers and we use these software to create a document and save them in our hard disk. It is then, we the users will decide whether or not to upload the document anywhere in the Internet in order to share with others.

But with this model, both the software and the document we create both of them are created in cloud server and then if the user needs they are allowed to be downloaded. Do you see the power / control shift here? In the long run, we will all be locked down to their platform in order to use the software and the document we create. Remember, server on the Internet is just another computer running 24*7 and is in control of some organization or group of individuals.

Another problem with using a proprietary platform like MS Office is the vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in is when the users lose their freedom to switch between alternate software. For example, when a user tries to open a .doc or .xls or .ppt or (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) document in, say LibreOffice, they will find a loss of certain information like formatting, alignment, styling, etc., This is because .doc .xls .ppt are proprietary formats (i.e only Microsoft knows how to implement a software that fully supports these formats for they have created these formats for their office suite) and .docx, .xlsx and .pptx are pseudo standard formats as we already mentioned which depends on Microsoft's other proprietary libraries like C-Fonts, etc. Techrights have exposed this scandal in their site.

Possible Solutions

Back in 2013, AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) has done something more worse than this. They have made the usage of Office365 mandatory to 11,500 colleges affiliated to them. An effort by Free Software Movement of India led to the removal of the mandatory clause of the usage of Office365.

Usage of both proprietary formats and pseudo standards should be discourage to avoid vendor lock-ins. Our university could encourage the usage of Open365 which is a cloud version of LibreOffice, a free software office suite with complete support for open standards, if at all cloud services are unavoidable.

At this moment, we would also like to point out to you that Government of India has adopted a policy to promote and use Free and Open Source Software.

It is very clear that our university, both for administration purposes as well as academic purposes should be promoting FOSS tools. Instead, the opposite is happening. The academic syllabus should be prepared with Vendor Neutrality. But in most of the departments, we are seeing the usage of some common proprietary tools like Matlab, LabView, 3Ds-Max, Photoshop, Turbo-C (which is a non-standard and obsolete compiler that shouldn't be taught at all), etc., The students should be given the choice to use the tool of their choice and the academic syllabus and question paper should should be prepared with vendor neutrality in mind without promoting a particular tool (proprietary tools in particular).

By signing this petition, we are requesting our University,

1. to adhere with the Free/Libre Open Source Software policy adopted by GOI.
2. to stop promoting a particular or in general any proprietary software.
3. to promote and encourage usage of FOSS tools wherever possible (both for academics and administration as well).

We hope, Systems Manager / Head, Computer Center, Pondicherry University would consider our petition and take necessary steps towards adopting FOSS.