FetchBytes

In a blog post, Will Norris, a software engineer at Google's Open Source Programs Office, wrote: "Free and  open-source software has been part of our technical and organizational foundation since Google's early beginnings . And now, 18 years after Google was founded, Google has launched  opensource.google.com . This site "ties together all of our initiatives with information on how we use, release, and support open source". Why is Google doing this? To quote the site, "Google believes that open source is good for everyone. By being open and freely available, it enables and encourages collaboration and the development of technology, solving real world problems." This is not a source-code site, such as  GitHub . Instead, it's a master directory to Google's open-source projects. But, it's more. Norris explained that it's a "look under the hood at how we 'do' open source". When Norris says that, he means it. ...

The Kerala government has made a saving of Rs 300 crore through introduction and adoption of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) in the school education sector, said a state government official on Sunday. IT became a compulsory subject in Kerala schools from 2003, but it was in 2005 only that FOSS was introduced in a phased manner and started to replace proprietary software. The decision made by the curriculum committee to implement it in the higher secondary sector has also been completed now. K. Anwar Sadath, executive director IT@School, said they have been entrusted the job for easy classroom transaction of chapters including customisation of applications, teachers’ training, and video tutorials. “The proprietary version of this software would have incurred a minimum cost of Rs 150,000 per machine in terms of licence fee. Hence, the minimum savings in a year (considering 20,000 machines) is Rs 300 crore. It’s not the cost saving that matters more, but the fact that the...