Indian academia runs on software it doesn't own, can't audit, and could lose overnight!
We are mapping every proprietary software dependency across India's public universities, through Right to Information requests, community-led audits and more to find out what it costs, who controls it and what happens when the lights go out.
The NITs case:
RTIs filed with 24 institutes, most didn’t respond, 9 reported a bill that adds up to 35 crores for the last 4 years Floor estimate based on the responses received so far; most institutes are yet to reply.Students graduate, the bills don't
Institutions spend crores every year, teaching students software they will never own. The moment a batch leaves campus, the student licences disappear. And then the invoices follow them to their first employer, or their own pockets!
Every engineer trained on MATLAB, every designer working with Adobe, every researcher using ANSYS is handed a lifelong dependency on the day they graduate.
Public Money, Public Code?
This one’s simple. Software procured with taxpayer money should be open to the public who funded it!
This isn’t a radical position; it is the same logic that says publicly funded research should be open-access. Say it with us again. Public Money, Public Code.
Digital Sovereignty et al
In 2022, Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, IBM, among many others, left the Russian market. Unis across Russia lost access to their entire stacks overnight. We’ve seen this story play out in different forms across the world.
And as they say, objects in the mirror are always closer than they appear. Friends over in the EU have already read the room; maybe it is time we put on our glasses too.