VTU chooses paid commercial software..AGAIN!

The Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belgaum (VTU) has announced that it has chosen Live Documents, the online office suite developed by Sabeer Bhatia-founded InstaColl for its 187 engineering colleges and more than 2 lakh students.

VTU Vice Chancellor, Dr. Maheshappa signed an agreement today to this effect with Sabeer Bhatia at an event, which was attended by Government of Karnataka Principal Secretary-Governance Department, Mr. M.N. Vidyashankar Governance Dr. D.S. Ravindran.
Speaking at the event, Dr. Maheshappa said, “VTU always looks forward to creating a culture of innovation in engineering education and research. We are looking forward to working with Internet pioneer and globally acknowledged technology innovator, Sabeer Bhatia to roll out the next-generation office productivity suite that his company has developed within our colleges. I am confident that our students will benefit immensely from using this solution”.
Sabeer Bhatia remarked, “Live Documents will do for documents what Hotmail did for email – free it up from confines of the desktop and open up new vistas of collaboration and accessibility. Live Documents is a “Made-in-India” software product that was conceived and developed right here in Bangalore and it gives me great pleasure to see progressive institutions like VTU adopt it and support the case for developing more world-class products in India.”

What instacoll is:(according to its linkedin profile)

InstaColl is a Bangalore-based company that is attempting to build a new class of business applications that bridge the gap between the desktop and the web..

Our flagship product, Live Documents is a web-enabled office productivity suite that allows users to create, edit and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations in the browser or on the desktop.


Does it come with much surprise that an 'educational institution' recently scarred by controversies of its vice chancellor, Dr H. Maheshappa, facing allegations that he misled the VTU VC search committee and the governor’s office on his academic qualifications and research background,has chosen to include 'commercial software' in its syllabus, AGAIN? Why do educational institutions choose commercial software when lakhs of rupees spent on licenses could be spend on better hardware instead? In my opinion (and atleast a million others) Open Office parallels if not, outbeats the MS Office suite any day.I firmly believe that educational institutions should go the FOSS way and use the money for better causes.I also think the 'educational institution ties up with ____________' (fill in the name of a commercial paid software company here) should be looked into.Something definitely smells fishy