Code For Change

Hari Sai

Code For Change (C4C) is an initiative of Swecha - with an aim to develop and increase the usage of free software based social projects in the public domain. Why Free Software? Incorporation of free software based technologies is the only way for progressive development of the society. As part of C4C, there are many projects related to each and every section of society. These projects are developed by Students and IT developers. Here are a few projects which have been initiated under Swecha:

Swecha OS:
Swecha is a project that aims to localise GNU/Linux and other Free Software to Telugu. The project bridges the language barrier that is a major reason behind the digital divide.

We have a working system in which most common tasks like writing and printing documents, browsing the web, sending/receiving emails, chatting, editing graphics etc. can all be in Telugu. The screen shot below shows you the Swecha desktop, a GNOME desktop localized to Telugu. Most of this work will ultimately reach all the GNU/Linux distributions. It is also packed into an easy to use LiveCD distribution. The project has also developed a Telugu text-to-speech system and integrated it with the desktop. Since, one can hear the text on the desktop or web page by pointing at it, illiterate people may use it to access the desktop, read news on the web etc.

BalaSwecha OS:
BalaSwecha is a Swecha initiative which focuses on bridging the digital divide at the school level. The primary objective of BalaSwecha is to bridge the growing digital divide in education between privileged and underprivileged in India. Schools for the underprivileged in India, for example the government schools, face a lot of problems including lack of continuous electricity, infrastructure and personnel. However, the government has invested in providing computers and other infrastructure to some of these schools. Proprietary software have been installed on these computers, the licenses for which have expired a long time ago. Teachers in corporate schools are equipped with digital resources to teach students, while the teachers in the schools for the underprivileged do not have access to such resources and the students from government schools do not have access to computer-aided-education which enables an experiential approach to learning.

BalaSwecha is a GNU/linux based operating system which is developed by students under the guidance of academicians and IT employees. It is packaged with multimedia content and GPL applications which create interactive lab environment. Students are exposed to interactive applications which provide them with an opportunity to learn and explore beyond their books.

Eswecha OS:
We know that colleges spend huge amounts of money on purchasing licenses for the proprietary OS and tools. E-Swecha is an operating system for the engineering students, by the engineering students. It consists of all the free software stack required by the engineering students of all disciplines. E-swecha is an operating system which can be used by engineering students to IT professionals

At this stage it aims in covering all the syllabus of JNTU and it has the plans of generalising it for all the universities. This project consists of reading material for all the branches along with lab manuals and free software tools for simulations such as octave for signal processing, vscodium ide, free cad etc.

For details: Visit Here

Free Software Conferencing and Streaming:
A greater portion of the world’s work is moving onto digital platforms and tools that facilitate connection and productivity: video conferencing, messaging apps, healthcare and educational platforms, and more. It’s important to be aware of the ways these tools may impact your digital privacy and security during the COVID-19 crisis.

Remote work has become an integral part of our life during this pandemic. This has been enabled by conferencing and streaming solutions. However, the privacy and security concerns of proprietary platforms are striking and are of great importance. At Swecha, we enriched the existing Free Software conference technologies and built a completely free software streaming solution.

virtual.swecha.org is a BBB(BigBlueButton) instance which is a Free Software web conferencing tool. This has a wide variety of features for online conferencing. Our work developed a low latency live conference tool which runs seamlessly on any device which can handle thousands of users.

For Details: visit here

(Harisai is a coordination committee member at Swecha and a Software Engineer)