www.public-software.in

Free software does not forbid selling and buying copies, but it means that the school system, after acquiring a copy, is free to make more and redistribute them - for instance, to all the schools. The schools do not need to pay for permission to use these copies. This creates the opportunity for great cost savings. In developing countries like India, there is really no reason to spend public money on proprietary software when equivalent free software is available.

For instance, in the state of Gujarat where if each of the around 40,000 schools had 5 computers for each class, then we would spend - 40,000 * 5 * 25,000 = 500,00,00,000 (Rupees 500 crores) on basic private software (a popular operating system and Office applications suite). On the other hand, if the option of free software is selected, then this entire money could be used for other priorities such as basic infrastructure, hardware, research into hardware innovations. If we take the entire Indian Public school system, comprising of over 1.3 million schools, the amount that we can avoid diverting to proprietary software can amount to more than 25,000 to even upto 100,000 crores.