FOSSEE, IIT Bombay (NMEICT) Activity Calendar 2025

The FOSSEE IIT Bombay project is excited to announce an array of activities for the calendar year 2025. The FOSSEE project promotes the usage of Free/ Libre Open Source Software in Academia and Industry. All the activities of FOSSEE are funded through and conducted under the aegis of the National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT), Ministry of Education, Government of India.

Opportunity for everyone!

The main objective of the FOSSEE project, IIT Bombay, is to promote and develop the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) tools in academia and research. This work is carried out by identifying good open-source software alternatives for the widely used commercial software and then promoting them nationwide.

Software under FOSSEE, IIT Bombay:

• Scilab: open-source equivalent of MATLAB

• Python: a programming language

• eSim: open source equivalent of Pspice, Orcad, etc

• DWSIM: open-source equivalent of Aspen Plus

• OpenFOAM: open source equivalent of Fluent

• R: open source equivalent of SaaS

• OpenModelica: A Modelica modelling language for modelling, simulation, and optimisation

• FreeCAD: open-source equivalent of AutoCAD

• QGIS: Open source GIS tool promoted by the FOSSEE GIS team

Anyone can contribute to the following activities under FOSSEE, IIT Bombay:

The primary target audience of the project is educational institutions across India. We reach out to the faculty and students of these institutions and promote FOSS tools. We aim to reduce the dependency on proprietary software in educational institutions. We encourage the use of FOSS tools through various activities to ensure that commercial software is replaced by equivalent FOSS tools. We also develop new FOSS tools and upgrade the existing tools to meet the requirements in academia and research.

FOSS tools like eSim and Osdag were developed by the FOSSEE, IIT Bombay. We have also developed the Cloud platforms for Scilab, Arduino, and eSim. Our team also develops software to enhance the capabilities of existing FOSS tools like the Optimisation Toolbox for  Scilab, Venturial, a GUI for OpenFOAM, etc. All these are the contributions of the FOSSEE team to the open source community.

We also generate documentation for various supported software. We create this documentation through various activities like Textbook Companion (TBC), Lab Migration (LM), niche activities (listed out below), trainings and workshops, internships, and pan-India events. Through these activities, the FOSSEE team trains tens of thousands of students and faculty on various software, to the extent that they themselves can create useful code and content. This is a unique offering of the FOSSEE project towards the learners wherein they are empowered with the capability of producing an output which are published on the FOSSEE website and can be referred to in future as and when it is needed. FOSSEE has a repository of such projects that are produced by the contributors, which is accessible by the one and all across the globe.

• Textbook Companion (TBC) aims to port solved examples from standard textbooks using an open source software system, such as Scilab, Python, etc. Any standard textbook can be used for this purpose.

• Lab Migration (LM) aims to migrate labs that use proprietary software (e.g., Matlab, OrCAD) to a Free/ Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) only lab.

Niche Activities:

• Research Migration Project aims to reproduce the results of any already published work using FOSS tools. This activity is available under OpenFOAM and eSim. The published work can be taken from sources like any leading journal paper or conference proceedings, and solve the same using the FOSS tool.

• The Case Study Project aims to promote usage and create documentation for any of the FOSS supported by the FOSSEE project. This activity solves a feasible problem statement of reasonable complexity, similar to those undertaken in B.Tech / M.Tech projects or mini projects, using FOSS like Scilab, R and OpenFOAM.

• Flowsheeting Project aims to create a process flowsheet for a process development project using the FOSS tools DWSIM and OpenModelica.

• Custom Modeling Project creates the custom models/ unit operations that are not available in the FOSS tool DWSIM.

• Internships: Every year, the FOSSEE project invites applications from students for our internships: Semester-long Internship, a FOSSEE Summer fellowship, and a Winter internship. The students get an opportunity to work on live projects under the guidance of the FOSSEE team and the associated professor, for around 2 - 3 months. The completed work is then published and released under open source.

• Trainings and workshops:The FOSSEE team organises workshops, both online and offline, and webinars to create awareness and train students, faculty members, professionals, and other FOSS evangelists on the various FOSSEE supported FOSS tools. 

• Pan India events like Marathons, Mapathons, and Hackathons allow the FOSSEE team to motivate, interact with, and guide the participants across India on a range of problem statements in various FOSS tools. These events aim to develop indigenous capacity and create new opportunities for young India.

Beneficiaries:

The primary stakeholders of the FOSSEE project are academic institutions/colleges across India. The faculty members and students from these colleges actively contribute to various activities under FOSSEE. Many students do internships and fellowships with us and improve their skill set. All the contributions are awarded certificates, honoraria, and a weblink on the FOSSEE webpage acknowledging the contribution. Students use this weblink to the published work to get opportunities like placements, admission to good universities across the globe, etc. Some of these contributing colleges become FOSSEE Clubs, and they, in turn, promote FOSSEE and its activities in nearby colleges. These colleges get good NAAC credits once they contribute to FOSSEE, and this benefits the college in a big way.

• Partner Institutes/ FOSSEE Clubs are institutions where a group of faculty and students support and promote the various activities of the FOSSEE project. These institutions also undertake events that are based on any of the software supported by FOSSEE.

• Industry - Academia connect (Advisory boards): The Advisory Board under each FOSS comprises of eminent Professionals from the industry. The Advisory Board Members suggest measures that can be implemented, so that FOSSEE activities can help the corporate sector to augment their R&D effort, which in turn can result in well-trained potential employees. The learners will get directions from the Advisory Board Members on the areas that are in current demand. Currently, we have an advisory board under OpenFOAM and eSim.

• Faculty Partners: Faculty members from other Institutes who associate themselves with a specific FOSS team under FOSSEE and contribute to its various activities. The faculty members take sessions in the FOSSEE conducted workshops, mentor interns under FOSSEE, encourage students in their institute to contribute to FOSSEE activities and do lab migration.

FOSSEE provides unrestricted access to institutions that have implemented NEP2020, with a plethora of opportunities with multiple options to apply for the internship/fellowship. The FOSSEE project, IIT Bombay, aims to create better opportunities for everyone (students, faculty, administrators, policymakers, etc) from diverse educational backgrounds.

Important dates:

Note: To know more about IIT Bombay FOSSEE GIS activities for the calendar year 2025, please visit: https://www.iitb.ac.in/iit-bombay-fossee-gis-activities-calendar-year-2025, and for any queries about FOSSEE GIS activities, write to mohamedkasim@iitb.ac.in

For more details, please visit: https://fossee.in/

Email: ushav372@iitb.ac.in; vineeta.p@iitb.ac.in; mohamedkasim@iitb.ac.in

Phone: (+91) 022-2576-4111