Free software in Kerala

Government Policy on Free software

The IT Policy for the state of Kerala had acknowledged the relevance of Free software as early as 2001

The 2001 IT policy states that,

The Government wishes to encourage the judicious use of open source/free software that complements/supplements proprietary software, to reduce the total cost of ownership of IT applications/solutions without compromising on the immediate and medium term value provided by the application. The Government welcomes research into the use of open/free software in the context of education, governance, and for general use at home, to make IT truly a part of the daily lives of the people of the State. The Government also encourages projects such as the Simputer that is low cost, based on open software, and attuned to the needs of the common man.

In 2007, government of Kerala released its ICT policy where one of its objectives was to mandate appropriate use of Free Software in all ICT initiatives.

The Government realizes that Free Software presents a unique opportunity in building a truly egalitarian knowledge society. The Government will take all efforts to develop Free Software and Free Knowledge and shall encourage and mandate the appropriate use of Free Software in all ICT initiatives.

Free software communities / mailing lists

There are two prominent free software mailing lists and communities around these mailing lists in Kerala. One is around the Free Software Users Group, Thiruvananthapuram and the other is the Indian Libre User Group, Kochi. The primary activities of the users groups were around offering support to Free software users and in running technology and awareness sessions for the public and in institutions and running install fests. There are also active Free software clubs in several Engineering colleges in the state like College of Engineering, Trivandrum, St. Josephs College of Engineering and Technology, Pala, MES College of engineering Kuttippuram, National Institute of Technology, Kozhikode.

Free software initiatives in the state

Over the years several government entities in the state of Kerala switched / started significantly using Free software solutions in their operations. Some of the notable projects are listed below.

IT@School Project

In 2006, the state government decided to impart ICT education in public schools across the state using a customized Debian distribution called the IT@School GNU/Linux. The IT@School project by Department of General Education, Government of Kerala is one of the largest deployments of GNU/Linux systems anywhere in the world. The technical support and training for the project was provided by SPACE.

ORUMA billing software by Kerala State Electricity Board

In 2008, the Kerala State Electricity Board moved to a Free software platform called ORUMA to run their billing operations. The system was built with the help of an internal team at KSEB. Initial consultations and trainings were provided by SPACE.

Kerala Khadi & Village Industries Board Free software migration

The Kerala Khadi and Village Industries Board moved to a Free software platform built by Keltron.

Public Works Department

The Kerala Public Works Department moved to a Free software platform built by InApp Technologies

Kerala Legislative Assembly Free software migration

In 2014 the Kerala Legislative Assembly moved all of their IT operations into GNU/Linux based systems with the assistance of Zyxware Technologies.

ICFOSS - International Center for Free and Open Source Software

ICFOSS is an autonomous agency set up by the Government of Kerala in 2011 with the mandate of popularizing Free and Open Source Software for universal use; consolidating the early FOSS work done in Kerala; and networking with different nations, communities and governments to collaboratively promote FOSS.

SPACE - Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment

SPACE is a not-for-profit society which has been working closely with the Government and several of the government departments and agencies in driving Free software adoption in them. SPACE has been involved in policy formulation, consultation, training and technical support for projects like IT@School, ORUMA, Khadi Board migration etc. The agency has also been running a center called INSIGHT which is actively pursuing taking Free software to the differently abled.

SMC - Swathantra Malayalam Computing

SMC is a Free software collective which works in the space of Indic language computing. SMC is the upstream maintainers for Malayalam fonts and tools for popular GNU/Linux based operating systems such as Fedora and Debian. They also maintain localizations for Free Software Desktops (GNOME/KDE) and applications such as Firefox and Libre Office.

Free Software Free Society Conference

Kerala hosts a regular international conference on Free Software which runs once every 2 – 4 years. This conference is done with the involvement of the Government of Kerala and the Free software community. International Center for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) has been responsible for organizing the last two editions of the conference.

1. Freedom First 2001
2. Free Software Free Society 2005
3. FSFS 2008
4. FOSSK4 2011
5. Swatantra 2014

FOSSMeet

The National Institute of Technology, Calicut conducts an annual Free software conference called the FOSSMeet which is held in the campus during the month of February/March every year.