The history of Free Software in India can be seen from three different perspectives - the growth of Free Software usage, the growth of Free Software communities, the adoption of Free Software policies by the governments. India was quite late to the free software scene [1] with adoption and penetration growing towards the end of the 1990s [1] with the formation of pockets of Free Software communities spread across the country. The communities were typically centered around educational institutions or free software supporting organizations.
Communities primarily revolved around support mailing lists. Some of the largest and earliest communities were those based out of Chennai, [2] Delhi, Kochi, Mumbai, [3] Pune, [4] and Trivandrum. [5] Free Software Foundation of India, was formed in 2001 to promote the use and development of free software in India.
Some of the state governments, notably Kerala and Tamil Nadu [6] created policies on the use of Free Software in state level organizations and launched ambitions projects like IT@School, Elcot OpenSuse migration. [7] The government of India rolled out a policy to adopt Open standards and promote open source and open technologies in 2015.
Free Software was almost synonymous with Linux and associated software in the past. However, with the gaining popularity of Free Software applications like Firefox or operating systems like Android it has become quite difficult to quantify the user base for Free Software. If we look at the usage of Linux operating systems in desktop computers in India we can see that the market share has increased to 1.8% [8] in July 2016. A report of similar data [9] in 2011 had shown that India was one of the top 20 users of Linux desktops globally. According to the State of FOSS in India report, "India still lags behind the global landscape in building sustainable home-grown projects and needs a strategic plan to incubate and proliferate domestic FOSS innovations worldwide". [10]
| Name | City | State | Founded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bangalore Linux User Group | Bangalore | Karnataka | 1998 |
| Free Software Users Group, Thiruvananthapuram | Thiruvananthapuram | Kerala | 2001 |
| India Linux User Group Delhi | New Delhi | New Delhi | 1998 |
In 2012, the government of India released 'National Information Technology Policy 2012', [11] where one of the stated objectives was "to adopt Open standards and promote open source and open technologies". In continuation to this, the 'Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India' [12] [13] [14] was released in 2014. This policy states that
Government of India shall endeavour to adopt Open Source Software in all e-Governance systems implemented by various Government organizations, as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software (CSS). The Open Source Software shall have the following characteristics:
3.1 The source code shall be available for the community / adopter / end user to study and modify the software and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified software.
3.2 Source code shall be free from any royalty.
Although the policy only talks about open source software and not free software per se, the conditions requiring that the source be available for modifications and redistributions aligns with the licensing requirements of Free and Open Source Software and thereby is expected to give a big boost to the adoption of free and open-source software in the government organizations in India. The state governments in the different states of India are expected to come up with their own versions of this policy around open source adoption for implementation at the state government levels. An analysis of Open Source promotion policies in India have shown deficiencies in implementation. [15]
In 2007, government of Kerala released its ICT policy [16] 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.
The state of Kerala has a rich history of free software activism [17] which had resulted in several internationally visible free software initiatives as well as the IT policy that is biased towards free software.
In 2001, the Government of Kerala launched an initiative called KITE (previously known as IT@School Project) which aimed at creating a Free Software-based IT training program for students in public schools. A custom Linux distribution called the KITE GNU/Linux (previously known as IT@School GNU/Linux) was rolled out across 12000 public schools in the state as part of this program.
In 2008, the Kerala State Electricity Board moved their billing solution to the free software platform "Oruma" developed by its internal team [18] with the support of the Free Software community in Kerala
Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) is a Linux distribution developed by the National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) of India.
In 2007, ELCOT, migrated 30,000 systems [7] in government establishments and schools in Tamil Nadu to OpenSUSE.
The free software movement is a social movement with the goal of obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms for software users, namely the freedoms to run, study, modify, and share copies of software. Software which meets these requirements, The Four Essential Freedoms of Free Software, is termed free software.
Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software.
Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM) is a non-commercial, volunteer-organized European event centered on free and open-source software development. It is aimed at developers and anyone interested in the free and open-source software movement. It aims to enable developers to meet and to promote the awareness and use of free and open-source software.
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is available under a license that grants the right to use, modify, and distribute the software, modified or not, to everyone free of charge. The public availability of the source code is, therefore, a necessary but not sufficient condition. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term for free software and open-source software. FOSS is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright or licensing and the source code is hidden from the users.
Free/open-source software – the source availability model used by free and open-source software (FOSS) – and closed source are two approaches to the distribution of software.
Alternative terms for free software, such as open source, FOSS, and FLOSS, have been a controversial issue among free and open-source software users from the late 1990s onwards. These terms share almost identical licence criteria and development practices.
Richard Matthew Stallman, also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software which ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.
This comparison only covers software licenses which have a linked Wikipedia article for details and which are approved by at least one of the following expert groups: the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the Debian Project and the Fedora Project. For a list of licenses not specifically intended for software, see List of free-content licences.
Opposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem.
BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD license was used for its namesake, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix-like operating system. The original version has since been revised, and its descendants are referred to as modified BSD licenses.
National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) is an organisation created and financed in India by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India in April 2005.
Bharat Operating System Solutions is an Indian Linux distribution based on Debian. Its latest stable version is 10.0 (Pragya), which was released in March 2024.
International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) is an autonomous organization set up by the Government of Kerala, India and having the combined 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.
The use of free software instead of proprietary software can give institutions better control over information technology. A growing number of public institutions have started a transition to free-software solutions. This grants independence and can also address the often-argued need for public access to publicly funded developments. This is the only way that public services can ensure that citizen data is handled in a trustworthy manner since non-free software doesn't allow total control over the employed functions of the needed programs.
The state of Kerala, in India has had an active Free software community since early 1980s. The initial users were those who started using TeX in the city of Thiruvananthapuram. Subsequently Free software users groups were formed in some of the different cities like Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and around engineering colleges in the state. The Free software community in Kerala was instrumental in creating a policy environment at the state government level that was biased towards Free software. The government of Kerala policy on Free software gives first preference to Free and Open Source software for its IT requirements. The state claims to be the only state in the world where IT education is imparted over a Free software operating system.
The origins of the Free software community in Thiruvananthapuram can be traced back to the group of TeX users around the University of Kerala in early 1980s. The community then later named themselves Thiruvananthapuram LUG, GNU/Linux Users Group, Thiruvananthapuram and then ultimately Free Software Users Group, Thiruvananthapuram. The community has worked with the government in helping with key Free software initiatives in the government and also in promoting and supporting Free software among the general public. The community has also been instrumental in creating an IT policy favorable to Free software in the state of Kerala.
Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) is a state owned special purpose company under Department of General Education of the Government of Kerala. It was developed to support ICT enabled education for schools in Kerala. The erstwhile IT@School Project was transformed into KITE for extending its scope of operations in August 2017. KITE was the first SPV company to get funded by KIIFB.
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