The state of Kerala, in India has had an active Free software community since early 1980s. [1] 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 [2] 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. [3] The government of Kerala policy on Free software gives first preference to Free and Open Source software for its IT requirements. [4] The state claims to be the only state in the world where IT education is imparted over a Free software operating system. [5] [6]
The IT Policy for the state of Kerala had acknowledged the relevance of Free software as early as 2001 [4]
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 [7] 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.
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 [8] [9] and running install fests. [10] [11] There are also active Free software clubs in several Engineering colleges in the state like College of Engineering, Trivandrum, [12] St. Josephs College of Engineering and Technology, Pala, [2] MES College of engineering Kuttippuram, [13] National Institute of Technology, Kozhikode, [14] L.B.S College of Engineering, Vidya Academy of Science and Technology, Thrissur
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.
In 2006, the state government decided to impart ICT education in public schools across the state using a customized Debian distribution called KITE GNU/Linux (previously known as IT@School GNU/Linux). [15] The KITE under Department of General Education, Government of Kerala implemented one of the largest deployments of GNU/Linux systems anywhere in the world. [5] [6] Earlier technical support and training for the project was provided by SPACE and is currently being provided by KITE [16]
In 2008, the Kerala State Electricity Board moved to a Free software platform called ORUMA to run their billing operations. [17] [18] The system was built with the help of an internal team at KSEB. Initial consultations and trainings were provided by SPACE. [19] [20]
The Kerala Khadi and Village Industries Board moved to a Free software platform [21] built by Keltron.
The Kerala Public Works Department moved to a Free software platform built by InApp Technologies [1]
In 2014 the Kerala Legislative Assembly moved all of their IT operations into GNU/Linux based systems with the assistance of Zyxware Technologies. [22]
ICFOSS is an autonomous agency set up by the Government of Kerala in 2011 [23] 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 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. [24] SPACE has been involved in policy formulation, consultation, training and technical support for projects like IT@School, ORUMA, Khadi Board migration etc. [25] The agency has also been running a center called INSIGHT which is actively pursuing taking Free software to the differently abled. [26]
SMC is a Free software collective which works in the space of Indic language computing. [27] SMC is the upstream maintainers for Malayalam fonts and tools [27] 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 [28] and Libre Office.
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.
The students of National Institute of Technology Calicut conducts an annual Free Software conference called FOSSMeet, which is held on the campus during the month of February/March every year. [37] The 3 day conference has been held every year since 2005. [38] After a gap of 3 years due to COVID-19, FOSSMeet was restarted offline in 2023.
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) refers to software projects that are redistributable, with all source code being made available. Similarly, modifications and derived works are allowed and distributable.
Government Medical College, Kozhikode, also known as Calicut Medical College (CMC), is a school of medicine in Kozhikode in the Indian state of Kerala. The college was established in 1957 as the second medical college in Kerala by DR.A. R. Menon MBBS, FRCH, Minister for Health, EMS ministry. With over 3025 beds, it is currently the largest hospital in India and tenth largest in the world. It is also one of India's largest hospitals by area, covering more than 270 acres of land in the outskirts of Kozhikode city. Formerly affiliated to the University of Calicut, the college is now attached to the Kerala University of Health Sciences (KUHS). Calicut Medical College is the most preferred medical college of Kerala during both All India as well as state counsellings for MBBS admission.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) grants two annual awards. Since 1998, FSF has granted the award for Advancement of Free Software and since 2005, also the Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit.
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.
Kozhikode International Airport is an international airport serving the city of Kozhikode in the state of Kerala, India. It is located at Karipur near Kondotty in the Malappuram district of the South Malabar region. It serves the Malabar region, consisting of Malappuram, Wayanad and Palakkad. It is situated 28 km (17 mi) away from Kozhikode and 25 km (16 mi) away from Malappuram. It serves two of the seven metropolitan areas in the state—Kozhikode metropolitan area and Malappuram metropolitan area. The airport opened on 13 April 1988. The airport serves as an operating base for Air India Express and operates Hajj Pilgrimage services to Medina and Jeddah from Kerala. It is tied with Hyderabad in terms of international traffic. It received international airport status on 2 February 2006. It is one of the few airports in the country with a tabletop runway.
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.
Brian Jhan Fox is an American computer programmer and free software advocate. He is the original author of the GNU Bash shell, which he announced as a beta in June 1989. He continued as the primary maintainer of bash until at least early 1993. Fox also built the first interactive online banking software in the U.S. for Wells Fargo in 1995, and he created an open source election system in 2008.
In the 1950s and 1960s, computer operating software and compilers were delivered as a part of hardware purchases without separate fees. At the time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software providing the ability to fix bugs or add new functions. Universities were early adopters of computing technology. Many of the modifications developed by universities were openly shared, in keeping with the academic principles of sharing knowledge, and organizations sprung up to facilitate sharing. As large-scale operating systems matured, fewer organizations allowed modifications to the operating software, and eventually such operating systems were closed to modification. However, utilities and other added-function applications are still shared and new organizations have been formed to promote the sharing of software.
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.
Satish Babu is a Free Software activist, early Internet advocate, and development professional based out of Kerala, India. He is the founding Director of the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an autonomous academic/research institution of the Government of Kerala, India, where he worked from March 2011 to September 2015. He was earlier the CEO of SIFFS, an NGO of small-scale artisanal fishers of south India; a co-founder and President of InApp Information Technologies; and is associated with international and national professional societies such as IEEE, Internet Society (ISOC), ICANN, and the Computer Society of India (CSI).
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.
Swatantra 2014 was the fifth international free software conference organized by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), an autonomous organization set up by the Government of Kerala, India for the propagation of FOSS. It was held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India during 18–20 December 2014. Among supporting organizations of the conference were the Free Software Foundation of India, Centre for Internet and Society (India), Software Freedom Law Center (India) and Swathantra Malayalam Computing.
Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (SMC) is a free software community and non profit charitable society working on Malayalam and other Indic languages. It is the biggest language computing developer community in India. This group has been involved in the Malayalam translation of GNOME, KDE, and Mozilla projects like Firefox. They developed Indic Keyboard which is a multi-language keyboard for Android. They have created several Malayalam fonts. The community also actively contributes towards Malayalam Wikipedia.
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 with adoption and penetration growing towards the end of the 1990s 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.
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.
Kerala Fibre Optic Network (K-FON) is a public-funded initiative by the Kerala government that aims to provide high-speed Internet connectivity to the whole Indian state of Kerala. It is the project of the first Pinarayi Vijayan government and was launched in February 2021 to ensure universal Internet connectivity, addressing the issue of the digital divide, and connecting 2 million below-poverty-line (BPL) families in Kerala. KFON got the Internet Service Provider Licence from the Department of Telecommunications in 2022, making Kerala the first Indian state to have its own Internet service. In the first phase, K-Fon's internet service will be available in 14,000 economically backward houses and over 30,000 government institutions. The project was inaugurated on 5 June 2023 by the Chief Minister Pinarai Vijayan.
