Thiruvananthapuram, commonly known by its former name Trivandrum, is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the largest city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration population is around 1.68 million. Located on the west coast of India near the extreme south of the mainland, Thiruvananthapuram is a major Information Technology hub in Kerala and contributes 55% of the state's software exports as of 2016. Referred to by Mahatma Gandhi as the "Evergreen city of India", the city is characterised by its undulating terrain of low coastal hills.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is a public technical and research university located in Powai, Mumbai, India.
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 can be classified as both free software and open-source software. That is, anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software. This is in contrast to proprietary software, where the software is under restrictive copyright licensing and the source code is usually hidden from the users.
The Free Software Foundation of India (FSFI) is the Indian sister organisation to the US-based Free Software Foundation. It was founded in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) in 2001 as a non-profit Company. The FSFI advocates to promote the use and development of free software in India. This includes educating people about free software, including how it can help the economy of a developing country like India. FSF India regards non-free software as not a solution, but a problem to be solved. Free software is sometimes locally called swatantra software in India.
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.
Lt. Col. P. R. Godavarma Raja often referred to as G. V. Raja, was a sports and tourism promoter and administrator, pilot, sportsman and Sanskrit scholar. He took special care in inspiring the youth into sports and was instrumental in founding the Kerala Sports Council in 1953. G.V Raja occupied the post of Council President till he was killed in a flight mishap in 1971. G.V Raja also played a key role in establishing the Thiruvananthapuram Tennis Club, Flying Club, and the development of the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport.
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a Bangalore-based non-profit organisation looking at multidisciplinary research and advocacy. CIS works on digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, in the field of Internet and Society.
Free Software Movement of India (FSMI) is a national coalition of various regional and sectoral free software movements operating in different parts of India. The formation of FSMI was announced in the valedictory function of the National Free Software Conference - 2010 held in Bangalore during 20–21 March 2010. FSMI is a pan Indian level initiative to propagate the ideology of free software and to popularize the usage of the free software. One of the declared aims of the movement is to take Free Software and its ideological implications to computer users “across the digital divide”, to under-privileged sections of society.
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.
Free Software Foundation Tamil Nadu is a not-for-profit organisation formed in 2008 as a part of Free Software Movement of India (FSMI). This organisation is a social movement that works towards enlightening the masses with the essence of free software and to liberate knowledge. FSFTN organises different workshops and seminars in Tamil Nadu among the youth to spread the idea of knowledge liberation.
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).
Free Software Movement Karnataka (FSMK) is a non-profit organization working for spreading free software and its ideals. The movement is inspired by software freedom visionaries like Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen. A small organising team was created in 2007 and FSMK's formation was announced via several mailing lists on April 7, 2009. The Free Software Movement-Karnataka has a sizable number of followers in Bangalore and South Canara. FSMK has presence in six different districts across Karnataka, namely Bangalore, Mandya, Mysore, Hassan, Mangalore and Tumkur.
Swecha is a non-profit organization formerly called as Free Software Foundation Andhra Pradesh later changed name to Swecha which is also the first Telugu Operating System released in year 2005, Swecha is a part of Free Software Movement of India (FSMI). This organization is a social movement that works towards enlightening the masses with the essence of Free Software and to liberate knowledge to the commoners. Swecha organizes different workshops and seminars in the Indian state of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh among the youth to spread the idea of knowledge liberation. The swecha has a sizable number of followers in states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and a vibrant community of software users, students, academicians and software professionals/developers determined to provide quality software built on the guidelines of free software development model.
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 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 education department 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.
Chandroth Vasudevan Radhakrishnan aka CV Radhakrishnan aka CVR, is an Indian free software developer, entrepreneur and the Founder of River Valley Technologies. He is also one of the founding members of TeX Users Group in India.
