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
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...
for universal use; consolidating the early FOSS work done in Kerala; and networking with different nations, communities and governments to collaboratively promote FOSS.
Origins
Kerala was the first state in
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
to formally adopt a pro-FOSS IT policy in 2001.
[ Free and open-source software#Adoption by governments] This main impetus for this step came from the landmark conference "Freedom First!" convened by a group of activists and supported by the
government of Kerala
The Government of Kerala (abbreviated as GoK), also known as the Kerala Government, is the administrative body responsible for governing the Indian States and territories of India, state of Kerala. The government is led by a chief minister, who ...
, where the
Free Software Foundation of India (FSF-India) was inaugurated by
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), 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 ...
, the founder of the
GNU Project
The GNU Project ( ) is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and Computer hardware, computing dev ...
.
Genesis
Kerala followed the 2001 conference with a conference series "Free Software, Free Society (FSFS)", held in 2005 and 2008 (with the third of the series being convened in the second half of 2011. This event also commemorated the tenth anniversary of the 2001 conference). In 2008, the Government of Kerala set up a commission under the leadership of Dr. Rahul De of IIM
Bangalore
Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...
to study how to take forward the momentum that Kerala had built up in FOSS. The activist community proposed to the Commission that an International Centre be set up that has a clear mandate on co-ordinating all FOSS efforts in Kerala, and also continued the multi-nation, multistakeholder networking that commenced from the FSFS conferences.
Activities
* Handbook on e-Governance, Malayalam Spell Checker
* T-Slide, mouse for people with motor disability
* Kerala's first public LoRaWAN Network in Technopark Campus to promote Open Source IoT.
* Low-cost telepresence robot developed on open source platform
Image Gallery
File:Sunil Thonikkuzhiyil ICFOSS.jpg, Sunil T.T, Director ICFOSS (2023)
References
{{reflist
External links
* Official site of ICFOS
Free and open-source software organizations
Organisations based in Thiruvananthapuram
2011 establishments in Kerala