International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) is an autonomous organization set up by the Government of

Kerala, India Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South C ...

and having the combined mandate of popularizing

Free and Open Source Software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

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 (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

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 Government of Kerala is the Subnational administrative division, subnational government of the Indian state of Kerala. The government is led by a chief minister, who selects all the other ministers. The chief minister and their most senior mini ...

, 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 computing devices by collaborat ...

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 Bangalore (), List of renamed places in India, officially Bengaluru (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan area, metropolitan population of a ...

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

References

{{reflist

External links

* Official site of ICFOS

Free and open-source software organizations Organisations based in Thiruvananthapuram 2011 establishments in Kerala