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.
Government Policy on Free software
The IT Policy for the state of Kerala had acknowledged the relevance of Free software as early as 2001 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 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.
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.
IT@School Project
In 2006, the state government decided to impart ICT education in public schools across the state using a customized Debian distribution called the IT@School GNU/Linux. The IT@School project by Department of General Education, Government of Kerala is one of the largest deployments of GNU/Linux systems anywhere in the world. The technical support and training for the project was provided by SPACE.
In 2008, the Kerala State Electricity Board moved to a Free software platform called ORUMA to run their billing operations. The system was built with the help of an internal team at KSEB. Initial consultations and trainings were provided by SPACE.
Kerala Khadi & Village Industries Board Free software migration
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. SPACE has been involved in policy formulation, consultation, training and technical support for projects like IT@School, ORUMA, Khadi Board migration etc. The agency has also been running a center called INSIGHT which is actively pursuing taking Free software to the differently abled.
SMC - Swathantra Malayalam Computing
is a Free software collective which works in the space of Indic language computing. SMC is the upstream maintainers for Malayalam fonts and tools for popular GNU/Linux based operating systems such as Fedora and Debian. They also maintain localizations for Free Software Desktops and applications such as Firefox 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 has been responsible for organizing the last two editions of the conference.
The National Institute of Technology, Calicut conducts an annual Free software conference called the which is held in the campus during the month of February/March every year.
