Consultation On Future Directions For FOSS In India

Aug. 24, 2011 - PRLog -- Trivandrum 9th August 2011 The consultation session is first of a series of similar sessions that build on Kerala’s early lead in FOSS initiatives and serving to consolidate and leverage the lead with international initiatives.The participants representing a cross-section of stakeholders from the Government, technology organizations, institutions of Higher Education, NGOs, and the FOSS community—outlined their vision for the future of FOSS in their respective domains, highlighting gaps and limitations to be resolved, and making suggestions on the way ahead.
The session was opened by Satish Babu, Director, ICFOSS, who presented a brief history of FOSS in India along with its central philosophy, that of Free Access to Knowledge. In his presentation, he also highlighted the gaps and limitations that need to be addressed. He also said that a FOSS Visioning Expert Committee has been set up to help prepare the roadmap for ICFOSS. The Committee comprises of Dr.Rahul De, Professor of IIM-Bangalore, Prof. Sebastian Morris of IIM-Ahmedabad, Professor Sunil Mani of Centre for Development Studies (CDS) and Mr. Soman Nair, Registrar of CDS.
“Kerala was the first State in the country to adopt FOSS as an ICT enabler and an instrument for development, starting from 2001. Since then the State had taken rapid strides in launching FOSS-based interventions in different domains such as e-governance, education, community computing, personal computing and computing for disabled.”, he added.
Prof Sunil Mani, one of the members of the Expert Committee, emphasized the need for initiatives in the areas of research, training, advocacy and outreach. “It is essential to build up faculty with effective training in FOSS in order to ensure awareness building and ensuring outreach of FOSS initiatives to wider audiences who are still unaware of its potential.”, he said.
Dr G. Nagarjuna of the Free Software Foundation of India (FSF-India) said that the FOSS community had great expectations from ICFOSS as Trivandrum was well-known as the FOSS Capital of the country, and Kerala has clearly demonstrated its commitment to FOSS. He continued that FOSS initiatives should promote freedom in society, and should provide the technological means to foster collaboration amongst people.
Mr. Anoop John and Mr. Lepeesh Parat, both running FOSS-based companies in Kerala, pointed out that despite their significant success in working with international markets, several policy impediments prevented them from local markets, especially the Government projects & programmes. They pointed out that an enabling ecosystem for FOSS-based enterprises will give a boost to Small and Medium Enterprise (SMEs) in IT, and provide vibrancy to Kerala's society.
The workshop was attended by Representatives from different governmental organizations such as National Informatics Centre (NIC), C-DAC, Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM), Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITM-K), IT@School; FOSS Community groups and NGOs such as Swatantra Malayalam Computing and Society For Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE); media, the student community, FOSS-based business enterprises such as Zyxware and Zesty Beanz, Technopark, and professional societies such as the Computer Society of India (CSI) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
ICFOSS is celebrating the 10th anniversary of FOSS in India and the seminar series is part of this celebrations.

Satish Babu
Director, IC-FOSS
94470 27274
director@icfoss.in