FOSS is a software that have licenses that allow users to freely run the program for any purpose, modify the program as they want, and also allows users to freely distribute copies of either the original version or their own modified version. The previous day, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan launched ‘Swatantra’, that is now billed as the world’s largest integrated Free and Open Source IT facility in a government sector. While a leaning step towards the International Center for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) was forwarded, Swatantra would take care of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Incubation Center & Training Space according to the reports.
It aims at improving and developing the governments ideologies to formulate the promotion of democratic access of information, keeping in mind the objective of sustainable economic development. ICFOSS is an institution planned by the Kerala government that has the connected mandate of marketing FOSS for global significance. Back in 2001, Kerala became the first state in India to formally adopt a pro-FOSS IT policy and then later in 2009, the state government began ICFOSS, mentioning its headquarters in Thiruvanthapuram.
Following in March 2015, India’s central government declared a policy on ‘adoption of FOSS’.Apart from this concept, Kerala also has ‘Society For Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment(SPACE),’ that is a registered society that consists of members from academia, the IT industry, professional societies and Government of Kerala. SPACE states its vision to promote the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in academics, governance, corporate and individual use, and to support the use of FOSS for employment generation in Kerala.
From the past six to seven years of success, an online free software ‘treasurehunt’ is also being held by ICFOSS, as a promotional event for FOSS, known to be “Swatantra international conference”. SPACE released its website code on Github as a free software under GPL 3 for the people to host their self-treasurehunt during the captivating hours utilising this project.