FOURTH CONFERENCE ON OPEN SOFTWARE ON KERALA, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

FOURTH CONFERENCE ON OPEN SOFTWARE ON KERALA, THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

The fourth international Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Conference, Kerala, got under way .The three-day conference was inaugurated by the release of doves as a symbolic representation of freedom, characteristic of free software, by the dignitaries present. Delivering the keynote address, S.V. Raghavan, scientific secretary to the principal scientific adviser to the Indian government, said that the complexity of the task of building information and software assets for the nation was formidable."FOSS provides a powerful, flexible and customizable model for addressing this need. FOSS provides robust technologies, tools and development methodologies which make the decentralized creation of content, as well as its verification feasible in a scalable manner," he said.

In his inaugural address, K.S. Srinivas, the state's special secretary, IT, said that FOSS fulfils a clear need in developing solutions for e-governance, especially given the needs of responsiveness and transparency."Kerala was the first state to embark on the path of FOSS in the country and in the world. The government of Kerala is committed to continuing efforts to propagate the use of FOSS," he said.Successful FOSS applications of the Kerala government, such as IT@School and InSight is being showcased at the meeting and a workshop on'Open Source Hardware' will be held for students on Friday30th December,2011.The inaugural event was attended by representatives from Africa, Latin America, Europe, and US in addition to India.
Previous conferences were held in 2001, 2005 and 2008.

                                                                Prof. John Kurakar