[FSF-India] NEWS: Global software promoter to open India chapter in Kerala

[Frederick Noronha]

Global software promoter to open India chapter in Kerala

By Sanu George, Indo-Asian News Service

Thiruvananthapuram, July 17 (IANS) Free Software Foundation (FSF), promoters
of a popular software that reportedly has 20 million users worldwide, is
going to launch its India chapter in Kerala Friday.

FSF founder Richard M. Stallman, who will be here to inaugurate the chapter,
will also meet Chief Minister A.K. Antony. Stallman has been in the news for
developing free operating system GNU (a recursive acronym for GNU's Not
Unix).

At their meeting, Antony is expected to seek Stallman's help to bring the
state on par with its southern neighbors like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka
who have made giant strides in the use of information technology.

The advent of the FSF will coincide with a two-day Conference on Free
Software's Freedom First beginning July 20, that is being sponsored by the
state government along with the Group of Technopark Companies, Technopark
and the Computer Society of India (CSI).

Satish Babu, CSI's regional vice president (south), told IANS that Free
Software was now being used extensively by all types of consumers --
businesses, research institutions and governments in Brazil, Argentina,
Germany and Mexico.

"The biggest advantage of this Free Software, which should not be mistaken
as one which is given free, is that it is a cross platform solution and it
can operate along with any of the other operating systems. This facility is
not there in any other operating system."

Also, this software allows users to edit the program to suit their needs,
Babu said.

"This is where third world countries like India are going to benefit, where
the user is free to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the
software according to his needs."

"The source code is also given to the users, for instance, Kerala needs the
version in Malayalam, its engineers could do the alteration, whereas in
other operating systems, the company has to produce a Malayalam version,"
said Babu.

He said the software costs much less than other operating systems.

Babu said Thiruvananthapuram had been chosen by FSF because the state's high
literacy had huge potential for generating trained manpower.

--Indo-Asian News Service