Date:16/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/16/stories/2008111660540300.htm

Kerala - Kochi

State to set up centre for free software

Staff Reporter

Kerala first in region to embrace free software
Malayalam encyclopaedia for Wikipedia

KOCHI: Hundreds of free software activists from across the country joined hands to share their expertise in the field at the second national conference on free software that began at the Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) campus here on Saturday.

Education Minister M.A. Baby inaugurated the event. In his inaugural address, the Minister said that Kerala was the first Euro-Asian region to fully embrace free software.

He said that the State has achieved commendable gains in expanding the usage of free and open source software.

“Through a government decision, we have made it mandatory to use free software in Kerala’s school curriculum. These initiatives have resulted in conducting examinations for 16 lakh students using the open source platform,” Mr. Baby said.

Stating that broadband connectivity was ensured for all high schools in the State, the Minister said the State was moving from IT education and training to ICT-enabled education.

He said that the Department of Culture has already decided to donate the contents of the Malayalam encyclopaedia to Malayalam Wikipedia.

The Department of Information Technology has also decided to set up an international centre for free software in the State.

In his keynote address on the occasion, Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac said that democratisation of science and technology field has become an integral part of the class struggle.

‘Political struggle’

He said that the struggle to make information technology free from being a private property has become a political struggle.

In his message telecast at the venue using the video-conferencing technology, V.R. Krishna Iyer, former Supreme Court judge, said that free software has ended the monopoly of multinational companies in the IT sector.

He said the common people had every right to communicate using free software. “Free software is going to have a new world that will produce lasting peace for the entire mankind,” he said.

Gangan Prathap, vice chancellor of Cusat, A.M. Yousuf, MLA, Y. Kiranchandra, convener of Swecha, an organisation promoting free software, G. Nagarjuna, chairman of Free Software Foundation of India, Joy Job Kulavelil, syndicate member and general convener of the event, and K. Babu Joseph, former vice chancellor of Cusat, spoke.