THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The fourth governing body meeting of the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS), chaired by the Minister for Industries and IT P K Kunhalikutty, decided to adopt a revised vision document for its structure and functioning. The new vision and mission were based on the recommendations of the expert committee chaired by Rahul De (Hewlett-Packard Chair in Quantitative Methods & Information Systems Area, IIM Bangalore). The other members of the Expert Committee included Prof. Sebastian Morris (IIM Ahmedabad), Prof Sunil Mani (Planning Commission Chair, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum) and Soman Nair (Registrar, CDS, Trivandrum).The expert committee highlighted the role of ICFOSS as a 21st century international and autonomous institution of the government which should be endowed with ‘’significant functional autonomy and operational agility’’ and said that ICFOSS held considerable promise to evolve into a world-class organisation of international stature and repute, dealing with programmes such as academics, R & D in FOSS, training, certification, outreach, and supporting FOSS-based entrepreneurship and industry.The governing body meeting also examined the present context of FOSS in the country and around the world. It was pointed out also that several state governments and governments of various countries around the world had adopted pro-FOSS IT policies in the last few years, while Kerala was the state first government in the world to adopt FOSS as a part of its IT Policy in 2001. This forward-looking strategy by the Government of Kerala was now being acknowledged around the world, and ICFOSS was being perceived as the latest step in of this strategy. “ICFOSS has been established on the premise that Kerala has the right credentials as well as responsibility to lead the rest of the country as well as the world, in the domain of FOSS. This has been proved by not only the successful FOSS-based projects in Kerala in the last ten years, but also by the high acceptability of FOSS in the civil society of Kerala. The expert committee has reiterated this point, and had suggested a set of measures that will help ICFOSS achieve a stature of global pre-eminence in the domain of FOSS”, said Satish Babu, Director, ICFOSS. The governing body also decided to conclude the 10th anniversary celebrations of FOSS in India with an international conference to be convened here from December 27 to 29 this year. The conference is the third in the ‘’Free software, Free society’’ series and has the theme ‘’A Decade of FOSS: Looking Back, Looking Forward.” The conference will be attended by over 200 delegates from around the world, including FOSS developers, academicians, practitioners, policymakers, free culture advocates, filmmakers, litterateurs, artistes and musicians.
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