International Centre for Free and Open Source Software at Technopark here has announced the launch of a new initiative called ‘Code Free for India'.
As part of this, programmers from free software community will be invited to develop tools and applications for desktop, Ínternet, mobile, cloud, and Internet-of-Things for use by the civil society, government and institutions.
The initiative is timed with the celebration of the Software Freedom Day tomorrow (September 20) by the Free Software Centre and the Free Software User Group here.
The Code Free for India initiative will provide a broad umbrella for the free software community members and groups to address the local issues and needs, says Satish Babu, Director of the Free Software Centre.
It will provide a platform for initiatives proven successful locally to scale up to state or national levels.
It will also encourage the use of local language computing tools and contemporary free software technology, while keeping in mind bandwidth and device limitations.
Annual event
Software Freedom Day is an annual event coordinated by Software Freedom International, a non-profit organisation working towards promoting free software.
PH Kurian, Principal Secretary, IT, Kerala, will be the chief guest at the event. V Sasikumar, Board Member, Free Software Foundation of India, will speak.
The purpose of the event is to propagate awareness about free software in the society, Satish Babu said.
It will felicitate Kerala State Electricity Board, IT@School, Kerala Khadi and Village Industries Board, and the State Legislative Assembly for migrating to free software.
Software freedom as a concept is gathering momentum - both as a stand-alone ethical concept as well as a component in the larger matrix of on-line and Internet freedom, says Satish Babu.
Costs of technology
“This is a good time to assert the reasons why software freedom should be treated as an ethical imperative.”
While technology adoption can certainly be an enabler of efficiency, convenience, cost reduction, and transparency enhancement, it is also critically important to examine the long-term, non-financial costs of technology as well.
To ensure that the present and future rights of end users are protected, both hardware and software must be transparent and visible to the users and be governed by licensing mechanisms that preserves such transparency in an inalienable manner.
Further, it has to be ensured that the data generated by users is also governed by similarly transparent mechanisms.
“This forms the crux of software freedom,” Satish Babu said.