FSF India

The Free Software Foundation of India (FSF India), the official Indian affiliate of the FSF, was formally inaugurated by Richard Stallman at the Freedom First! Conference at Thiruvanathapuram, Kerala on 20 July 2001.


FSF INDIA will be the national agency for the promotion of the use of free software, i.e. software distributed under the GNU General Public Licence (GNU GPL) or other licences approved by FSF, in all domains.
Broadly, FSF India will strive to ensure that free software is strengthened in all respects so as to form a genuine, credible and viable alternative to proprietary software for every kind of application.


To do so, FSF India will:
• Promote awareness about free software among the general public and, specifically, among programmers and students.
• Increase access to free software by users in India.
• Promote the development of local solutions to local problems by empowering local programmers in the use of free platforms, tools and technologies.
• Provide support to free software by way of documentation, expert help or any other means.
• Help organize training for programmers and users of free software platforms and software.
• Carry out R&D work for free software solutions to suit local requirements.
• Provide services for the free software programmer community by, for example, locating and distributing jobs.
• Assist the national and State governments in all aspects relating to free software, such as evolving and maintaining standards; providing a quality assurance mechanism for free software; and ensuring the use of free software in government and quasi-government milieux.
• Provide services such as adjudication and conflict redressal within the free software domain.