About FSF India
-The Free Software Foundation India (FSF India) is a - nonprofit organisation committed to advocating, - promoting and propagating the use and development of - free (swatantra) software in India.
- -The special need of free software community in the - current historical context.
- - -Background
- -As the computer continues to become increasingly - pervasive in our personal, social and working - lives, the soul of the machine — software — is - seemingly trapped in a battle of proprietary - ownership.
- -In the early days of computing, it was customary for - programmers to share software. Since the 1970s, - however, much software has become proprietary, such - that its users have been prevented from sharing, let - alone modifying, programs. By the 1980s, proprietary - software had become commonplace, and the computing - community was losing the freedom to cooperate in using - and altering software. Freedom was under attack.
- - -The Free Software Foundation
- --- -The owners of software had erected walls to divide - us from each other.
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Those words came from the one person who has - zealously campaigned to safeguard software - freedoms–Richard M. Stallman, a celebrated - programmer and an accomplished hacker. (Contrary - to popular belief, a hacker is not an anti-social - being. S/he is someone who is passionate, even - obsessive, about programming, as opposed to a - cracker, someone who breaks security on a system, - often with malicious intent.)
- -Stallman, then working at MIT’s Artificial - Intelligence Lab, left to pursue the Free Software - Movement in 1984, inspired by the ideals of - American independence: freedom, community and - voluntary co-operation, which leads to free - enterprise, free speech and free software. He had - already started the GNU project in - 1983 to develop the free operating system GNU (a recursive - acronym for GNU’s Not Unix).
- -In 1985 Stallman founded the Free - Software Foundation - (FSF), dedicated to promoting computer users’ - rights to use, study, copy, modify and - redistribute computer programs.
- -The FSF promotes the development and use of free - software and free documentation. In particular, - FSF promotes the GNU operating system, used widely - today in its GNU/Linux variant, based on the Linux - kernel developed by Linus Torvalds. These systems - are often mistakenly called just `Linux’; calling - them `GNU/Linux’ corrects this confusion.
- -The FSF (fsf.org), - whose headquarters is in Boston, Massachusetts, - USA, is a tax-exempt charity for free software - development. It raises funds by selling GNU - CD-ROMs, T-shirts, manuals and deluxe - distributions (all of which users are free to copy - and change), as well as from donations.
- -The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the - ethical and political issues of freedom in the use - of software. The FSF believes that free software - is a matter of freedom, not price.
- -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.
- -The Vision of FSF India
- -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:
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Promote awareness about free software among - the general public and, specifically, among - programmers and students.
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- Increase access to free software by users - in India.
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- Promote the development of local solutions - to local problems by empowering local - programmers in the use of free platforms, - tools and technologies.
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- Provide support to free software by way of - documentation, expert help or any other means.
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- Help organize training for programmers and - users of free software platforms and software.
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- Carry out R&D work for free software - solutions to suit local requirements.
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- Provide services for the free software - programmer community by, for example, locating - and distributing jobs.
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- 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.
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- Provide services such as adjudication and - conflict redressal within the free software - domain.
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