Survey of ICTs for Education in India and South Asia, Extended Summary 2010 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has gained popularity in India, the country hosts one of the largest FOSS events in the world ‐ FOSS.IN, an event that focuses on FOSS development and distribution. Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Education The Open Source community offers a database where educational institutions can tap the full potential of software available in the Open Source domain. This software which is available free of cost is developed, tested and upgraded by programmers and users on a regular basis. In April 2005, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India set up the National Resource Centre for Free and Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) in an effort to bridge the digital divide and strengthen the Indian software industry. NRCFOSS encompasses research and development, human resource development, networking and entrepreneurship development and it serves as a reference point for all FOSS related activities in the country. (http://nrcfoss.org.in/) In India the adoption of open source solutions is primarily under the state governments. The IT@School project was initiated by the Government of Kerala in 2000 to provide ICT enabled education in the state and has achieved the status of the World’s largest simultaneous deployment of FOSS based ICT education.
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