Kerala Tips

Kerala Government and Free software community is organizing a 3 day conference on open source free software movement in Trivandrum, Kerala. The conference is organized at the Mascot hotel during 9-11 December and there is also an exhibition named “Freedom Expo 2008″ at the Kanakakkunnu Palace grounds. The highlight of the event is the participation of well known free software advocate Richard Stallman and the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales.

You can get more details on the “Free Software Free Society Conference” here.

Free Software Free Society, is an International Conference on Free and Open Source software and Free Knowledge Movements being organised by Government of Kerala and Free Software community in Kerala. The conference will explore the possibilities offered by Free and Open Source Software in addressing broader questions such as Governance, Digital Inclusion, Development and Culture.

The registration to the conference is not free, probably to drive home the point that “free software” doesn’t mean that it is free of cost!   If Kerala Government can spend over one crore rupees for the “International seminar on democratic and secular education – Kerala experience”, they can easily spend few rupees for this event as well! And what are the sponsors doing?

I just hope that we don’t see any hidden sponsors popping up in the last minute. Only god knows what Richard Stallman will do if that hidden sponsor turns out to be Microsoft!

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