"...We saw how Free Software has come to stay in Kerala. The natural question this raises is, “Why Kerala?” There is no other state in the country where Free Software has made an impact that is anywhere near that in Kerala. This itself could be the subject for an entire thesis, and this is certainly not the place to enter into a serious analysis of the question.

Free software is software you can study, modify and share without restriction. But unlike proprietary software, there is no big budget marketing campaign behind it. Rather, people discover it and come to value the freedom it provides. What are these people's motivations for working on free software? Why is community and sharing so important? Why should everyone be using free software?

"Freedom is... the GNU Operating System. GNU is the first operating system designed to give you, the user, the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software, because the user is free. GNU and free software are used by millions of people all over the world.

Free software is simply software that respects our freedom -- our freedom to learn and understand the software we are using.

"...Free software is software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free. To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting the right to learn, and share what we learn with others. Free software has become the foundation of a learning society where we share our knowledge in a way that others can build upon and enjoy..."

Free software had remained a technological and an economic issue in the state of Kerala and it had been very successful in being so. A team of four people decided to take the fundamental principle of the freedom behind free software and take this message of freedom to the masses in Kerala.

Kerala is abuzz with free software mantra after the present Government of Kerala formally endorsed free software as one of its natural allies. Lot of common people are showing interest in free software and its bi-products such as copy left books , wikipedia etc. As a long time user of free software, I am pretty amused at the
current hype.

When explaining why Free Software is important, one question that often comes up is: “do I really need the software freedom?”

Software always has bugs, and free software is no exception to this. When we think of free software, we think of software we can distribute, modify, study and of course, run. I don't spend a lot of my time studying or modifying free software, to be honest. There are lot of people who do this, and they're a lot smarter than me... well, most of them. Apparently, none of the people who write free software bug trackers ever actually use them to report a bug, or if they do, they have a very high tolerance for pain and annoyance.