National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) is an organisation created and financed in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology

Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (India)

The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology is an Indian government ministry. It contains three departments:*Department of Telecommunications*Department of Information Technology*Department of Posts...

, Government of India

Government of India

The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India...

 in April 2005.
It is jointly administered by the Chennai Division of Centre for Development of Advanced Computing

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing

Centre for Development of Advanced Computing is a research and development organization under the Department of Information Technology, India.-History:...

 (C-DAC) and the AU-KBC Research Centre of Anna University

Anna University

Anna University was a premier technical university in Tamil Nadu, India. Anna University was formed on September 4, 1978, as a unitary university that integrated four technical institutions in the city of Chennai , including the College of Engineering, Guindy, Alagappa College of Technology,...

.
Some state governments, for example Kerala

Kerala

or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....

, already have programmes to popularize FOSS

Foss

Foss may refer toPeople*Foss , people with the last name Foss*Foss Shanahan , New Zealand diplomat*Foss Westcott , English bishop...

 among the masses especially among the students. The founding of NRCFOSS is the first initiative by the Government of India in the direction of making efforts for increasing the acceptance of FOSS

Foss

Foss may refer toPeople*Foss , people with the last name Foss*Foss Shanahan , New Zealand diplomat*Foss Westcott , English bishop...

 at a national level. NRCFOSS is designed to give a boost to the efforts to popularize FOSS

Foss

Foss may refer toPeople*Foss , people with the last name Foss*Foss Shanahan , New Zealand diplomat*Foss Westcott , English bishop...

 products among lay computer users of India.

Objectives

NRCFOSS is mandated to work in areas related to Free/Open Source Software basically with the following objectives:

• Human resource
  Human resources
  Human resources is a term used to describe the individuals who make up the workforce of an organization, although it is also applied in labor economics to, for example, business sectors or even whole nations...
  
   development by training engineering teachers in the formal sector giving support to educational agencies in the nonformal sector.
• Development of technology, tools and solutions by making available certified tools to industry and users creating a repository
  Information repository
  An information repository is an easy way to deploy a secondary tier of data storage that can comprise multiple, networked data storage technologies running on diverse operating systems, where data that no longer needs to be in primary storage is protected, classified according to captured metadata,...
  
   of information
  Information
  Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
  
   on resources.
• Localisation
  Internationalization and localization
  In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...
  
   for Indian languages by enhancing the presence and visibility of Indian Languages on the web coordinating with various local language communities.
• Policy formulation and global networking by providing support to the Government and other agencies in policy and program formulation joining global networks, especially with similarly placed nations, and participating in international events.
• Entrepreneurship
  Entrepreneurship
  Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which can be defined as "one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods". This may result in new organizations or may be part of revitalizing mature organizations in response...
  
   development by creating appropriate business models.

Initial achievements

NRCFOSS has caused the introduction of elective papers in FOSS in the syllabi and curriculum of Anna University.
The syllabi is applicable to around 250 engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University. It has prepared the entire course material for these elective papers and made it available for free download.
NRCFOSS has organized a series of workshops and seminars in different parts of India to popularize the idea of FOSS.
It developed the FOSS Lab Server as an archive of various resources that are essential for the students taking FOSS courses.
It contains source code, documentation and mailing list archives. NRCFOSS developed Bharat Operating System Solutions

Bharat Operating System Solutions

Bharat Operating System Solutions is a free and open source computer operating system developed by the National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software of India. This software is also known by the acronym BOSS GNU/Linux or simply BOSS Linux...

 a GNU/Linux distribution made specifically for the Indian environment. The latest version of this Free/Open Source Software, BOSS GNU/Linux v4.0, was released in February 26, 2011. This software supports eighteen Indian languages out of a total of twenty-two constitutionally recognized languages

Languages of India

The languages of India belong to several language families, the major ones being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian languages...

in India at the desktop level.