Every high school in Kerala, including the over a thousand government-run ones, will be wired to high-speed broadband Internet by this July, which will be another first in India. All, of course, will use nothing but free software. “We are now moving from IT education to IT-enabled education in our schools, using only free software,” asserts Education Minister M A Baby.

When Stallman, who fathered the GNU project and developed text editor Emacs, flew down to Kerala for the first time in 2001—in his old patched jeans, long beard, free flowing hair and crumpled T-shirt—and told the curious who hadn’t heard of him in Thiruvananthapuram that he was, really, “Saint iGNUcious of the church of Emacs”, the then Congress-led Government was already busy getting the state’s IT drive on keel, drawing in Intel and Microsoft. Achuthanandan, then Opposition leader, was quick to demand that both be got rid of, and launched a particularly vocal campaign against Microsoft being allowed to train Kerala school kids, calling it “exploitative”.

The then A K Antony Government had not overly warmed up to Stallman, who opened Asia’s first centre of his outfit, the Free Software Foundation-India, in Thiruvananthapuram. But Achuthanandan was keen, even when CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan originally favoured the Microsoft idea. Stallman then began regularly dropping down to Kerala. Two years ago, Achuthanandan, after vainly ordering Pepsi and Coca-Cola out of the state, declared that all schools will go the FOSS way.

Last year, in its state IT policy, the Left Government vowed to use only FOSS in all e-governance projects and declared it would even incentivise companies developing free software. Government departments, beginning with the state Secretariat, soon began switching from Microsoft to Linux. “There were some initial fears and some understandable resistance, but things have been smoothing out faster than we thought.” says a a senior state IT official. The migration is at various stages in key Government arms now.