Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment
The Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE) is located in Trivandrum, Kerala, India.[1]
Objective
SPACE is a registered society that has members from academia, the IT industry, professional societies such as IEEE and Computer Society of India, and the IT Administration of the Government of Kerala. The vision of SPACE is to promote the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in academics, governance, corporate and individual use, and to support the use FOSS for employment generation in Kerala. The VME model promoted by SPACE envisages a decentralized and distributed mode of IT development where local employment, particularly using FOSS, is promoted and facilitated. SPACE intends to promote more VMEs that can take up different services in Kerala, especially in smaller towns and rural areas.
Intervention
The primary thrust of the intervention of SPACE are:
- Promote the use of FOSS in the public, private, and governmental sectors as well as for personal/home use
- Develop a model for FOSS- based employment generation that is appropriate to Kerala's context, by identifying appropriate business opportunities and providing support services including training and micro business incubation
- Carry out R & D activities for the development of essential prototypes that bridge existing gaps in software, so as to enable widespread use of FLOSS
- Ensure that Kerala is able to develop sufficient numbers of high-quality human resources in the FLOSS domain