During early November 2019, ICFOSS invited volunteers of the Free Software community in Kerala to express their concerns and suggestions.

• Prof Deepa Gopinath (espeak, festival, cmu sphinx) wants to link research with products that people can use and go beyond just research papers.
• Ramesh from KSEB wanted this good initiative to meetup with community continued and not dropped (this was accepted and quarterly meetup on every 1st saturday was announced)
• He also wanted a solution to Income Tax return submission (only Microsoft Excel format is accepted)
• Another issue he raised is lack of Free Software to digitally sign for e-tender
• He was also not happy with current status of KSEB's lab for experiments which was started but did not progress
• He proposed creation of framework to share KSEB's experienced people in migrating other offices (they have 10k computers powered by Ubuntu)
• Sebin from SMC wanted ICFOSS to intervene in migration of e-office software to proprietary software in secretariat as its a clear violation of state IT policy which supports Free Software for all e-govt initiatives.
• He pointed there is no representation for community in govt's Malayalam computing initiative.
• He also pointed out the private ownership attitude of ICFOSS for community projects
• He also underscored the need for thinking in terms of feat as opposed to current product development attitude
• He proposed ICFOSS should consider community as an extension of itself
• Amarnath Raja proposed to survey the Free Software adoption in govt departments to have an idea of the numbers to help further campaigns
• Sebin suggested ICFOSS should allow all its workers to spend 20% of its work hours to spend on community projects similar to how corporates like Google. Srinivasan from ICFOSS clarified such a policy already exist, though its not very effective
• Manoj mentioned the need for loosening up the funding structure for community and college foss events.
• The brainstorming session highlighted the need for focusing on Free Software contribution instead of academic profile as ICFOSS fellows selection criteria.
• Kannan emphasized the need to develop Free Software Developers instead of just Software Developers and involvement of community in trainings is essential for that
• Community involvement should get preference when selecting new people to ICFOSS
• Sebin proposed Google Summer of Code or Outreachy like mentoring programs where community manages the program and ICFOSS provide funding
• Ramesh from KSEB suggested ICFOSS should spearhead more Free Software adoption campaigns in targeted areas like library management, 12th standard syllabus, DTP centers...

• ICFOSS director Sasi PM agreed to 90% of the demands and mentioned the decisions will be shared in the ICFOSS instant messaging group (Matrix bridged with Telegram).
• Directory of Free Software groups will be created by community and ICFOSS will publish it on its website.
• KSEB project documentation will be published as case study
• Community organized events will be supported by ICFOSS
• ICFOSS will involve community in fellowship selection process
• ICFOSS servers will be accessible for free software projects as soon as the current server maintenance is over