Why FOSFEM?

Before we get into the question of why the community was renamed, it is important to understand why the community was named FOSFEM.

FOSFEM was born out of 2 words: FOS representing free and open source, FEM for female.

That’s right. Initially, FOSFEM was a women-centric community focused on developing free and open source technologies and developing the Indian free software ecosystem as a whole by equipping people from underrepresented backgrounds, without an explicit focus on inclusion and accessibility, though the community is inclusive by nature.

So, why rename?

As we went on exploring the DEIA landscape, we realized the true limitations of accessibility and inclusion. The only way this could be reduced is by working on inclusion and accessibility, that means working with communities focused on DEIA and developing assistive technologies that are intuitive and adheres to the free software philosophy.

Well, that implies one thing: working with men and allies to make this happen. Earlier, we had intentions of making FOSFEM a women-only community from women-centric community to make sure they feel safe to express themselves and their opinions upon observing and discussing with other women and people in the DEIA landscape.

However, that means, we will be missing on collaborating with bright minds and being counter-intuitive to our objectives and goals of building an inclusive and accessible free software ecosystem in India.

What’s in a name?

FOSSIA is an abbreviation for:

‘FOSS’ = Free and open-source software
‘I’ = Inclusion
‘A’ = Accessibility

The name is pronounced as FOSS-ee-ah.

The name reflects on our broader objectives and goals in an accurate manner, clearing any misconceptions that may arise.

With that said, we hope the community achieve much more in terms of inclusion and accessibility in Indian free software ecosystem.

If you’re interested in what we are doing, help spreading the word to the world.

Let’s work together for an inclusive and accessible free software ecosystem!