GCompris co-owner Timothée Giet (extreme right) visited Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) on Tuesday. KITE CEO K. Anvar Sadath (centre) is also seen.
Timothée Giet, a French graphic artist, co-administrator of the famous free educational software for education “GCompris” and an active contributor to Krita software, visited Kerala Education Infrastructure and Technology (KITE) here on Tuesday.
GCompris is the primary software used in ‘Kalipetty’ (Play Box), an ICT textbook developed under the guidance of KITE for students of classes I to IV in Kerala schools.
Mr. Giet, who shared insights on similar free software repositories used in France and Italy, noted that the unique and widespread use of free software in schools in Kerala is a global model.
Currently, only Malayalam, apart from Sanskrit, has a large GCompris repository among Indian languages.
KITE CEO K. Anvar Sadath said that KITE will make customized Tamil and Kannada packages available for upstreaming to GCompris.
GCompris, which includes around 200 games, is suitable for children aged two to 10 years to develop skills in areas such as numeracy, letters, science, geography and reading through play.
As it is available under a Free Software License, KITE has fully adapted it to match the state curriculum and used it in its operating system and ICT textbooks.
Mr. Geet’s wife Aishwarya KK, a native of Kannur district, is a Free Software Consultant and Embedded Systems Engineer in France. She shared that her early experience with free software through the IT@School project paved the way for a successful career.
Mr. Giet’s visit concluded with KITE’s commitment to take the initiative to adapt the new client-server version of GCompris, which works without internet access, for applications with children with special needs, according to a KITE statement.
Published – 28 October 2025 20:00 IST
