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First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference
Hi, The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) is organising a one day Debian Conference on 20th August, 2005. The conference is mainly to create a platform for Debian Developers in India and create an environment for more contributions to Debian Project from India. I am posting this email on behalf of the organisers. All aspiring developers and users are welcome for the conference. The details I got from IIIT-B are posted at http://people.debian.org/~rkrishnan/debconf-india.pdf -- 73 - Ramakrishnan, VU3RDD (Log in to post comments)
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 2:19 UTC (Sat) by fjf33 (subscriber, #5768) [Link] It's funny, I was visiting Infosys' Bangalore campus last week and got to talk to one of the founders. He started talking about the social responsibility of the company and himself so I asked him if they were doing anything, personally or as a company regarding Linux. His answer was: "I know exactly what you are talking about but until there is a demand we are not doing anything." The most telling thing however was his face, I don't think he expected a question like that, he looked like a deer caught in the headlight.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 6:43 UTC (Sat) by gnu (subscriber, #65) [Link] It's even more funny that out of 1000 000 000 odd people there only very very few free software developers. And out of all the software developers (free and non-free) very few of them have computers at home and out of those who have computers, very few of them have internet connection.
My point is that programming is not a fun activity for most of these so called "software engineers". It's just another means to make money.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 15, 2005 2:42 UTC (Mon) by rganesan (subscriber, #1182) [Link] > It's even more funny that out of 1000 000 000 odd people there only very> very few free software developers.
It's unfair to compare with the number of free software developers with the population of India. Less than 1% probably even have access to a computer. However, considering the number of software developers in India, I have to concede that the number of active contributors or even the number of people who know about free software is quite low. Fortunately this is changing. Linux and other free software is being increasingly used in many colleges and awareness is increasing every day. I expect the situation to considerably improve a couple of years down the line. This conference is one of the ways to increase the awareness.
> And out of all the software developers
This fortunately is no longer true. PCs and broadband access at home is pretty affordable now. Middle income households with kids going to school are increasingly buying PCs and getting an internet connection at home.
> My point is that programming is not a fun activity for most of these so
Sadly this is true. However, this is not a India specific problem. But, like I said, situation is definitely improving in India.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 8:46 UTC (Sat) by riteshsarraf (subscriber, #11138) [Link] Boy! You made that guy uncomfortable.Lot of companies make noise, "We support Free Software", "We have a complete team" blah blah blah. But in truth nothing like that. Forget Infosys, I'll give Intel's example. An Intel representative claimed in a seminar that they support Free Software and do a lot of work before the launch of their product in regard to support Linux. Asking her why Centrino support in the Linux kernel wasn't done early before the launch of the product left her flabbergasted and I got the infamous corporate reply, "We'll take it offline!" :-)
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 14:09 UTC (Sat) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link] What is the Infosys context here? This event is at the Indian Institute of Information Technology!
About Infosys...
The facts you have at hand seem to clash with the ones I have. Maybe we should compare notes.
Infosys has the single largest formal FOSS user group in India (InfyLUG), numbering in the thousands.
They have a *huge* FOSS lab, where they are constantly working on stuff, testing, improving etc. And not just Linux, but in *BSD, Cygwin and many other FOSS apps and technologies.
And they eat their own dogfood - they deploy FOSS stuff wherever they can, and advise their clients to do so, too.
Infosys encourages its developers to get involved in FOSS projects and activities, and *doesn't* insist that developers put in Infosys' company name when they contribute something.
They cater to HUGE clients who *demand* FOSS technologies, methodologies, licenses, etc. and therefore Infosys constantly runs workshops and seminars inhouse to educate its developers and managers on these things.
Nandan Nilekani, Gopalkrishnan, Narayan Murthy and other top level people are fairly FOSS savvy, and support FOSS at all levels.
Infosys groks FOSS like few other companies that I have seen. Sure, they are in the business of making money (and are extremely good at it), and sure, not everyone in the company may be as clued in on FOSS as everyone else (they do cater to clients using MS technologies as well, including Microsoft itself), but that doesn't take away anything from their FOSS related activities.
They were a top sponsor of India's largest FOSS conference last year (http://linux-bangalore.org/2004).
Among other things they hosted a lunch for all the speakers of the event at Infosys, where they also gave them a guided tour of the facilities, including the FOSS labs, and had a discussion with people working on FOSS technologies in Infosys, including kernel development.
My reason for pointing out this factoid is that the speakers included people like Harald Welte (Netfilter, GPLviolations.org), Brian Behlendorf (Apache), Scott Wheeler (KDE), Werner Almesberger, Andi Klein, Deepak Saxena and others.
So you don't have to take my word for anything - I am sure they can tell you all about it.
Which Infosys founder did you speak to, exactly? Maybe I can help clear up this misunderstanding.
Disclosure: I am one of the organisers of the Linux Bangalore conferences.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 15:48 UTC (Sat) by fjf33 (subscriber, #5768) [Link] I believe it was Narayana Murthy but I had to look up the name to get a face so that is not too reliable. What you say is more in line with what I expected, it may be that I turned a conversation into an area he didn't expect given we were a group that did not mention Linux or FOSS at all during the open questions and I only asked it from him during tea afterwards. He was actually talking about his personal involvement in the community (general not FOSS) and how much social responsibility Indian corporations and Indians in general have which I can say I did see and very much appreciate. He was actually talking about how he donated a certain amount to a transplant clinic to bring the costs down to the point that transplants were available to the poorer groups. His answer to my question was that he was aware of what I mentioned but that it did not make commercial sense at that point but that they would support it when it did. I am paraphrasing since it was about 2 weeks ago. If I came through too negative I am sorry I didn't mean to. What really suprised me was his look when I mentioned it more than anything and I may have read more than I should. Thanks for the background info.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 16:39 UTC (Sat) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link] I guess the real story lies in the question that was asked, I guess. NM is extremely fair, and knows just how big a role FOSS already plays in his company's operations.
I suspect some crossed wires, or a misunderstood question somewhere, because he wouldn't say that they aren't doing anything in this space when I know that they were (in 2004 itself) addressing a market estimated to be hundreds of millions of US$ in size - a pure FOSS oriented market.
You sure you didn't ask him when he is going to start using Linux on his desktop or something? It would be hilarious, and *would* catch him in an uncomfortable position, because he once modelled for a Windows XP ad. :)
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 16:43 UTC (Sat) by fjf33 (subscriber, #5768) [Link] Nah, but that sure would've been funny. I think I mentioned the Linux based sub $300 computer that an Indian institute had developed (IIT?).
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 19, 2005 9:41 UTC (Fri) by lawgon (guest, #31936) [Link] thrilled to know that infosys is into FOSS - can you give the URL where one can evaluate/download their FOSS products?
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 19, 2005 18:17 UTC (Fri) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link] A "lab" does not produce products, it is used to test and understand stuff, and improve performance by tweaking parameters, etc.
"Contribution" is in their personal capacities - Infosys people are involved in many projects, but unlike some companies, they are not forced to tag their company's name to the contributions. The preferred place for their work is Sourceforge.
For a sample, check out http://mir-os.sourceforge.net/
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 8:34 UTC (Sat) by sachinrase (guest, #31803) [Link] http://people.debian.org/~rkrishnan/debconf-india.pdf
Has title in Properies as M$ Windows word ? why why ?
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 8:49 UTC (Sat) by riteshsarraf (subscriber, #11138) [Link] Good one. :-)But are Free Software people restricted to use Microsoft ?
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 8:51 UTC (Sat) by riteshsarraf (subscriber, #11138) [Link] Sorry!Restricted to not use Microsoft
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 9:06 UTC (Sat) by paivakil (guest, #31804) [Link] That was because the guy who created the pdf (probably at the host institution, which does not appear to be too GNU/Linux friendly) used a non-Free software.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 10:06 UTC (Sat) by gnu (subscriber, #65) [Link] > Has title in Properies as M$ Windows word ? why why ?
Should you really care what editors others use ? I don't. There are more important issues to solve in this World than looking at what others do and make issues out of it.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 13, 2005 17:42 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] > Has title in Properies as M$ Windows word ? why why ?
>Should you really care what editors others use ? I don't. There are more >important issues to solve in this World than looking at what others do and >make issues out of it.
Sure there are more important issues.. like AIDs or starvation or whatnot.. but they don't realy enter the discussion much when your talking about software.
Thing is is that when your hear PR from a company or orginization it's always best to do some more investigating to try to figure out how full of crap they are. For instance I went to novells website downloaded a pdf describing the virtues of Linux over Windows, except the PDF itself was made using MS Office and Acrobat distiller.
So it's something that makes you go 'hmmmmm', maybe they are trying to give me a line of crap for marketting reasons, right?
The PDF was originally authored in Windows, definately. PScript5.dll is a postscript driver file... So what you do if your using Word or whatnot and don't want to pay for a Adobe Distiller license you setup a fake postscript printer. You send the output to a file, collect the resulting postscript file and send that to a pdf conversion tool. Or maybe it works like that when you setup a CUPS or lpd server as a network printer to catch ps files from windows clients and turn that into PDFs. It's quite handy actually, and much cheaper then paying for Adobe and such. There is a handy little tool called ps2pdf that does it well.
In the PDF file itself I can't find any reference to word, microsoft, office, or anything else. Usually those types of things leave a mark on the file.. like it'll stick in the version and name of MS Office or whatnot.. so I am not discounting them using OO.org or Abiword, but I think that it's likely that it's either MS Word from Office, or just plain old wordpad.
On my Debian unstable machine gs-gpl is at version 8.15...
~$ pdfinfo debconf-india.pdf
So I don't think it's that bad. Probably just a secretary using a version of W2k, 98, or XP that doesn't know how to use Linux.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 15, 2005 14:23 UTC (Mon) by umesh (guest, #3692) [Link] Correction this is conference is not organized by Indian Institute of Technology Banglore. In fact such a thing does not exist. This is organized by Indian Institute of Science, Banglore.
When I was at IIT-Madras, there is a big push for Linux on campus (both for development and use). It seems that the push has since dies down. I have not seen any credible contribution from any IIT to Linux. I just can not figure out why. They have talent, time and money to contribute for sure.
For some reason IISc is more interested then IIT in Linux development.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 16, 2005 3:58 UTC (Tue) by rganesan (subscriber, #1182) [Link] This is organized by Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore as it says clearly in the announcement. Please note the "Information" in the name. Please don't issue corrections without verifying the facts. Thanks.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 16, 2005 14:59 UTC (Tue) by umesh (guest, #3692) [Link] I stay corrected. However the second part of the comment is still very valid.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 17, 2005 9:46 UTC (Wed) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link] ROTFL - it isn't the IISc, either. The IISc has never conducted a Linux/FOSS event per se - you are confusing it with our event, which was held in the IISc auditoriums, but is conducted by Linux Bangalore.
This year, the event has moved away from the IISc, and has also been renamed: it is called "FOSS.IN", the location is the Bangalore Palace, the duration is four days.
More details coming up at http://foss.in/2005
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 17, 2005 14:53 UTC (Wed) by umesh (guest, #3692) [Link] So what you are saying that I was unnecessarily nice to IISc and the criticism should have included IITs and IISc.
First Annual Bangalore Debian Developer Conference Posted Aug 20, 2005 4:11 UTC (Sat) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link] Actually, what I am saying is that you probably aren't in a position to judge either the IITs or the IISc, based on published policies. It isn't the institution that "pushes" FOSS, it is the users. The institution just uses what users want.
In the case of the IISc and the IITs, the use of FOSS technologies and products is tremendous, as it is in most academic institutions in India. In fact, it is because of this that India carried the tag "Unix county" since the 1980s.
The best thing an institution can do is *not* "promote/push/advocate/enforce FOSS" - the best thing it can (and should) do is simply to get out of the way when users want to use/adopt something. BTW - the same applies to governments.
And the IISc and IITs have been pretty good at that.
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