2004.02_Linux Bangalore 2003-a Report on the Largest Open Source Event in India.pdf

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Linux Bangalore 2003

India is Coming

It’s the largest Open Source event in the second-largest country on the planet,

and it happens early each December in South Asia’s most IT-savvy city,

Bangalore. 2003 saw a growing but also more predictable “Linux Bangalore”

show than the two years before. BY FREDERICK NORONHA

Figure 1: Take your pick: A youngster takes a clo-

ser look at the program, which saw some 96 talks

ment with Free/Libre and Open

Source Software (FLOSS) is grow-

ing fast, Linux Bangalore 2003 [1] was

held from December 2–4. “We had some

1,500 participants. It was difficult to

count. But going by the meals eaten, the

total number of delegates, speakers and

exhibitors exceeded that figure,” this

year’s event coordinator Kartik N

reported.

“There were more speakers than last

year. Registration was faster. Our food

counter worked well (except on the first

day). One shortcoming, if you could call

it that, was that there were too many

talks,” said Mahendra, himself a former

coordinator of this event, which had the

Government of India as its principal

sponsor this time.

Atul Chitnis, an engineer of mixed

Indo-German parentage and one of the

high-profile Open Source business-evan-

gelists here, was smug: “96 talks (over

three days). I’ve been told that’s some

kind of a world record. At any point of

time, every one (of the five halls, with

seating capacity of 60 to 750 seats) had

some talk or other going on.”

The audience was mainly comprised of

programmers and students. In the

absence of other national events of this

size, Bangalore also pulls in FLOSS enthu-

siasts from other Indian states, including

user-groups elsewhere in Karnataka, the

tourist region of Goa, the former French

colony of Pondicherry, India’s southern-

most province of Tamil Nadu, and even

the northern parts of the country.

of being upset with the short-shrift given

to free software, the GNU project and the

like, and toyed with the idea of having a

conference of their own. But organizing

anything of this gargantuan size is a

huge effort. All the same, India’s first

Open Source magazine „Linux For You“,

has just announced plans for an event

called Linux Asia [3] to be held early

2004 in the national capital New Delhi.

In general, India’s involvement with

FLOSS is slowly making waves. Promi-

nent at the venue was a statement by

former-scientist turned Indian President

APJ Abdul Kalam, talking about the

potential of Open Source in India. Like-

wise, people of South Asian origin seem

to be playing an increasing role in pro-

moting FLOSS in as diverse parts of the

globe as Singapore, Malaysia, the Middle

East, London, and the rest of Europe

(Rishab Aiyer Ghosh’s FLOSS study has

been widely noted in the Netherlands,

while Niranjan Rajani [4] headed the

team which studied the role of FLOSS in

the developing world).

Hence, things look promising even if

proprietary software is hitting back hard,

by trying to capture large contracts in the

governmental and educational sectors, in

a country that could tilt the proprietary-

versus-FLOSS debate decisively in one

way or the other.

Talks, talks, talks

This year, the participation of high-

profile foreign speakers seemed to be

on the up. Speakers from overseas

included the lively and jovial Miguel de

Icaza (Mono/Ximian), Rasmus Lerdorf

(PHP), Nat Friedman (Ximian), Jeremy

Zawodny (MySQL/Yahoo), Bdale Garbee

(Debian), and Harald Welte (iptables).

Former Netscape employee Sudhakar

‘Thaths’ Chandrashekhar, a co-founder

of the Linux India movement [2], which

helped network spo-

radic groups, was back

from Kenya. A year

of volunteering spent

there – and this is is

unusual for most Indian

youth – made for an

interesting story.

Others have been

trying to build alterna-

tives or competition to

the Bangalore show.

Last year, GNU/Linux

enthusiasts from the

country’s commercial

center of Mumbai

(Bombay) showed signs

■

INFO

Figure 2: The Simputer works and has now reached the market

[1] Linux Bangalore 2003:

http://linux-bangalore.org/2003

[2] Linux India: http://www.linux-india.org/

[3] Linux Asia 2004:

http://www.linuxasia2004.com/

[4] C. Martin:„Fits the World“,

Linux Magazine Issue 33, p84

February 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

Linux Bangalore 2003

A t a time when India’s involve-

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