Avinash Joshi, a final-year B Tech student of Information Technology at the Amritapuri Campus, was chosen as the only student from India to attend the JavaOne 2009 Developer Conference in San Francisco, completely sponsored by Sun Microsystems.

Avinash (second from left), at JavaOne 2009.

See his blog entry on this.

School OS for NCERT

School OS is specially designed for school children by Shyam and Avinash (final year IT student), while interning with SUN, in collaboration with NCERT and IIT Delhi. The School OS is determined to spearhead the rise of open-source in the primary & secondary education system of India. The project was based at Sun Microsystems, Delhi office. They also went to the schools to install and test the operating system.

Contribution to Android - ADC2, 2009

Three students from 2nd year Computer Science, Rahul, Shilpa and Seshagiri, participated in the Android Developer Challenge 2(ADC2). They had made a game of "Tic Tac Toe" that runs on the Android platform. This is now an OpenSource project hosted at google code.
See the blog entry here.

Application porting to Open Solaris

Varun Rao and Adithya, 3rd year Computer Science Engg. students, made contributions to Open Solaris by porting applications. They worked on porting applications like "Parcellite", which is a clip board manager for Open Solaris.
See his blog entry on this.

First Non Sun employee to contribute to Open HA Cluster

Abhilash, a finaly year student of Computer Science Engg., contributed to a bug fix on Open HA Cluster by someone not employed by Sun!

GlassFish Examples and documentation

Archana N, a final year student of Computer Science Engg., made contributions to the Java EE/GlassFish documentation on how to secure the existing EJB converter example from the Java EE tutorial using mutual authentication. It will be included in an upcoming release of the Java EE tutorial.

The Sun's Code For Freedom Contest (2007)

Students of Amrita started contributing to opensource with the Code For Freedom 2007 contest organized by Sun Microsystems.

Amrita was conferred the ‘Champion University’ status contributing to 105 bug fixes and enhancements to Opensolaris, Apache Derby and Open Portal.

Ever since students have contributed to documentation projects enhancements and bug fixes.

IBM TGMC 2007

Our students won the IBM Great minds challenge (TGMC '07)using open source tools like eclipse and java. Abhilash, Sandeep, Deepthi and Vidya were part of the team that came 5th in TGMC '07.

Sun Club @ Amrita had conducted a National Level FOSS Conference - FOSSTER '09 at Amritapuri Campus on March 28th and 29th, this year. It was a great success. The event wae inaugural day by Mr. Nageshwara Rao, Sun’s Senior Site Director and Site Lead of its India Engineering Center. Tirthankar gave talk on Open HA Clusters and Mayuresh on Introduction to OpenSolaris.

We are going to conduct a FOSSTER '10. We would like to have full support from the community!

You can visit the Photo Gallery and also see the Press release/article

Fosster website: http://foss.amrita.ac.in

Here is the article published in our amrita website (http://amrita.edu/news2009/events-news/d-march/fosster.php):

When NASA decided to build Mars Exploration Rovers at a cost of several hundred million dollars, it chose free and open source software to power the robots. Launched on the Martian surface in 2003, the rovers are still going strong today. When Amrita decided to build a complex ERP software solution for its 1300-bed specialty hospital AIMS, the decision was taken to use a free and open source operating system and database. Free and open source software (FOSS) is now a world-wide movement; many computer companies are investing their resources to support the effort.

For example, take the case of Sun Microsystems. Its operating system Solaris, initially a proprietary product, is now also available in its open source version. Amrita University students have, in fact, contributed to the development of this product. Abhilash TG, a final year B Tech student at Amrita was the first person not employed by Sun to fix a bug in OpenSolaris’s Open High Availability Cluster. Senior executives from Sun Microsystems and other companies were in Amrita recently as resource persons and to participate in FOSSTER 09, Amrita’s first national conference organized to promote the use of free and open source software and technologies.

Conceived and organized by students, the conference had extensive support from the Amrita faculty and administration. Nearly a hundred non-Amrita delegates -- students, faculty members and professionals from industry -- in addition to hundreds from Amrita, participated. "We wanted to promote the awareness of FOSS and take steps to create a user base competent in the use of this technology," stated Avinash Joshi, the student coordinator. Avinash will graduate with an engineering degree from Amrita next year; he was the one to first float the idea about the conference a few months ago. "I am happy that we have met these objectives," he added.

Invited speakers included several eminent names from the FOSS community. The sessions were organized in two parallel tracks -- technology/education and culture/society -- and covered topics as varied as Linux, blogging, 3D games, movie-making, Drupal. The keynote address on the inaugural day by Mr. Nageshwara Rao, Sun’s Senior Site Director of its India Engineering Center, underscored the importance of FOSS in students’ lives in terms of employability, becoming part of a vibrant community, and learning and sharpening technical skills. The importance of FOSS in the world of emerging technologies was also highlighted.

Most sessions were house-full, delegates participated enthusiastically. "I learned so many new concepts; I am inspired to develop new skills now," said M. Sangeeta, B Tech student from Bannariamman Institute of Technology in Tamil Nadu, which sent nearly 90 student-delegates. "You all have done a great job!" added Yadu Nand B, from College of Engineering, Trivadrum. Several sessions were 'taught' by Amrita students and staff. These included two demos on installation and customization of GNU/Linux and doing everyday things with it; the sessions made migration to this operating system look easy. A session on building websites using the content management system, Drupal, was also conducted by Amrita students.

Multiple sessions on blogging were included. "I learned to blog late in my life," stated Mr. Chandrasekharan Nair, a retired jawan, now a farmer. Mr. Nair helps other farmers through his blog; he publishes correct rubber statistics and campaigns against genetically modified crops. "I am glad I could attend his talk," said Swapna Laxman, B Tech student. "The talk was moving and inspirational. Mr. Nair’s experience proves that age is not a bar for learning new technologies." Additional sessions on blogging were conducted by 'Uncle' Chandrakumar who contributes to community service through his blogs, Anand Subramaniam, a professional blogger and Arun Basil, a student, whose blogging has brought him fame and fortune.

Apoorv Singhal, a final year BBM student in Amrita, was the event manager for this event. "I want to make my career in Event Management, I learnt a lot from having the opportunity to plan for this event," he shared. "Initially there was a lot of turmoil but in the end, everything worked out well; the conference was a big success." "I am very happy with the response to the conference," added Dr. Sankaran, Principal of the School of Engineering, the chief patron of this initiative of the students. "The response exceeded our expectations. I am glad that the students came forward with the idea and we were able to provide them the needed support."

For more information about the conference, please see http://foss.amrita.ac.in

The Sun Club at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri Campus conducted the first ever fossquiz '09, a college wide FOSS contest.

To start with, we had the registration on 21^st and 22^nd of January. Registration desks were placed in the College corridors. The first day, we had 50 teams registered and on the second day, it shot up to 96 registrations. The registration was in teams of two.

The contest has three rounds:

1. The Preliminary Round - 29th January 2009
2. The Online Quiz - 11th February 2009
3. Grand Finale - 18th February 2009

Preliminary Round:

The Preliminary Round was held yesterday, the 29th of January. It was a huge success.

I have attached two pdf documents along with this post.

1. The Prelims questions
2. OSUM Registration

You must be wondering what is the "OSUM Registration" all about! Well, as my College is directly associated with Sun (via the Campus Ambassador Programme), they have provided us with OSUM, an online community portal where Schools and Universities all over thew world can meet at one place The URL is http://osum.sun.com. So we decided to make the maximum use of this portal so that the students get benifited by the services given to the Student Community by Sun!

The idea is simple. Each member of a team must register to OSUM, under "Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Kerala" University and joint the "Amrita OSUM group". In this group, there is a discussion forum "FOSS Quiz 09' - Team Name Contest" where each participant replies with their team number and their "Team Name" (one of the prizes). I have prepared a one-page document on how to go with the OSUM registration (OSUM Registration - pdf). Only once the team replies to the fourm, will they get qualified to the second round!

Now, for the Online Quiz round, thirty teams will qualify.

Prizes:

This contest is fully supported by Sun Microsystems and Sun Club @ Amrita. The prizes are for each participant

Grand Prize: 8GB pendrive
First Runner Up: 4GB pendrive
Second Runner Up: T-Shirts
Third Runner Up: Coffee Mug

There is a special category prize:
Best Team Name: Coffee Maker Mug

I will write about the Online quiz round once we are done with it.

PS: If you think, you can contribute questions, please do mail the questions to mail at avinashjoshi.co.in

Amrita OSUM

The Open-Source University Meet-Up (OSUM) is a student developer organization that educates its members about the latest open-source technologies in a fun and engaging way.

Through its on-campus activities, Sun sponsored OSUMs will receive access to technical information that can be shared with OSUM members via technical demonstrations. Additionally, online web courses, through the Sun Academic Initiative program will be available to the OSUM to provide an opportunity to get its members Sun Certified.

Sun has a social networking web site for all registered OSUMs. This online presence will enable the OSUM community to connect with other student developers worldwide. OSUMs can collaborate online in forums and community groups with other student developers who share their technical interests.

Overall, the OSUM is a one-stop community that will expand the educational training and social interaction of the up-and-coming tech-savvy student preparing to enter the global workforce. Find and join your university's OSUM today!

If your university does not have an OSUM, read below to learn how and why to create a new OSUM community on your campus.

The free and open source movement is emerging as the new world order in the technology sector across the world. Today, free and open source products such as Apache Web Server, OpenOffice.org and GNU/Linux have dwarfed several proprietary software products.

Sun Club @ Amrita is happy to announce the FOSS Quiz 09' contest where students of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri Campus. And there is more. We in turn will reward you for your valuable contributions towards the free and open source movement.

Important Dates
21 and 22 January 2009     Registration
28 January 2009                   Preliminary Round
29 January 2009                   Results of Preliminary Round announced
11 February 2009                Online Test for those selected in Preliminary Round
18 February 2009                The Grand Finale!

For more details, please visit: http://sunclub.amrita.ac.in/fossquiz

SFD @ Amrita was great! All of us had fun that day. There were a lot of participants from the Amrita mysore campus. It was held on 30^th Sept 2008

My first session was on on Insight Into Open Source:
     It was basically about what is open source, why is it so important, what you as students and developers can do in opensource and stuff like that. ( slide )

Second session was taken by my friend Varun. It was an intro to Ubuntu( ubuntu is an open source linux distribution).
     He spoke about ubuntu and how to contribute into ubuntu. ( slide )

SOFTWARE FREEDOM DAY CELEBRATION @ AMRITA

Most of the  students (1^st year, 2^nd year, 3^rd year) of my college are newbies to Open Source and the use/benefits of getting into and working with/on open source technologies!!!

So, my presentation of  SFD event was to focus on spreading awareness on various open source technologies(mainly Sun's open source technologies). It was a great experience.............

Sun Club, Amrita is celebrating the software freedom day on the 21st of September, 2008. All are welcome!

Date: 21st September 2008
Venue: E-Learning Centre

The events to be held on that day:

1. Install Fests: (This can fetch you goodies!!!)
         -> OpenSolaris Install Fest + Introduction to OpenSoalris
          -> Ubuntu - Get free CD's from Ubuntu

2. Talk on OpenSource Technologies

3. Basics into Java

4. Unix Basics

5. Installing and Customising Drupal: Create you own personal or professional site using Drupal CMS