SFD 2009 - Competitions & Presentations
This year, as a part of the Software Freedom celebrations, we
hosted a few competitions and gave a few informative presentations. Here is a
quick overview of them –
Essay Writing Competition
The competition was primarily to encourage participants to
explore various Open Source topics – technical and non-technical, and come up
with innovative articles. We had a huge response for this and had a tough time
selecting the best entries. We had various topics covering different perspectives
of the Open Source world. Below are a few of the articles which were really
good –
Open Source – The
article covered the basic philosophy of Open Source and gave an insight about
the economic perspective of OSS. It also emphasized the innovation which drives
Open Source products.
VirtualBox – The
article covered the salient features of the VirtualBox OSE. It gave a
bird’s-eye view of VirtualBox, with a focus on the technical strongholds of the
virtualization package. It also briefly described the advancements planned in
the development of VirtualBox.
Open Source
in the Cloud – This article merged the philosophy of Open Source
with the innovative paradigm of Cloud Computing. It gave an overview of what
Cloud Computing is and highlighted the contribution of Sun Microsystems Inc. to
the cloud.
Google
Chrome – The article was primarily about the Open Source web browser
from Google, Chrome. It focused on the prominent features of the browser and
gave a description of features like speed, stability, security, etc.
Top Ten
Linux Distributions – The article was mainly a mash-up of the Operating
Systems built on the Linux kernel. The author reviewed various Linux in the
article. Several flavors like Debian, Slackware, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSUSE,
Ubuntu, Gentoo, LinuxMint, PCLinuxOS and the CentOS were covered in this.
Open Source Quiz
This was one of the most exciting events of Software Freedom
Day this year. We wanted more participation of the audience this year, so as to
achieve this and bring up the spirit of Open Source in the audience; we planned
an Open Source Quiz.
To accommodate the entire audience, the quiz was conducted in
two stages – there was a preliminary round which had a questionnaire of around
20 questions. Almost everybody in the audience was interested in the quiz and came
forward for the prelims. After the prelims, the top 6 teams were invited for
the final round. The round had an oral questionnaire and consisted of around 6
sub-rounds.
Finally at the end of the final sub-round the highest and
second-highest scorers were declared the winners. There was a neck-to-neck
competition between the teams till the end and had the pulse of the crowd running.
Overall, the quiz was the show-stopper of the day. Hats off
to the quiz-masters! – Miss. Devika and Mr. Roopak Bhartee.
Software Freedom Day and Open Source
In order to convey the philosophy of Open Source and the
importance of Software Freedom Day to the audience, Mr. Vishwak gave a
presentation titled “Software Freedom Day and Open Source”.
The presentation emphasized on various concepts like –
- What is Open Source?
- Free Software
- Why the move to Open Source?
- Perception and participation
- Software Freedom Day
- Contribution of Sun
Microsystems Inc. to the Open Source world
- Sun’s Open Source strategy
- Overview of the Open Source technologies of Sun
- The session was very informative and the audience had a
through insight about the OSS world.
Sun Academic Initiative
To help the audience realize the importance of certifications
and inform them of the wonderful discounts available on various Sun
certifications, Mr. Laxman took up a presentation on “Sun Academic Initiative”.
The presentation focused on various topics like –
- Introduction to SAI
- Benefits of certifications
- The Java certification
hierarchy
- The Solaris certification
hierarchy
- The MySQL certification
hierarchy
- Various certifications
available as a part of SAI
- Registration process at SAI
- A step-by-step explanation of how to purchase a voucher and
avail the huge discounts.
The session was inspiring and there were several students who
were keen on taking up a certification exam. The various tutorials and the
learning programs of SAI were highlighted which created a confidence in the
interested students to pursue the certification.
On a whole, Software Freedom Day 2009 was a huge success wherein
the participants and the organizers enjoyed and learnt a lot.
Photos uploaded at –
http://picasaweb.google.com/osum.source
Presentations uploaded at –
