Wednesday Mar 26, 2008
Two great talks wrapped up the mela today:
- "Digital Colonization and Open Source Technologies" by Dr. Jaijit Bhattacharya
- "Why free and open source software?" by Prof. Andrew Lynn
Both the talks offered a whole new perspective to think about free and open source software. The talks focused on using open source software to reach out to more people. Dr. Jaijit's talk covered patents and intellectual property with lot of interesting anecdotes. Prof. Andrew talked about why open source is just great. These presentations generated a lot of audience questions too.
This was followed by Open Source TV and "lucky-dip". Two lucky winners walked away with iPod Shuffle. Enjoy the closing moments of open source mela right here:
Wednesday Mar 26, 2008
Welcome to day 2 of open source mela. Day 2 started with a presentation from Joe George on "What every Sun employee should know about open source?". The presentation covered basics of open source and also addressed common myths about open source. Building and interacting with communities were also part of the presentation. The audience had lot of questions on legal/copyright aspects.
Some pictures from day 2:
Wednesday Mar 26, 2008
Here are the winning open source captions:
- "Source-related" (contributed by
Gopalakrishnan Sankaran): Freedom Matters, May the source be you, Let
the source be you, May the source be yours, Let the source be yours
- Contributed by Amol Chiplunkar: "Open Source Mela, IEC 2008... a chance to find your lost siblings"
- Contributed by Saurabh Vyas:
- Come all! Join the bandwagon of open source and add in your bit for this participation age!!
- OpenSource Mela - Calling all the hackers of the IEC: experience, explore & share
List of prize winners:
- Gopal Krishnan Sankaran
- Venkatraman C S
- Rohan Ranade
List of consolation prize winners:
- Srinivas K G
- Saurabh Vyas
- Amol Chiplunkar
Tuesday Mar 25, 2008
Mad-ad contest winners. Thanks to Sreelakshmi Padmanabhan for providing the information.
- First Prize: The Unknowns (Saurabh Vyas, Mayuresh Nirhali, Madhu KR)
- Second Prize: JavaFX Frontiers (Rakesh Menon,Srinivas Mandalika, Nizamudeen K
- Consolation prize: Voyagers (Vijay Upreti, Satyajit Tripati,Deepak Raja)
Acrostic puzzle winners. Thanks to Swathi Devulapalli for providing the information.
- First Prize: Rahimunnisa M
- Consolation Prizes: Sanjay Gianchandani, Sujit Nair, Gopalakrishnan Sankaran
Congratulations to all the prize winners!
Tuesday Mar 25, 2008
The prize distribution ceremony at the end of day 1 was a gala event. Watch this space for the names of winners. But you can enjoy the photos for now :-)
Tuesday Mar 25, 2008
If you have been wondering who got so creative with the open source mela posters and e-mails, meet the creative engineers of IEC - Pallavi Madhusudhan & Manu Samuel. It's not an easy task to design these posters or come up with e-mails soliciting participation. These posters have to convey the essence of open source, and at the same time must be catchy too. They had to fit this task in between their regular work and deliver them at short notice. Thank you so much, Pallavi and Manu!
Take a look at one of the posters they designed. This poster invites contributions for the mad-ads contest.
Tuesday Mar 25, 2008
The second half of Day 1 is currently underway. Usually, enthusiasm dies down post-lunch. But just the opposite seems to be happening in IEC. Highlights from the second half of the day:
- Gamers queueing up to play Quake III Arena
- Big crowd to learn more about Sun SPOT
- Sessions filled up with just standing space for late-comers
- High level of participation in contests and quizzes
It's a packed schedule on both the days for IEC engineers.
Tuesday Mar 25, 2008
This blog captures just 33% of the excitement! A bird's eye view of what happened so far. There are at least three parallel sessions going on at any point of time, so I am trying to report from what I attended. This is just 33% of the excitement.
Day 1 of the open source mela started at 10am today. KNR gave a presentation on the open source efforts going on in IEC. He talked about the "open source culture" and the importance of thinking and being in the open. The hall started filling in as soon as KNR started to talk. This was followed by Harish's talk on open source technologies.
At 11am, there was an interesting talk by SaiSatish Vedam on "Architectures, Code, and Law". Sai talked about copyrights, controlled environments, and coding. In a proprietary software environment, there is an inherent copyright associated with the code we create (and the comments on the source code). The software industry is at a crossroads in terms of our understanding of the legal aspects of coding. This is not so straightforward unlike other industries. A lot of real-life examples helped the audience relate to what Sai talked about. Open source software comes to the software industry's rescue in these cases. In the ground floor conference room, Suvendu Ray talked about Sun's open source initiative and gave tips on how to participate in the open source programs. Incidentally, Suvendu is also one of the "think tanks" of Sun's open source agenda in IEC.
The 4th floor yoga room and cafeteria were abuzz with activity. Participants tried their luck on "how much do you know about Sun" quizzes and got a chance to talk to the engineers working on today's bleeding edge technologies.
Tuesday Mar 25, 2008
The open source mela begins today. The IEC Times carried a news article this morning.
Tuesday Mar 25, 2008
Prof. Andrew Lynn of JNU, a very active crusader of open source will be in IEC to talk about "Why is open source important?".
As per Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, "No amount of fear can stop the rise of free media, or free software (they are the same, after all). The community is vastly more innovative and powerful than a single company. And you will never turn back the clock on elementary school students and developing economies and aid agencies and fledgling universities - or the Fortune 500 - that have found value in the wisdom of the open source community. Open standards and open source software are literally changing the face of the planet - creating opportunity wherever the network can reach."
Thursday Mar 20, 2008
An interesting aspect to coding that most of us don't think of. Can there be a legal aspect for coding? Certainly yes, says SaiSatish Vedam. Here is more on the topic, in his own words:
It
is now imperative for us software engineers to understand that
the lines between the tech code we write and the "legal code"
(Intellectual Property) is blurred. Architectures created by the code
we write embeds certain fundamental principles and values.
Increasingly intrusive changes in the "legal code" and vice-versa
are undermining these fundamental principles and changing the
basic characteristic of architectures. The talk aims to provide
this understanding using some real life stories. The talk attempts to
make a case for open source software being a key factor in a
present world where "code is law".
Thursday Mar 20, 2008
We are fortunate to have Dr. Jaijit Bhattacharya, Country Director of Government Strategy for Sun Microsystems, talk to us on "Digital Colonization and Open Source Technologies". The talk will focus on the economics of global IPR regime and the importance of quickly adopting open source technologies.
Besides his strategic role for Sun, Dr. Jaijit is Adjunct Faculty at IIT Delhi, Vice President of IOTA, Government of West Bengal. He is responsible for the creation of the next generation of solutions for governments, based on open standards. He has numerous research papers to his credit in leading journals and conferences. He is the author/co-author of three books on e-Governance including the first book on e-Governance in India, ‘Government On-line – Opportunities and Challenges’ released by former president of India - Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
Thursday Mar 20, 2008
The IEC open source committee is organizing a series of contests for Sun's enthusiastic geeks. The banners and e-mails inviting contest entries are already out. IEC engineers are busy trying their hands at these contests. The passion for open source in IEC needs to be seen to be believed.
The following contests are being organized:
- Mad-ads
- Open source poster/logo/caption
- Acrostic puzzle
- Open source gaming
At the end of the day, contests are an opportunity to learn and get better at things. To quote Geoffrey Gaberino:
"The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else.”
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