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
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."
Tuesday Mar 25, 2008
Bhavna Singh is providing in-house process expertise for open source.
When a product is planning to go open source, there are a lot of things to take care of. License restrictions and infringements are just two of them. How would you like if somone provides the required help to walk you through the whole process? Bhavna Singh provides this much needed expertise for IEC product teams. Hear Bhavna talk about open source review process.
Open source is the ideal development and business model for today's massively connected Participation Age economy. Why? Because it offers freedom to every user and developer by encouraging genuinely collaborative innovation. Open source software can lower customer barriers to: access, switching costs, and greater value achieved in an environment that allows for increased participation and competition. Companies gain compensation for their innovations by building on the contributions of others. Click here for more information.
Monday Mar 24, 2008
I got a chance to talk to Ganesh Hiregoudar, Program Manager for CA (Campus Ambassador) program about Sun SPOT kits. For starters, this wikipedia entry on Sun SPOTs might help.
More on Sun SPOTs and CAs:
- Currently, all CAs in India have Sun SPOT kits
- A few Sun SPOT kits are used for open source initiative programs and IEC lab "green" initiative
- Demos using Sun SPOT kits were showcased in Sun Tech Days, including Robocar.
- CA tech leads have created a module on Sun SPOTs for training
- Discussion held with IIT professors on leveraging Sun SPOT kits for student projects
Monday Mar 24, 2008
Seen in the IEC lobby:
A poster inviting Sun engineers to attend open source mela!
Open source projects are primarily community driven, although companies may make commercial products from these projects. Open source projects encourage everyone in the community to contribute their knowledge and expertise and, in turn, everyone in the community benefits. For example, when the community contributes enhancement requests or submits bug reports, fixes or enhancements are implemented to improve the tools, and everyone benefits. Example: Because NetBeans is open source, you can influence what happens to the IDE and the direction for NetBeans' future growth. Click here for more information.
Monday Mar 24, 2008
An interesting talk on NetBeans awaits those who are
planning to attend the open source mela. This talk on NetBeans
(intended primarily for engineers) by Rohan Ranade covers:
- NetBeans platform and architecture aspects
- Using NetBeans to build applications
This talk will be followed by a demo on checking out source code, compiling source code, and writing enhancements.
Rohan
has been working on the NetBeans platform for the last 1.5 years
primarily on the XML editing aspects. Rohan is a self-made NetBeans
evangelist.
Monday Mar 24, 2008
A
logo/caption contest was organized as part of the open source mela.
Nivedita Kamat ran the contest on behalf of IEC. A good number of
entries were received, but it was extremely difficult to finalize the
best entry. There were a lot of responses a day before the contest close date. The name of the winner along with the list of captions will
be published soon. Watch this space for updates.
The contest announcement:
It's the perfect time for you to get those gray cells working! The IEC Open Source Mela 2008 is looking for it's very own Brand Guru!!! We bring to you the Caption and Logo competition! All you need to do is envisage a logo OR design a caption for the IEC Open Source Mela 2008. What we expect is not the run of the mill ideas but beyond the obvious and the known. So send in your ideas for the Caption and Logo competition and the best ones will be recognized and rewarded.
Thursday Mar 20, 2008
Meet the IEC HR team.
Did you think only software groups are gearing up for the open source mela? Well, HR is getting ready for the mela too. But why? In fact, HR is setting up stalls to talk to IEC engineers about hiring, internal job transfers, job statisfaction and so many other things that are closely related to working at Sun. It is an effort from HR to reach out to the ever busy techies. Only an event that is as powerful as the open source mela can bring the IEC geeks from their desks to the mela venue. So, HR is cashing in on the opportunity to reach out to the employees.
Thursday Mar 20, 2008
Louis Suarez-Potts, Community Manager for OpenOffice
will talk about his favorite subject (OpenOffice) next week at the Open
Source Mela. Louis won't be in India, but instead deliver his talk
using video conference. For starters, OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform
and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible
with all other major office suites, the product is free to download,
use, and distribute. You can download OpenOffice here.
The mission statement of OpenOffice.Org is to create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. Click here for more information.
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