Open Source India 2012 Takes FOSS to a New Level
The techie crowd at Asia’s largest open source convention shows how FOSS has evolved from being a niche concept to becoming mainstream. The future of technology lies in it being free and open source. This was the unanimous call raised by the participants and community members present at the event. FOSS is not just about making the source code of the software freely available; it’s also about opening up of the mind. Open Source India (OSI) 2012 concluded on this positive note, promising to come back next year with much more power and increased involvement from the community.
The three-day affair proved to be an apt platform for a reunion of the FOSS community and for the sharing of FOSS concepts. The informative sessions and quality audience at Asia’s largest open source convention proved how FOSS has evolved from being a niche concept to becoming mainstream.
The event witnessed a turnout of industry professionals, the community folk and a lot of newbies who came to get a closer look and to experience the FOSS environment. Open Source India 2012, which concluded at the NIMHANS Convention Center, Bengaluru, featured a lot of enlightening content.
Sharing his insight on OSI 2012, Ramesh Chopra, vice chairman, EFv Enterprises Pvt Ltd, said, “We are glad that we have been able to bring out a much bigger, better and improved OSI this year. We aimed at offering something for all techies, including software developers, IT managers and heads of IT departments, project managers, delivery experts, academia, and the open source community.”
Praising the event, Dr Pramod K Varma, chief architect and WHFKQRORJy DGYLVRU WR WKH UQLTXH ,GHQWLfiFDWLRQ AXWKRULWy RI ,QGLD, said, “India has become a huge consumer of open source technology. It’s about time that we also became a dominant contributor to the open source projects. I think OSI, being a leading open source event in India, is proving to be a great platform for encouraging the community and increasing participation in open source projects.”
The three-day convention witnessed the presence of over 70 speakers from the corporate world and the community. Companies like Oracle, Sify Technologies Limited, Intel, Acquia, HP, Dell and Microsoft came forward to show their support for open source technology at this event. Mandar Naik, director, Platform Strategy, Microsoft, said, “It is always exciting to be a part of OSI, and this year was no exception. The technology sessions were highly informative with some of the experts sharing their insights on a range of topics including mobile application development, the kernel and the cloud. I feel the conference proved to be a great opportunity to engage with technology enthusiasts from all over the country, ranging from app developers and open source contributors
to students. Nothing beats a great technology debate over a coffee with like-minded friends from the community.”
FOSS for developers
OSI has always been known as a platform where developers get a lot of opportunities to learn about futuristic technologies. This year’s convention had a special focus on Google’s Android RSHUDWLQJ VyVWHP, wKLFK wDV HVSHFLDOOy EHQHfiFLDO WR PRELOH DSS developers. Dushyantsinh Jadeja, software business manager, Intel- APAC, talked about ‘Building next generation applications for Android on Intel architecture’ – a session that was much appreciated by the attendees. He said, “Android is the most preferred platform these days. The key behind making successful Android applications is to run them seamlessly on various hardware.” His talk focused on how Intel’s Overlay allows OEMs to customise applications on Android.
vet another interesting discussion was initiated by Anantharaman P N, director, Engineering, Adobe Systems, Bengaluru. He talked about ‘Building compelling mobile applications--the open source way’. Anantharaman threw light on topics like compelling mobile applications, the relationship between open source technology and mobiles, the open source landscape and how Adobe’s EdgeCode is helpful in building such apps.
Other sessions that proved helpful to developers included ‘Kernel performance tuning’ by Varad Gupta, Keen & Able &RPSXWHUV 3YW LWG, 1Hw DHOKL; ‘DHYHORSLQJ RIflLQH :HE applications using HTML5 local storage’ by Janardan Revuru, project manager, Hewlett Packard, Bengaluru; ‘Test driven development and automation’ by Mahesh Salaria, technology evangelist, Kayako Support Systems, Gurgaon; and ‘Testing Web services’ by Dibya Prakash, technology consultant.
FOSS for IT managers
OSI normally witnesses a great turnout of IT managers, who attend WKH HYHQW WR fiQG RXW DERXW WKH ODWHVW WHFKQRORJy VROXWLRQV WKDW FDQ EH implemented in their organisations. This year was no different, as IT managers and CXOs from across the nation attended the convention. A track called ‘Cloud Day’ was a major hit amongst one and all.
Gaurav Agarwal of Sify Technologies Limited shared his insight on the topic ‘Opening the doors of the cloud’. He talked about how the cloud and open source come together to create innovation for customers, who can leverage the combined offering. The key takeaway was how a cloud service provider and the open source community can together create business propositions. He touched upon how the cloud can help the open source community at every stage -- right from the incubation stage, where users want to experiment with an idea and explore flHxLEOH PRGHOV, WR wKHQ WKHy UHDFK WKH LQflHxLRQ PRGH wLWK services stabilised, running and growing.
Lux Rao, country lead, Cloud Consulting Solutions, HP India, Bengaluru, touched upon a very interesting topic amongst cloud users: ‘Public, private or hybrid: What is your cloud?’ He talked on how an organisation ought to choose the best cloud solution.
The third day of the event saw an interesting track on ‘OpenStack’. Atul Jha of CSS Corp, who managed the session, ensured that there was something for all OpenStack users, be it the enterprises or the developers. Kavit Munshi from Aptira spoke about OpenStack’s identity and access management component, Keystone. Munshi emphasised that, “The community in India needs to focus on getting SMEs and students interested and involved with OpenStack. The community needs to assist developers and administrators to familiarise themselves with the technology with the help of the meetup group by organising demos and workshops.”
FOSS for everyone
Gone are the days when open source technology was only for the techies. It has now become equally popular amongst regular technology users, and how! FOSS is now being used by everyone, be it the enterprises or the educational institutions. OSI 2012 did not miss out on touching upon the FOSS needs of the common user. Right from discussions on topics like ‘The past, present and future of open source’ to ‘How to contribute to FOSS without programming’, this jam-packed track covered some thought-provoking issues.
Any discussion on the Indian open source community is incomplete without the mention of Indian LINUX User Groups. OSI had representatives from the popular Chennai and Kolkata LUGs, apart from legendary contributors like Raj Mathur and Kingsley John. The group discussion also incorporated the policy issues that need to be dealt with to improve adoption of FOSS in public bodies.
‘FOSS for academia’ was yet another session which was looked forward to. Charles Jayawardena, business consultant, Virtusa Corp, who came all the way from Colombo, Sri Lanka, delivered a talk on the ‘Akura open source school management system’, which is being deployed by his company in Sri Lanka. His talk demonstrated how RSHQ VRXUFH WHFKQRORJy FDQ HDVLOy fiQG SODFH LQ WKH HGXFDWLRQ VSDFH.
K Prabhakaran, engineer, NRCFOSS, AU-KBC Research Centre, Anna University, Chennai, talked about a very successful model for deploying open source in academia, entitled, ‘Automation and Networking of 33 public libraries using FOSS in Tamil Nadu’.
Hands-on experience
Open Source India believes in sharing practical knowledge as much as sharing ideologies. Apart from knowledge-packed technology sessions, there were hands-on workshops held by industry experts on HTML5, SQL, OpenLDAP and JBoss, among others. An interesting workshop on ‘App development for Android’ gained a lot of traction on Day 1 of the event. Dibya Prakash, who conducted the workshop, talked about why developers should choose Android, the basics of the Android platform, the development environment set-up, Android building blocks, the Android user interface, the resources framework, storage options, accessing Phone Components and publishing an application.
A live stream of updates was provided on Twitter and Facebook, regarding the conference. This helped everyone stay updated on the discussions and sessions happening.
Celebrating the spirit of FOSS, OSI aims to be back with greater enthusiasm and more information-packed sessions next year.