Linux draws big numbers to Bangalore

Frederick Noronha / Bangalore

For the third year running, India’s Silicon Valley drew a 1500-strong crowd at a technology event that’s turning into a pilgrimage for both neo-converts and worshippers bowing at the altar of Open Source.

A youngster takes a closer look at the packed programme, which saw some 96 talks spread over three days Photo: Frederick Noronha

Called Linux-Bangalore, this is the largest Open Source event in India, and happens early each December in South Asia’s most IT-savvy city, Bangalore. It came this year at a time when India’s involvement with Free/Libre and Open Source Software is being closely watched across the globe—opportunities and challenges to the alternative-to-Windows GNU/Linux computer operating system are growing fast across the country, and Indians themselves are increasingly playing a more-noticeable role in world of Linux.

Some 96 talks went into this year’s brew. “We had around 1,500 participants. It was difficult to count. But going by the meals eaten, the total number of delegates, speakers and exhibits exceeded that figure,” LB2003 event coordinator Kartik N told Linux Magazine here.

“One shortcoming, if you could call it that, was that there were too many talks,” said Mahendra, a former coordinator of this event. Atul Chitnis, a high-profile Open Source business-evangelist here, was smug: “96 talks (over three days). I’ve been told that’s some kind of a world record. At any point of time, every hall (of the five halls, with seating capacity of 60 to 750 seats each) has some or the other talk going on.”

Hewlett-Packard, Novell (which recently bought over prominent GNU/Linux brands Ximian and SuSE), and local Bangalore firm Exocore Consulting were sponsors at the event. India’s central government, which has earned some flak for appearing unsure of its support to Free/Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS), also came in with sponsorship, as in the past year.

Much of the crowd comprised of programmers and students, as registration figures indicated. In the absence of other national events of this size—both in the Open Source and Free Software world—this event also pulls in FLOSS enthusiasts from other Indian states. These included user-groups elsewhere in Karnataka, from Goa, to the former French colony of Pondicherry, India’s southernmost province of Tamil Nadu, and even the northern parts of the country.

Said the organisers: “What differentiates this event from commercial events (that are typically driven by vendors) is that this event is completely conceived, organised and driven by the Open Source community, focussing on technology talks and a technology expo.” The fact that they could offer a three-day event, with food, for just Rs 300-500 per head, also added to its popularity.

Speakers pulled in from across the globe included the noted Mexican developer Miguel de Icaza (Mono/ Ximian), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP), Nat Friedman (Ximian), Jeremy Zawodny (MySQL/ Yahoo), Bdale Garbee (of the volunteer-run Debian distribution), Harald Welte (iptables) and others.

Some of those taking part from India included the Australia-based K Desktop Environment developer of Indian origin Sirtaj Singh Kang, Anjuta-developer Naba Kumar of Delhi, co-founder of the Linux India movement Sudhakar Thaths Chandrasekharan, and others. Also thrown in were a film on FLOSS (‘Revolution OS’), and music and rock concerts.

Others have been trying to build alternatives or competition. Last year, GNU/Linux enthusiasts from the country’s commercial of Mumbai showed signs of being upset with the short-shrift given to Free Software, the GNU project and the like and toyed with the idea of having a conference of their own. But organising anything of this gargantuan size is obviously a huge effort.

India’s involvement with FLOSS is slowly getting noticed. People of South Asian origin seem to be playing an increasing role in promoting FLOSS in as diverse parts of the globe as Singapore, Malaysia, the Middle East, London, and the rest of Europe (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh’s FLOSS study has been widely noticed from The Netherlands, while Niranjan Rajani headed the team which studied the role of FLOSS in the developing world).

Indian President Abdul Kalam’s statement strongly in favour of FLOSS, which unlike proprietary software encourages an unrestrained sharing of knowledge, without the barriers of copyright was highlighted at the entrance of this event.

And New Delhi has just announced in a statement made in Parliament that the research benefits of publicly funded computing institutions are “being shared wherever appropriate.” The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), had added components relating to a number of Indian languages for GNU/Linux available under the freely-sharable General Public Licence (GPL) in September 2003.

Similarly, OpenOffice solutions developed by C-DAC have been provided for Indian languages under the sharable General Public License. Likewise, the CollabCAD software package developed by the state-run National Informatics Centre (NIC) has also been put out in a limited sharing mode within certain agencies of the government. C-DAC has also put its Indian fonts in the public domain. “Wherever appropriate, software developed under public funded efforts are being shared under GPL or similar licenses that do not restrict the sharing of knowledge due to copyright restrictions,” the Indian government has said.