LINUX Asia 2004 to showcase power of FLOSS

LINUX ASIA will be a major event targeted at Asia, not just India, and will be held in February 2004 in New Delhi. This will be the most ambitious event of its kind to be organised in North India, and probably in other areas of the neighbourhood too. From February 11 to 13, the LINUX Asia event hopes to demonstrate “the power and benefits of [GNU]Linux and free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) to decision makers.” Rahul Chopra, the techie-scion of the EFY-LFY publishing network explains to Frederick Noronha exactly what’s involved in the event and what’s planned

What is the plan for the 2004 GNU/Linux meet in Delhi?

LINUX Asia 2004 comes with the sole aim of demonstrating to decision-makers the power of open source and GNU/Linux. Hence, in addition to an expo and five simultaneous tracks of conferences (including two workshops), LINUX Asia will have 100-plus Linux PCs demonstrating different applications.

So, if a managing director or an SME wants to know how he can save licensing costs without sacrificing the productivity of his team, LINUX Asia is the place to be. If the IT secretary of a state government wants to know how his e-governance initiatives can do more for less, LINUX Asia will be a great place to check that out. If a CIO wants to see how Linux is the perfect choice for clustering, this event will provide him the demo.

What prompted you to go in for it?

We realised that no matter how much we stress on the benefits of open source and Linux through the media—it will remain just ‘talk’. To make others ‘walk the talk’ we had to demonstrate the walk ourselves, and its benefits.

This event was conceptualised with the primary goal of providing first-hand demonstration of the powers of Linux and open source. Our target audience for the ‘how to save money’ theme includes the general industry, the government, and social sector initiatives like educational institutes and NGOs.

Another goal is to demonstrate to existing IT entrepreneurs how they can make money in the open source paradigm. We all know that it’s very different from the proprietary model and many are confused about how to get on to this new bus called ‘open source business-model’, which seems to be gaining speed.

No one wants to be left out. But a fate worse than being left out would be to get off the proprietary business model bus and not being able to catch the open source business-model bus either. We are calling eminent speakers from across the globe, many from Asia, to explain how they succeeded, and their own mantras of success. Thus our second goal can be summarised as ‘how to make money from open source’.

How has the response been so far?

It’s been very encouraging. Our goal to have our partners with us before December 15, 2003 was accomplished before the end of December 2003. We now have with us the (US-based) Technetra Corp (www.technetra.com) who are managing the content of the event.

SERCON, which happens to be one of India’s top show management firms, is handling the LINUX Asia show too. Delhi-based Tetra, a firm that has been into Linux implementations since the last seven years, has agreed to manage the ‘hub’. Then, we got a major boost when MAIT (India’s apex IT hardware trade body) joined us as a co-organiser, promising major support in promoting the event to the industry. As of now, it couldn’t have been better.

How will this be different from other attempts, say Linux-Bangalore held in December each year?

Linux Bangalore is a premium event that focuses more on technology aspects, while current and future LINUX Asia will focus more on selling—rather demonstrating—this technology to the decision-makers. In a nutshell, LINUX Asia 2004 is summarised by its two goals, ‘how to make money’ and ‘how to save money’.

Why do you feel Delhi has a good chance of succeeding?

Though Bangalore and Hyderabad are the names that come up first in people’s minds when one talks of IT industry, group New Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida together (all cities around the national capital) and you have a bigger IT industry than these two cities combined.

Delhi also gives access to decision-makers in the central government, plus seven state governments including Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Efforts are on to get government representations from other states of India too.

Lastly, in terms of the enterprise sector, Delhi is definitely ahead of all, except India’s commercial capital Mumbai. Thus, Delhi offers a very attractive opportunity to reach out to the IT industry, governments and the industry.

What do you see as the potential for GNU/Linux in India?

Tremendous. Just like other developing nations, India too needs productivity solutions that provide the best RoI (return on investment), and open source definitely offers that.

Plus, with our huge IT talent pool, Indian IT industry does not need to pay a heavy premium for recruiting or retraining the necessary manpower. And, once we go into various offshoots like thin-clients, the proposal becomes very attractive even for social initiatives in segments like education, rural connectivity and e-governance.

What is needed to make free/libre and open source software grow in the country?

Two-pronged efforts are necessary. First, creating and nurturing the talent pool for developing open source software, an issue that is being addressed by initiatives like the Bangalore-Linux meet (an ambitious, community-organised event attracting nearly 2,000 participants each December, held for the past three years); various LUGs (Linux User Groups), Free Software Foundation-India, etc.

This has to then be followed up by demonstrating (selling) the benefits of open source to the decision-makers, so that we have a healthy internal consumption too.

We face the biggest threat from China over our software strengths—not because of proprietary software development but because China is pushing both development efforts on the open source platform followed by initiatives to boost its own internal consumption of the same. We could end up being the largest exporter of a technology platform that may shrink to the second spot in terms of global consumption!