LocalFOSS

On November 24th almost 3000 people are expected for the opening of South Asia's largest Free and Open Source Software Conference.

What started out as a pavilion (kindly donated by a forward looking state government) in BangaloreIT.com, India's premier IT Event at the time, has grown quickly since 1999.

The 1999 "Linux Pavilion" (so named for the most well known at the time FOSS project) was a raging success, being dubbed the “the jewel in the crown of Bangalore IT.COM”. So successful was the pavilion that it was run again the next year, this time with the added feature of concurrent series of both technical and non technical talks, held at a nearby conference centre.

In 2001 it was decided that instead of running under the auspices of BangaloreIT.com the community decided that there was now a demand for a full conference focusing specifically on Linux and development of FOSS systems. So Linux Bangalore was born.

For three years Linux Bangalore grew, until in 2004, almost 3000 people turned up to hear from FOSS community luminaries from India and abroad. Speakers included HP's Bdale Garbee, Rasmus Lerdorf - PHP Founder and more. However they hit a problem. With the growth of the conference there were more and more calls to include other FOSS areas, such as the BSD's, Community Development and more.

2005 saw the metamorphosis of Linux Bangalore into the current FOSS.in conference. Some of the changes made include extending the length of the conference and broadening its focus to include a larger chunk of the FOSS community.

Now in 2006 it is only two weeks until FOSS.in launches again. The Speakers list has been announced and once again it is a powerful mix of both local and international speakers.

Some of the speakers are listed below:

• Andrew Cowie: Andrew Cowie, a Canadian ex-pat now making his home in Australia, and maintainer of the Java bindings for GTK and GNOME will be will be giving two talks. The first will be examining the future of the java-gnome project, especially interesting with the news the Sun might be releasing Java under the GPL. Andrew is again giving a Keynote, this year's entitled "On The Cutting Edge: solving the fundamental structural problem of the free software movement".
• Jaya Kumar: Jaya Kumar, a kernel developer will be presenting on the current debate surrounding GPLv2/GPLv3. His talk will "cover exposure to the broad range of supporting and detracting opinions (from leading kernel developers as well as others)", in an effort to encourage participation from South/South East Asian community members.
• Sirtaj Sing Kang: Sirtaj Sing Kang has been described as a FOSS superstar. "The year he stops coming, we stop having the event," said Atul Chitnis, Project Lead for FOSS.in. Sirtaj will be giving a talk about "Writing an SMS Service with Free Software".
• K. K. Subramaniam: Subramaniam will be presenting on "FOSS Tools in Primary Schools". This talk is aimed at FOSS enthusiasts promoting its adoption in their local community, particularly in primary education. It presents the experience of deploying a FOSS desktop in a small public primary school in Bangalore.
• Suparna Bhattacharya: Atul had this to say about Suparna Bhattacharya, "Suparna Bhattacharya is the only person in the whole world who can claim to make Linus Torvalds shut up, sit down and listen. We almost failed to get her - can you imagine how much it hurt when 120 kilos slammed onto my kneecaps as I went down begging her to come and speak?" Suparna will be presenting on ext4 development in the Linux kernel as well as "Linux and the art of minimalist development".

The spread of speakers reflects the commitment of the FOSS.in organisers to offer a broad range of topics while retaining its technical focus.

Atul Chitnis had this to say about FOSS.in

"This event is of the FOSS community (run by a core group of dedicated and hardworking people), an event by the FOSS community (all speakers are FOSS contributors and FOSS community members) and for the FOSS community (it educates new and potential contributors on FOSS technologies, it empowers existing contributors with new developments, and it acts as a platform for the FOSS community to show what has been doing and can do in the future)."

The FOSS.in conference will run from November 24th to November 26th at the National Science Symposium Centre, Bangalore.

For more details on FOSS.in head a long to their website.