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Good turnout at FOSS.in

by Tushar Abraham Mathew — last modified 2006-12-03 11:17 PM

FOSS.in is one of the largest FOSS events held annually in India.

Bangalore: FOSS.in 2006, held at the Indian Institute of Science, took off with a bang on the 24th of November. Located a little away from the heart of the city, a trip to this prestigious institute made one forget the inconvenience caused due to Bangalore's now famous traffic snarls. The venue was quite different from the chaos one had to endure to reach it. In the backdrop of the J.N. Tata building were lush green lawns insterspaced with a variety of trees that provided a sense of serenity.

The Scenery

The venue started to fill around 8.30 am. The inaugral speech was given by Mr. Atul Chitnis, a well known FOSS advocate in India. Following that were a host of talks starting with Suparna Battacharya from IBM, one of the very few female kernel hackers in the world. To see a list of all the scheduled talks, click here

A jam packed auditorium

A lot of hungry FOSS enthusiasts

Lunch was served around 1pm to the relief of many. People were given coupons of different colours for all three days. Served were Chapattis, Pulao, Paneer and other Indian dishes the only inconvenience being access to the wash rooms which were located a floor above. Over the eventful three days, people of similar interests also got together at Birds of a Feather (BOF) sessions. These took place at tents located between the Lunch hall and the stalls, a very convenient location.

The BOF tents

Inside a BOF session

Sunil Abraham of IOSN

Sunil Abraham of the International Open Source Network also gave a talk on " Impact of Indian Copyright and Patent Law on FOSS " which was well received by many. With almost 2000 people attending the event seeing closer interaction between Industry and the FOSS community, the overall outcome was more than satisfactory.