Bengaluru, India – The Huge Turnout at Asia’s Largest Open Source Convention Shows how FOSS has Evolved From Being a Niche Concept to the Mindset of the Masses

The future of technology lies in being free and open source. This was the unanimous call raised by the participants and the community members present at the event. FOSS is not just about making the source code of the software freely available, it’s about opening up of the mindset. Open Source India 2012 concluded on this positive note, promising to come back next year with much more power and increased involvement of the community.

The three-day affair proved to be an apt platform for the re-union of the FOSS community and sharing of FOSS concepts. The jam-packed sessions and huge turnout at Asia’s largest open source convention prove how FOSS has evolved from being a niche concept to the mindset of the masses.

The event witnessed a major turnout of the industry professionals, the community folks and a lot of newbies who came to have a close look and feel of the FOSS environment. Open Source India 2012, which concluded in NIMHANS Convention Center, Bengaluru, was full of enlightening content.

Praising the event, Dr. Pramod K Varma, Chief Architect and Technology Advisor to Unique Identification Authority of India, 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 Days, being a leading open source event in India, is proving out to be a great platform for encouraging the community and increasing participation in open source projects.”

The three-day convention witnessed presence of over 70 speakers from the corporate world and the community. Companies like Oracle, Sify Technologies Limited, Intel, Acquia, HP, Dell and even Microsoft came forward to show their support for open source technology at this platform. Mandar Naik, Director – Platform Strategy, Microsoft, said, “It is always exciting to be a part of OSI Days 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, kernel and the cloud. I feel the conference proved to be a great opportunity for engaging with technology enthusiasts from all over the country ranging from app developers and open source contributors to the students. Nothing beats a great technology debate over a coffee with like-minded friends from the community.”

OSI Days had a special thrust on Google’s Android operating system, which was especially beneficial for the mobile app developers. Dushyantsinh Jadeja, Software Business Manager – APAC, Intel talked about Building Next Generation Applications For Android On Intel Architecture, which was much appreciated by the attendees. Yet another enlightening session on Building Compelling Mobile Web Applications – The Open Source Way was presented by Anantharaman P N, Director – Engineering, Adobe Systems, Bengaluru. Gaurav Agrawal from Sify Technologies Limited talked about ‘Opening The Doors Of Cloud’, while Lux Rao, Country Lead – Cloud Consulting Solutions, HP India, Bengaluru, gave a deep insight on the topic ‘Public, Private or Hybrid – What is your Cloud?

Some of the eminent speakers present on the occasion included Ramesh Rajagopalan, Engineering Director, Dell India R&D Center, Chandra Balani, MySQL India Sales Manager, Oracle India Pvt Ltd, Atul Kumar Jha, Technology Evangelist, CSSCorp, Chennai, Durgadoss R, Software Engineer, Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd, Bengaluru, Janardan Revuru, Project Manager, Hewlett Packard, Bengaluru and many more.

Open Source India believes in sharing practical knowledge as much as sharing ideologies. Apart from knowledge-packed technology sessions, there were hands-on workshops on HTML5, SQL, OpenLDAP, JBoss among others from industry experts. India Linux User Groups play a major role in promotion of FOSS in India. The event would have been incomplete without the discussion on the role of ILUGs in promoting FOSS in the country. OSI Days had representatives of the popular Chennai and Kolkata LUGs apart from the legendary contributors like Raj Mathur and Kingsly John. The group discussion also incorporated the policy issues that need to be dealt with to improve adoption of FOSS in public bodies.

Sharing his insight on OSI 2012, Ramesh Chopra, Vice Chairman, EFY Enterprises Pvt. Ltd., said, “We are glad that we have been able to bring much bigger, better and improvised OSI Days 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.”

A live stream of updates was provided on Twitter and Facebook for the conference. This helped everyone stay updated about the discussions and sessions happening at the conference.

Celebrating the spirit of FOSS as always, OSI Days bids adieu this year only to come back with greater enthusiasm and information-packed sessions next year.

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