On 10 November 2014 09:35, Rushabh Mehta rmehta@gmail.com wrote:
Checked that Kenneth was involved with NRC-FOSS. Was this the alternate group? (NRC-FOSS - FOSSEE Lab at IITB and ICFOSS, are all govt funded and seemed aligned and different from the FOSS.in group (?)).
http://www.nrcfoss.org.in/ Kenneth was based out of the AU-KBC research centre at the Madras Institute of Technology campus.
While I was digging more last night, I ran into this ( http://atulchitnis.net/2006/happy-10th-anniversary-pc-quest-linux/) - It seems no one person is more responsible to popularize FOSS in India other than Chitnis. Also, he was more an evangelist rather than an activist (or rather, he was firmly not an activist, which pissed off the Free Software guys I am assuming). Other than Chitnis, frequent visits by RMS (and remote mentoring?) has also helped us to get us to where we are.
I think this is over-generalising things. Each one has their own opinion and approach and are free to do so. More than "remote mentoring" I think it was the initiative taken by many locally that actually helped take FOSS forward - it might have been individually or organisationally.
The first and only state to move completely at Free Software was Kerala and this was primarily due to the direct action by the Left-backed Kerala School Teachers Association http://kstakerala.in/ and supported by local FS activists.