INDIA'S BIGGEST 'OPEN SOURCE' MEET GETS UNDERWAY DEC 2 IN BANGALORE

FROM FREDERICK NORONHA

In a country of vast numbers, figures sometimes cease to surprise. But organisers were themselves thrilled on roping in 2000 registered delegates for a major open source conference over 72 hours before the meet's start on December 2.

"A little while ago, we breached the 2000 registered delegates barrier, and are heading for the stars. We are going to need tin openers and shoe-horns to get everyone in," said a tongue-in-cheek announcement from Atul Chitnis, one of the main organisers of the Linux Bangalore 2003.

India's southern garden-city of Bangalore considers itself the 'Silicon Valley of India' and this will be the third year running it has been hosting the largest-so far open source conference in this country of a thousand million.

At 2000 registered participants, the number crossed the official seating capacity of the conference.

But, organisers said: "This does not necessarily mean that you wont get to participate, since not everyone who registers actually shows up, and some people will attend on some days, and miss others. However it does mean that we are going to be seeing a full house again this year."

Online-registration costs Rs 300, while those who sign-up at the venue, the prestigious Indian Institute of Sciences, would have to pay Rs 500. In dollar terms, this is just approx US$ 6 and US$ 11 respectively. But for Indian participants, this obviously means more than its dollar-equivalent suggests. Food comes included for this three-day event.

Hewlett Packard, Novell Inc which recently bought over Ximian and Suse, and local Bangalore firm Exocore Consulting are sponsors for the event. India's federal government, which has earned some flak for appearing unsure of its support to Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), has also come in with sponsorship, as in the past year.

Organisers went ahead to call this "India's biggest annual Open Source event". Till now, they've had no competition in either size or ambitions. But in 2004, the country's first exclusively-FLOSS magazine called 'Linux For You' has announced plans for a national meet in Delhi.

It is not clear still what size and shape that meet would take on.

Said the Bangalore organisers: "What differentiates this event from commercial events (that are typically driven by vendors) is that this event is completely conceived, organised and driven by the Open Source community, focussing on technology talks and a technology expo."

It is seen as being built on a "low-cost" model, where Rs 300 to 500 brings in access to "all talks and sub-events".

This year, over the three days, this event promises nearly 100 talks.

Speakers pulled in from across the globe include Miguel de Icaza (Mono/Ximian), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP), Nat Friedman (Ximian), Jeremy Zawodny (MySQL/Yahoo), Bdale Garbee (Debian), Harald Welte (iptables) and others.

Local big names from across India's open source movement would also be present, though those in the Free Software camp -- with its nucleus around the also South India-based Free Software Foundation (India) -- are known to sometimes keep off this event due to differences in approaches.

Some of those from India taking part would include KDE-developer of Indian origin Sirtaj Singh Kang, Anjuta-developer Naba Kumar, one of the co-founders of the Linux India movement Sudhakar 'Thaths' Chandrasekharan and others.

Organizers have planned the screening of a movie ('Revolution OS'), a music concert by the fusion group Laya Taranga, and a rock concert by the group Phenom.

"Bangalore, already the IT capital of India, is quickly becoming a hothouse for Open Source development, with companies like Ximian/Novell, IBM, HP and others setting up development centres there," said the event's organisers.

More details about the event at http://linux-bangalore.org/2003

Avik Sengupta avik.sengupta@itellix.com discussed the possibility of holding a PGP Key Signing Party at the conference. He explained: "Unlike SSL/SMIME certificates (where trust flows from a single authority), PGP operates on a 'web of trust', generated through identifying and signing each other's keys." (ENDS) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks ------------------------------------------------------------------------- T: 0091.832.2409490 or 2409783 M: 0 9822 122436 -------------------------------------------------------------------------