Report of the Software Freedom Day (Aug 28, 2004)

Venue of the event, Rayeshwar Institute of Technology, at Shiroda.

IT'S COST advantage was mentioned. So were its technical plus points. Likewise, the versatility of this trend in software was demo-ed. But, without doubt, the focus was on why freedom is such a key element in the world of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS).

On August 28, 2004 -- the last Saturday in the month -- some 200 students gathered to mark Software Freedom Day at the Rayeshwar Institute of Technology, in Goa.

This three-years young engineering college is seated atop a hilltop at the seemingly remote village of Shiroda, about 40 kilometres from Goa's state-capital Panaji (also called Panjim). Goa has 1.4 million inhabitants, and is a former Portuguese colony along the Indian west coast.

They strummed guitars, <Blistened attentively to talks that extended well into lunch-time, sat in awe while watching GNU/Linux micro-distributions handle slick multimedia presentations, and even cut a large cake to mark the day. But the need to build on the importance of "software freedom" stayed at the back of everybody's mind.

Writing on the tee-shirt (top)... and the guitars come out.

From the college campus, one could see the heavy monsoon clouds almost touching the even taller peaks of the bluish-green hill ranges that surround Goa, not far from this region.

"The idea of freedom needs to be strong in this country of Mahatma Gandhi. I would never tolerate the clutches of bondage -- whether it is economic or educational," said former Goa education minister Subhash Shirodkar, who heads the board that runs this State's youngest engineering college, RIT.

Former Goa education minister Subhash Shirodkar, making a point.

Shipra Goel, a student, echoed these words when she introduced the topic saying: "Freedom in the software world is important to everyone, not just to software developers. If you're not allowed to give a (software) programme to a person in need, that makes it non-free".

2004 marked the first year of the launch of this global campaign. Finally, when the day came up, there were FLOSS enthusiasts from over 30 countries across the world, from Albania and Australia to Vietnam and Zimbabwe, who volunteered to take part in the event.

Each team worked out diverse ways of distributing software or building awareness, and raise the concern of 'software freedom' through the media and among users and techies.

Software Freedom Day (http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/) was described by organisers as a global grassroots marketing campaign "in which we are inviting volunteers from around the world to participate". Local teams were given the leeway to choose how best to organise and spread the message.

This occasion was marked by festivities... and a cake too.

This message came home here too.

"Often people say, 'Indians have not contributed to FLOSS.' But in order to contribute, you need the infrastructure. Possibilities for sharing came in with the Internet," said Dr Anil Seth, head of the IT Department of Goa's PCC College of Engineering at Verna, and an active proponent of Open Source.

"In the world of FLOSS, it is possible to study better on your own, rather than in institutions," he added. Dr Seth stressed the need for young engineers to be aware of ethical, social and economic issues, apart from technological and commercial issues.

"Like the stars in the sky, you will never run out of possibilities in the world of (Free/Libre Software and) Open Source. Even if you learn new softwares at the rate of one product a day, there are so many that you won't finish in your lifetime," said the PCC-IT department head, Dr Seth, speaking at the Shiroda function.

Young businessmen Sandeep Verenkar, who heads the Goa Chambers of Commerce and Industry sub-committee on IT, stressed the possibility of 'software re-use' in the world of FLOSS was particularly helpful to small software firms.

"When I told my business colleagues about Free Software, they said they were already using 'free software'," he said, half joking. His comment was aimed at the growing use of illegally-copied software, since the legal versions coming from global companies are often simply too costly to afford by Indian standards for many, including small businesses.

Slick and trim... that's the look of GNU/Linux, from a demo by engineer Bijon Sahah.

"For businesses too, FLOSS is beneficial, as they find it affordable to use." Verenkar added: "In the last three months, proprietorial software OSs (operating systems) like Windows XP have been hit by a spate of virus. There is money to be made out of writing or deploying FLOSS applications." Verenkar said he was working with students from PCC Collge, Verna (Goa) to develop a data warehousing project in GNU/Linux. He called on Goa's Linux User Group, which just under 400 members on its mailing-list, to work to offer a network of commercial services to FLOSS in this small state.

Engineer Bijon Shaha, head of the Govt of India-run Electronic Test and Development Centre at Bambolim, kept the students regaled with his fascinating demo of GNU/Linux 'micro distros' which occupy just 5 to 50 MB of space and work effectively with multimedia.

"It's extremely configurable, and the source code is available too," Shaha told students, some of whom wore tee-shirts with the slogan 'May the source be with you' blazened across in bold letters.

IITian and National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) info technology group head Dr Albert Gouveia advised students to use FLOSS as a "tool to benchmark your skills". He stressed on the need to make the most of the choice that FLOSS tools offered, without being unnecessarily panicky of the same.

Goa Engineering College's mechanical engineering professor Dr George Easaw narrated how the region's earliest-launched engineering college had taken to FLOSS. These efforts, he said, had got a boost after the visit of international Free Software Foundation chairman Dr Richard M Stallman to their campus in November 2001.

"Our present generation doesn't know (first hand) what it meant to fight for Independence from the British. But this generation has the responsibility of nation building. FLOSS usage and development is a way of creating wealth for the country," he said.

Student Shipra Goel makes a point... many points actually, on why FLOSS makes sense, and why freedom matters.

Easaw narrated how the shifting over of a computer lab to GNU/Linux had brought in varied effiencies for students at his campus, also known as the Engico, short for Engineering College Goa.

"You can tinker around with the features and develop more features for the world community. We volunteers are available 24 x 7 to help," said Easaw, narrating how distros like Debian came, free to copy, with over 8000 software packages along with the operating system.

Young student Shivram Khandeparkar and engineer Amit Shirdokar narrated their own experiences with FLOSS, and inspired students by showing what is possible.

"(GNU/Linux) is kind of cool. It's fun. More importantly, it has the source code with it. For the first time, it was possible to look at the Operating System and find out what it was doing. GNU/Linux allowed me to find out how my computer actually worked. That's fantastic," said Khandeparkar.

"Since you have the source, everything is out there in front of you. You can look and modify and improve it. You can give some of your work back to the community (of coders) and users. Most of all, it's fun," said he.

Khandeparkar has worked on the splash screen for the Grub boot-loader, which allows for very high display of splash images, using Vesa standards. "Now I'm working on that for Grub 2.0 and have done some bug fixes too," said this young man from India's smallest state who is now contributing to the global FLOSS coders' community.

Student Shivram Khandeparkar: Most of all, it's fun.

"That's how open source creates value. It's about support and services. I can tell you that I've made money out of FLOSS. Free software doesn't mean that you can't charge," he added.

Amit Shirodkar, who recently morphed from being a student into a freelance developer and consultant, said FLOSS enable him to learn "a lot of things". Says he: "One can always study the source and find your way through. In the end, you end up studying more, on a day by day basis."

By late afternoon, students were talking about plans to take their just-formed LUG (GNU/Linux users group) ahead. Various distributions of FLOSS software were also made available for students in the college to study and appreciate, modify and share.

Getting going... a new LUG is born.

"Above all, have fun," was the advice from Yunus Shaikh, a techie based in the nearby central Goa town of Ponda, who has been the moving force behind this program, and who has worked with teams in Norway to create innovative embedded software products.

Speakers also pointed to the danger to FLOSS from concepts like 'software patents'. Copyrights restrict just the distribution of software, but patents could restrict both the development and use of software too.

There are also challenges to FLOSS on the horizon -- including what are feared to be lock-in technologies like WinFS and Palladium. These could be used to block FLOSS's interoperability with the proprietorial software world, and thus seriously hampers its growth potential.

There are other issues too. For instance, in Goa itself, there are some e-governance and other projects which have resulted in records and maps being maintained in proprietorial formats, which are not easily accessible by others. Tax-payers' money goes into creating assets not easily accessibly by the citizen.

softwarefreedomday.org/wiki/index.php/Goa

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[Gulf Goans] FUN AND FREEDOM... The two do mix in the software world

FUN AND FREEDOM... The two do mix in the software world

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