FOSS.IN gains momentum in Bangalore

By siliconindia staff writer   |   Friday, 24 November 2006, 18:30 IST
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Bangalore: FOSS.In dubbed as one of India's largest conferences on open source software, kick started in Bangalore today. The event showcased new technologies in the open source domain and witnessed thousands of participants and renowned speakers from across the world. "Free and open source software is getting extremely popular in India. It is already in vogue in the enterprise server domain but it needs to be incorporated on the desktop applications as well," says Open Source evangelist Atul Chitnis. Foss enthusiasts and professionals exchanged thoughts and ideas through technical discussions, workshops and tutorials related to open source projects and technologies, in the fields of web development, kernel development, embedded systems and operating systems. Social aspects such as development tools and languages, and localization were also areas the event highlighted. . With the theme BoFs (birds of same feathers), the event invited talents to discussions various Foss related subjects impromptu. Companies like ABB, Google, Sun Microsystems, CDAC, IBM, Geodesic Information Systems, Wipro showcased the commercial use of open source in the industry. The term FOSS refers to technologies where the source code of software is freely distributed and modified to suit ones need. Hence, the event aims to create awareness to the Indian software community to 'contribute' more than to be passive consumers. Like every year, this year too, the program got a strong support and sponsorship from the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India.