Dr. Debesh Das

Dr Debesh Das, minister-in-charge, Department of Information Technology, Govt of West Bengal, will inaugurate Asia’s largest event on open source at the Chennai Trade Center on 19 September

New Delhi: Open source software dates back to the 1960s. One of the major reasons for open source software being accepted widely is because it’s free. “Free”, not as in “costs nothing”, but “Free” as in “libre”, the roman word which means “the state of being free” or simply, “having freedom”. Today open source as a community has grown to a humongous stature. India too has not failed to hop on the open source bandwagon. To lay testimony to this fact is the growth of OSI Days, Asia’s largest event on open source whose 6th chapter will be inaugurated by Dr Debesh Das, minister-in-charge, Department of Information Technology, Govt of West Bengal, at the Chennai Trade Center on 19 September.

The growth of open source in India can surely be measured by the parameters this event is setting for itself for its future chapters. But the association of the members of the Indian Government with this event actually shows that open source has a promising future in India. The minister will be also sharing with the audience the undertakings of the Government to encourage the adoption of open source and its related benefits.

OSI Days 2010 is being organised by the Forum for Open Source Initiatives in India (FOSII) , in association with LINUX For You magazine. Powered by the EFY Group of publications, OSI Days 2010 is the 6th edition of this event which started out in 2004 as LinuxAsia. Previously, the event was organised at New Delhi, but due to overwhelming demand from the fans as well as the community to fly South, the organisers decided to shift the 2009 chapter of the event to Chennai. It registered the most successful response for the event till then. In hopes of repeating that success, the organisers have decided to hold the 6th edition again at Chennai.

Thousands of people have registered for the three-day event with the number of passes available thinning out to a minimum. Thousand silver pass registrations have already happened and considering this overwhelming response, the organisers have released 500 more passes for the ones who may want to be there and  catch the action live!

The euphoria surrounding OSI Days is least surprising considering the names associated with the event. Google, Facebook, Ingres, C-DAC, Yahoo!, HP, Dell, Microsoft and Zend are all part of this mega event. Speakers, both Indian greats and international masterminds, will share their knowledge and experience at this event. To name a few, Burkhardt Roger, David Recordon, David Coallier, Denis Lafont-Trevisan, Eben Moglen, Fabien Potencier, Jakub Vrána, John Smedley, Kevin Schroeder, Rajdeep Dua, Siddhartha Agarwal, Sonali Minocha and Vijay Rajgopalan will enrich the audience with their vast knowledge.

OSI Days will be enriching and enlightening to say the least. Tracks ranging from Cloud Computing to Developer Tools & Techniques, from Database to Drupal, from IT Business to Java Script, from Mobile Software to PHP are all going to be covered extensively at the event. There are presentations, discussions and workshops to attend and grow one’s knowledge of open source.

Open source is the future of computing. Still, today many people use proprietary software. Most do not know what they are missing out on by not using open source. It is a duty of the community to make the people aware of the advantages and benefits of open source software. OSI Days is doing just this.