Indiaos Conference Experience
18 Jan 2020
#opensource #india #indiaosIndiaOS is the first tech conference I have attended. I got to see the many facets of tech and open source. Everybody was friendly and had great energy and shared their knowledge and inspiring experiences.
Every talk opened a window into the world of open source - The need for free software, the freedom it gives to creators and artists, the challenges in managing an open source project, the impact of open source projects, sustaining open source projects, the cost savings in using open source, the effort required to make the software, why you cannot just rip-off open source projects, open source software licensing, the impact of government policies on software , user data privacy, the remote working! and so much more.
I was most inspired by the social impact the Kerala Rescue project started by Biswas and team. How a group of college students started the open source project which helped many people of Kerala during the floods and also got contributions from different parts of the world. The hurdles they faced when they reached end of free-tier usage, a critical website slowing down and how they overcame it all! They faced real world production issues during college!
Zerodha’s FOSS story is incredible. With a team of about 30 engineers they have built software used by a huge amount of people. They have great synergy and freedom in their passionate team. Their use of open source helped them be more agile and abide to market regulatory rules quickly. Adopting open source also helped them escape vendor lock-in. Kailash Nadh and Nitin Kamath are cool and funny!
The talk by Abhas Abhinav highlighted the need for free software in hardware, making repariable products, software being open so that we can validate the trust it ensures and software being open so that we can create more software that ensures privacy.
Chatwoot, a customer support startup by Pranav and team showed me how their one decision to open source the code turned around his startup. Also the hard decision they took to reject an acquisition and stay open sourced! Wow!
I cannot imagine the amount effort that must have been put to create a new database like BlobCity. A great tool for data scientists. The great trade off Sanket had to make to open up his intellectual property and make Blobcity open source!
The India mapping and data science reshaper technology talk by Niyas was a great insight to how powerful data science is! Also the questions asked by the audience about the assumptions on the data he made were very good.
The open source experience Kiran shared was a good overview of the challenges faced when making open source software. The need for shared responsibility for maintenance of the open source product. The ecosystem of participation that needs to be organized and enabled. Why we cannot rip-off open source businesses because value is in the usage of the software. Security issues and complex legal disputes that can arise using open source software.
Through his talk, Anish from SMC highlighted how the open source platform can be used to create software to protect the privacy of individuals. His project on open source handwriting recognition for virtual keyboards is inspiring! At the same conference we had MOSIP which was on a mission to Aadhaarify the world!
The cost saving aspect of open source was presented by Mujeeb Rahman. He explained how switching to FOSS helped Janayugom and the great effort put in that migration! The results were great enough for the government to start promoting FOSS! FTW!
I am intrigued by and eager to learn and use Hasura and rapid app development Frappe frameworks, Discourse and Bagisto too.
Anivar spoke about software licensing. There were so many type of licenses that help keep the FOSS community alive! He also open my eyes to how companies can veil themselves as FOSS.
The spontaneous Apar from Internet Freedom Foundation drew parallels to how government policies like net neutrality and internet shutdowns effect the FOSS community. Our country is privileged to have organizations like IFF fighting for our internet rights!
I am glad that IndiaOS was my first conference and will start working on contributing to open source and try to speak there some day!
Thanks Frappe and Zerodha team and speakers and participants for a long Saturday well spent!