The Fedora Community in India - plans and proposals

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

Debarshi Ray wrote:

> The free software community already has such a relationship with
> places like TIFR, IISc, NIT Calicut. Maybe we can explore them from a
> Fedora specific view point. For example, an event which showcases
> upcoming or new features, and has a hands-on workshop with sufficient
> academic or technical content. Things like SELinux, IPv6, Ext4,
> Systemtap, PolicyKit, Qt4/KDE4, etc. could be some of the upcoming or
> new features we can consider.

Yes, and for that to happen we need to figure out how to get to know 
people who can talk at a session on the topics you mentioned.

The idea is not to re-invent the relationships. If there is an existing 
"like" group who are already doing regular sessions at a place, it is 
nicer to use that goodwill to present.

> We may even consider something like a workshop on UML using BOUML
> (available as a package); or one on GCC/GDB/Make (like the one in
> Calcutta University bu ILug-Cal).

Right and you must have noticed that we are also talking about "special 
spins" here :) I was hoping that it would get your attention.

>> [2] Enable us to access their students, faculties and persons interested in
>> education and FOSS to help us work in their community
> 
> The distinction between "us" and "them" would be very fuzzy, at best,
> because students, faculties and persons interested in education and
> FOSS would be a part of the larger community too.

Without being pedantic and using artifacts of use cases, as on date we 
don't have a large amount of insight into what the requirements are and 
how we are placed to meet them.

So, although Aanjhan is doing fine work with the FEL spin, we haven't 
been going around demo-ing it too much or talking about it whenever we 
can. There has been talk of doing a "Mathematics" spin, but it hasn't 
progressed beyond that.

At the initial stages, the needs of "us" are different from the demands 
of "them". The objective is to match up so that we are part of a larger 
community. For clarity of comprehension, replace students and other 
persons from academia with photographers and you will perhaps figure out 
what I am trying to get at.

>> If you were a GSoC candidate, what would you expect ? You were such not so
>> long back, what would you have expected from Fedora and from NIT-H (say) ?
> 
> I would have expected the Fedora (or the larger free software)
> community to somehow convince NIT-H that allowing CVS/GIT/IRC/SSH/SVN
> connections to outside servers is a good thing and not an evil one.

Hmm... and now that you have brought it up, what would be a convincing 
argument to get them convinced ?

> Just look at what IIT Kanpur did to restrict Internet timings, and our
> Director uses that as an example to enforce the same madness in NIT-H
> too.

True, Arun Raghavan is worried about the cascading effect of that 
instruction.



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