[fedora-india] request for speaker for our FOSS festival Mukti 2010

[Aanjhan R]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 4:09 AM, Debayan Banerjee <debayanin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/1/8 sankarshan <foss.mailinglists at gmail.com>
>>
>> I might not be comprehending this properly. Why would participating in
>> online coding contests be a deterrent to contributing to Free and Open
>> Source Software ?
>
> People who participate in programming contest arenas spend a lot of time
> getting accustomed to the arena rules and keep practicing whenever they are
> free. These arenas have a ranking schemes which require consistent
> performance. If you are a student, you generally choose what you want to do
> with your free time.

[OT] Does this rule of chosing what you want to do with your free time
only applicable to students? ;)

> Why dont these people choose to contribute to free software instead? The
> biggest reason is the learning curve. Going through the process of
> interacting with developers online, making sure that a particular feature is
> indeed required and then going to work on it.

One of those flash questions I get. What's stopping in getting things
done the other way round as well? Like students involved in OpenSource
development taking part in programming contests? From your description
of Open Source involvement it is very similar to a corporate model.
You cant get to write a AFS (Aanjhan File System) right away which is
fair enough. You are first put in testing, then into module
development and then into hardcore research teams depending on your
performance. So I see a BIG plus when students involved in Open Source
also take part in programming contests and improve/trigger their
algorithmic implementation circuits of their brain.

Just my 2 paisa.

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A