We in India have a thing for 'muhurats'...auspicious days which are particularly suited for starting something new.
So although this blog had been eating space on some poor server somewhere for the last week or two, it is only today that the first post arrives.
Call it coincidence, but today can be called a 'muhurat', it being Software Freedom Day.
It is on this day that followers of the Free Software movement (free as in freedom, not as in 'lunch') celebrate the idea that is free software.
And so we at CoFSUG too celebrated SFD at COEP. This celebration was spearheaded by the enthusiastic members of the CoFSUG and our mentors in the faculty.
Despite the fact that it was a Saturday and the mid semester examination has just ended and most normal students are expected to be snoring till late, a good number of members turned up for the occasion.
The chief guest for the program was Mr. Amit Karpe, a free software evangelist from the city. We also had with us Prof AA Sawant, Head of the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology, COEP, and Mr.Agarwal, a freelance free software activist and contributor.
After the chief guest gave a most useful session on Drupal, there was a free question and answer session, where many things were discussed.
The future of the Linux kernel, hackers and crackers, some nuances of Drupal, and a lot more...
Many thanks to Mr.Karpe for his time and the knowledge he imparted us.
This was followed by a talk by Abhijit sir, our faculty advisor. This non technical talk explored the deep meaning and significance of the Free Software movement and the ongoing Software Freedom Struggle for the whole of humanity.
We explored a new dimension of freedom through this talk.
And as usual, we also talked about that, without which no Free software talk can be complete...that is 'Free v/s Proprietary' and the all important question of whether Free Software engineers starve or not.
Abhijit Sir also announced the first Linux development project which we will undertake soon: improvement of the Indian vernacular Linux, starting with Hindi and Marathi.
The screening of a short movie had also been planned, but time 'ran out',so it had to be followed shortly by the people in the hall :P
All in all, the first of many SFD's for COEP went very well and people went home with numerous new ideas....day spent doing better things than sleeping.
Photographs to be up soon.Watch this space.
