Software Freedom Day-2011 @ BMSIT

Software Freedom Day 2008 is when I got introduced to the movement and the awesome community attached to the Free Software. Ever since then, Free Software has been a revelatory experience on a daily basis.

The philosophy of learning, sharing and growing together has been manifesting itself regularly with opportunities of interacting with numerous other like minded individuals.

Free Software Movement Karnataka has been involved in propagating Free Software in various educational institutions. With regular efforts BMSIT in Bangalore will become a prospective Free Software hub.

And SFD, every year is something we look forward to and this year's celebration in BMSIT would undoubtedly be one of the most memorable Free Software meet ups.

This celebration comprised of the ritual of cutting a yummy chocolate cake and sharing the 'joy of freedom'. With this setting the premise I tried to invoke some background to the necessity of freedom in software using Eben Moglen's ideas of "Mathematics as property", which I think conveyed to some extent the need of freedom in software.

It was followed by a basic introduction to Python: The programming language by a couple of students from the college. We were trying to project the scalability and usability of Python.

It was followed by a demonstration of a signal processor based wrist watch by Texas Instruments, interfaced with Ubuntu executing python scripts and some aspects of the features that could be extended by writing simple scripts.




I demonstrated the 3-D module in python mayavi and the tool's super capabilities of simulating 3-dimensional surfaces and volumes. There was also a demonstration of solving second order ordinary differential equations using python, which was hopefully of some use to the students gathered there.

In all, this SFD was eventful in Bangalore, while the celebration at BMSIT was only one of the numerous other sessions we had planned to conduct.


Free Software is the future,
The future is ours.

Migration to FOSS at BMSIT

As sprint events to Software Freedom Day, and celebrating Software Freedom the second of the sessions in BMS Institute of Technology was organized today.

After a session on FOSS approach towards Privacy and Security in the Internet for students, a full day workshop aimed at facilitating the faculty members of Electronics and Communication Department of BMS Institute of Technology to migrate onto GNU/Linux platform with equivalent tools to most of the ubiquitous tools used in the ECE academic scene were demonstrated.

The overall response was overwhelming, and very positive. Being the ECE Department the speaker for the session Mr.Prabodh and myself was preparing to brace for a colder audience with some natural hesitation. But, on the contrary we found everyone really interested in the gamut of tools with unadaunted enthusiasm till the end of the day. Numerous tools available for the various topics to be dealt in teaching the curriculum. Through the day, interaction was highly productive with proactive queries and discussions.

There is a pressing need for the academic institutions to migrate to Free and Open Source Software knowing the entire depth of positive ramifications of the tools and the philosophy behind the tools. I am glad that my alma matter has taken this step. We at FSMK are  certainly looking forward to sustained efforts to perpetuate the momentum instigated by today's sessions.

And talking specifically about Electronics related tools in the GNU/Linux domain, a special push is required to bundle these marvelous tools already available with comprehensive manuals. This way first smooth migration and prospective contributions can be hoped for.

A big shout out to all who were part of today's workshop. Cheers!