MiniDebConf @ FOSSMeet-NITC

This post is about the MiniDebConf held at FOSSMeet @ NIT-C.

22^ndFebruary 2013: 2100 hrs We are all here at the MiniDebConf. Debian team, Akhilan, Shirish and Praveen, enters the lab, and we had a brief discussion about Debian. They introduced about Debian, how they contributed for the native Malayalam version of Debian and also about the contributors to other native Indian languages. Bug fixing, adding new features, etc were also the part of the brief introduction. And side by side we also had Freedom Box Introduction talk by Abhishek, who currently works in Oracle. He came unprepared for the talk, as he quoted ” This was the similar situation for his Final Year Project” and humbly requested excuse of using his Diary. He talked about how the government and other third-party companies can intercept our data, and how our privacy is compromised without getting any idea about it. And also how the data can come in the hands of hackers, and other companies and the sensitive data can be extracted using various means or directly through the network, intercepting the data which is transmitted from our machines to the respective servers. Using online banking, how our login and transaction details, etc. can be compromised and can be misused and can create a Havoc for the users. These things happen every second all over the world and many people suffer from this. Also he talked about the uses of this little Freedom Box, which acts as a server itself, using Open Source software and a small hardware, these things can be possible. FreedomBox can be used to communicate with the person on the other side also using a FreedomBox securely using a secure and unique IP address. Praveen kept on asking questions about what will happen if? and Abhishek tried his level best to answer them and also we all also shared our ideas about it. It was a great discussion.

The discussion continued till mignight, and then we called it a day and decided to continue the following day after breakfast. Praveen asked me to join them as they discussed about pirateparty – ‘Open Source Community’ and their contributions and I met Bala, who was in his 3^rd year Computer Science Engineering, who also is an open source contributor and was there to give a talk about it. Also I met Aneesh, who completed his graduation and is an entrepreneur and hosts Debian servers and earns his daily bread from Open Source. From this I got inspired towards Open Source and contributing towards it and learning many things from it.

I am very glad that I met them and got to know what the FOSS Community does and how we can we become a part of this huge community and contribute to FOSS. It opened many doors for me to explore in this field and my mind was focused on what I want to do.