The day started with the keynote address by Neville Roy Singham of Thoughtworks Inc. at the Mascot Hotel Convention Centre. A packed audience hall was briefed about the Agile methodologies and how it can be clubbed with FOSS.
The panel discussions began with the panel on Software Patents featuring presentations by Mishi Chowdary, Venkatesh Hariharan, Macro Cuircina and Eben Moglen. Mishi, a Lawyer and a free Software activist, spoke on the software patent norms in the Indian context. Since India did not have any patent norms for years, a sudden inflow of over 150 patents in 2005 was a huge change from the past. This patent regime needs to be challenged. Marco, an Italian lawyer, working in the field of commercial and contractual law, Information Technology law, Copyright, Patent and Trademark law, spoke on how a campaign was launched through political parties on Software patents in Italy. Venkatesh, who is the Corporate Affairs Director of Red Hat, spoke of the history of the patent laws protests in India. Eben Moglen summarised the panel and criticised the US for its closed attitude regarding patents.
The panel on FOSS and Gender saw Cheekay Cinco of APC women speaking on the Gender Perspective to Free Software. She dealt with the various issues and challenges that women face in the computing environment. Raji P.R of SPACE spoke about the women master trainers and school IT coordinators involved in the IT@school project of the Govt of Kerala. The IT@school project is the state goverments IT literacy programme for the school students of Kerala. The IT@school project runs completely on FOSS.
Stefen Mertan, of Projekt Oekonux, spoke on Free Software, Free Society. Stefen elucidated the Oekonux project and explained how economy and Linux can be combined to form Oekonux. He also described how Free Software can be considered as a new mode of production replacing the present modes of production.
Rishabh Ghosh , an open source initiative member and Prof. Rajinish Das participated in the Free Software Education and Research panel.
A paper on Ethical Economy was presented by Adam Arvidsson.
Anil Nair, CEO Cinesoft systems and services Pvt Ltd, speaking under the topic of Free Software for Free Media explained the benefits of the free animation software called Blender.
The history of the copyright movement in India was traced in the panel discussion on Open Access. The panel participants were G Nagarjuna and Dr. V Sasikumar of FSF India, and Subbiah Arunachalam.
Richard M Stallman delivered the key note address bringing the panel discussions to a close. Richard lectured about the four freedoms in computing and the significance of each of these freedoms. In the case of proprietary software, if a friend sees a software that you are using and asks for a copy of the software, then you have to violate one of the 2 trusts - your trust with your friend by not sharing the software with him and maintaining the trust with the Companny which produced the software or break the trust with the company and share the software with your friend. The option of helping your friend is the better option. Otherwise one has to use completely free software which allows the user to exercise freedom in computing. Stallman also gave a brief history of the GNU/Linux operating system. He was appreciative of the work that the Govt of Kerala has done regarding bringing free software to the schools. But felt that at the same time the school students should be taught to appreciate the freedom they are enjoying.
The final programme of the day was a 'Kacheri' by Kaithapram.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 aud.jpg | 70.16 KB |
