FOSS.in day 5, The final showdown
Bosky and I had to miss the pre-lunch sessions at FOSS.in today, for we had to sell Bosky’s bike. It was a good experience selling the bike to an agent and stuff. Yup at times I got irked, but then when you are selling something, these glitches are to be there.
So we missed the “From user to hacker in 90 minutes” and “Talloc in C” sessions, something that I was really looking forward to. I did manage to attend the Lightning Talks which was moderated by Danese Cooper. It was very entertaining, with 3 minute speaking slots and 15 second gap between each talk.
Bosky took part in the LT and gave a talk on Returnable project. The returnable project lets you put contextual content on the web when you hover around something. His new company Orange Cubes is right now working on Hover.in which is an extension of the returnable project.
Danese Cooper ended the LT with her talk on “What I like about India” which was humorous and entertaining.
I caught up with a lot of friends, took random snaps, posed for random snaps, shook a lot of hands and smiled at folks whom I didn’t even know before I got to the Main Audi for the closing ceremony.
Rusty Russell was asked to head the ceremony and he did it in an unconventional style. He sat down on the stage and told people how he started off as a kernel hacker. Apparently he attended a conference and there he didn’t know anything and people were doing great stuff. He got back from the conference and he started learning and working on kernel hacking and that is how he started. Then he invited James Morris, who also had a similar story on how he started, but in his case he attended Rusty Russell’s conference. And that was a great move by Rusty. It was like as if he was screaming to us, “hey we started by going to conferences of great folks and now you have attended conferences with great folks, so what you waiting for? Just go ahead and code.”
He then invited one of the organizers of the event on to the stage and asked her to find a bug in his work and submit it. All this in front of an audience of about 800 people who would be watching her every move on a huge screen on stage. Of course Rusty would tell her what to do and how to do it. But still the pressure of performing in front of such a huge audience could be hell. But then when that person required 4 attempts typing ‘colon-q-enter’ and Rusty’s suggestion to use the ‘escape’ key to figure out that to quit from a VIM editor, you have to press ‘escape-colon-q-enter’, it is not because of pressure, it is because of lack of knowledge. My bad! She apparently is a good coder and she fumbled because of pressure. Thanks to folks who pointed out.
Maybe FOSS.in is just meant for the delegates and not the organizers. The organizers hardly even have time to attend the sessions, whereas they should be the first to attend. It is not good enough to just be pretty and have infinite spare time to be in the organizing team. And maybe Rusty just exploited this point, to tell Team FOSS.in what is wrong. Again,I seem to have misunderstood here as per Gaurav’s comment.
There were other occasions where FOSS.in proved that it is only meant for the delegates and not the organizers (Team FOSS.in). For instance, the presentation screen read “Talk is cheap, show me the code” and there was Atul Chitnis talking and talking and talking and… talking. It was like sitting thro’ Lord of the Rings part 3, where the director kept stretching the movie for the crew just couldn’t say goodbye. I was half hoping, like the thousand others in the room, that Atul would turn back and look at the huge screen and maybe … maybe, if we were really lucky, even understand it.
I liked the way they concluded the event, with all the volunteers on stage with a slide show synced manually with their sound bites. Good!
One of the things I really didn’t like about FOSS.in this year, was the way they treated open source. Nope, it is not about the event, it is not about the organizing team, but a few attendees. I was talking to this Mumbai hacker and during the conversation I told him that I use Adobe Photoshop for editing images. He quickly replied “Sharam nahin aathi, free and open source event aatha hai or Adobe use kartha hai, GIMP use karna chahiye thumhe” (a rough translation in English: Aren’t you ashamed that you are coming to a free and open source event and you don’t use Gimp and you use Adobe Photoshop). Free and Open Source is not a religion. It is not like “I am a Hindu and hence I can’t go to the Mosque”. Nope! I don’t see it that way. I support the open source movement, but am no dumbass to blindly follow something just because I have a mental block and a boundary which defines my freedom. If I am comfortable with Adobe Photoshop I will use it even if it is not Open Source. All I see is, it is a tool I can use. And in case you are arguing to me that Open Source movement is a religion, then again saying something like “You are a disgrace to FOSS.in for using a paid software” is as good as saying I won’t talk to him for he is a Muslim. Sorry to disappoint you, I am free from all those mind-limits. I will use Linux, I will use Windows, I will use Visual Studio but that doesn’t mean I don’t support Open Source and won’t contribute to it. At the end of the day, these are all tools and am not emotionally binded to them to prove my loyalties et al.
I got conned by an auto driver trying to reach Belli’s place at Cox-town, Hutching’s road. 
Guys peace out! There are good stuff and bad stuff about Foss.in in this blog. If you are one of those organizers who put in a lot of effort in the last 5 months to get this event up and running (I salute you for that, BTW), and can’t handle the negative parts of this post (which is my opinion and cribbing) then go ahead and take the piss, but spare me. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very nasty place, welcome!
Couldnt agree more with you on the final point…
kryptos
December 9, 2007
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Bob McGuire
Bob McGuire
December 9, 2007
I agree with you – I use tools that are convenient and comfortable, whether they’re open-source or not. It makes no sense using something just because it’s open-source.
Navaneethan Santhanam
December 10, 2007
It is not good enough to just be pretty and have infinite spare time to be in the organizing team. And maybe Rusty just exploited this point, to tell Team FOSS.in what is wrong.
Sigh, If i were to really be nasty, i would ask you how many lines of code you have written to see if you are even qualified to make such a statement, But i wont because i am not a troll.
Maybe the concerned person uses eclipse and since i am a emacs user i would have struggled as much using vi. Making a generalization such as this on all organizers is unacceptable.
http://tinyurl.com/26fwf7
If you have questions of how qualified i am to make this comment. What i find unbelievable about this blog post and your whole attitude is the sense of high handedness which i dont even see in “Rusty”.
Besides, your reasoning is all wrong. The “code” was symbiotic to contribution and after having contributed to the event (which is a project in itself), each organizer has contributed more than any random person whose contributions i cant find on his site.
I would appreciate an edit to the post. Each team member of FOSS.IN has worked 5 months for this event and i will not tolerate generalizations like this.
Shreyas
Projects: Gnome, Evolution, OpenOffice, Clutter
Other Projects: RadioVeRVe, Foss.in
Knows editor: Emacs
Doesn’t know: VI
Shreyas
December 10, 2007
He quickly replied “Sharam nahin aathi, free and open source event aatha hai or Adobe use kartha hai, GIMP use karna chahiye thumhe” (a rough translation in English: Aren’t you ashamed that you are coming to a free and open source event and you don’t use Gimp and you use Adobe Photoshop). Free and Open Source is not a religion. It is not like “I am a Hindu and hence I can’t go to the Mosque”. Nope! I don’t see it that way. I support the open source movement, but am no dumbass to blindly follow something just because I have a mental block and a boundary which defines my freedom. If I am comfortable with Adobe Photoshop I will use it even if it is not Open Source. All I see is, it is a tool I can use.
) don’t hate people who use proprietary software rather ask those who use if they are using a proper licensed and legally bought version which is not the case usually in india and hence use foss and create a health society where no one can threatened or be sued for using a software .
Its surely not the religion analogy u gave ,but foss is also about respect for code,we(given i have contributed to a foss project
And talking abotu vi ,trust me the choices/options in the editors that you see in gnu/linux oses are huge and its up to each person to use what he/she wants .
and talking about foss.in organizers about his/her inability to use just one editor called vi is unfair,they invite everyone who is interested in organizing the event and it might happen that some of them are not in to coding at all and to tell you the organizer list of foss.in consists of some big names ,headed by atul chitnis himself ,as much as you would like to point out some mistakes ,i think little reading about the people you are starting to criticize will help you
Taggy
December 10, 2007
Ganesh,
Rusty first asked me to volunteer to come on stage, but since I was too busy to even attend the closing talk, he asked my sister to do it at the last moment. For your kind information, she does know how to use VI and has been using it for 3 years. To be called on stage so suddenly really freaked her out.
This comment of yours is really nasty and completely unfair. I would appreciate it if you removed this post.
Shilpa
Shilpa
December 10, 2007
1. I am NOT an open source contributor in the true sense of the phrase “open source contributor”, but I am an organizer and part of Team Foss.in, a very big part of it if you consider my weight. If *ONLY* contributors (who write code) had to organize open source events, have you bothered to wonder where FOSS events would be today?
2. Rusty’s talk gave an overview of how easy it is to pick up a computer and start contributing, atleast that is what everyone in the audience (including Rusty!) other than of course you thought! hear a bell ringing somewhere?
3. How easily you assume we have infinite spare time .. we MAKE time for FOSS. We don’t do it because we already have time and are wondering what to do with that time. Food for thought?
4. I completely agree with you! Sheela is very pretty! and obviously, her beauty blinded significant parts of your thought process … which is quite apparent to the rest of us here!
5. I’d really ask you to please take some time off and read your post again .. you have issues with people who ask you to use specific open source software and you are dissing someone for not knowing to use an open source software … the word “HYPOCRITE” sound familiar?
Your issue with the whole thing was that a few VI commands were typed wrong … on the other hand … guess who’s patch has been accepted in the linux kernel?
Gaurav
December 10, 2007
Hey guys and girl! we got better things to do…
Tarique Sani
December 10, 2007
Guys Y do u bombard this innocent guy with all these curses..No one is an expert in VI..even people find hard to move from VI to VIM.so easy..Sometimes he is unconventional, but dont abuse this poor kid like this. let him move to the industry and learn to spill out all the abuses in an orthodox way
way to go Ganesh..
Prabhakar
December 10, 2007
“Talk is cheap. Show me the code.” I guess you first need to learn what this means before you can criticize others.
amresh thacker
December 10, 2007
Well rounded post with enough bouquets and brick bats to keep yourself amused for a while.
Striving for depth while you keep your sense of humor alive is a worthy challenge ahead of you. You need all the social capital that you can get to realize your full potential.
As I said before, one word to keep in mind is( rather 3) Community, Community, Community!
labsji
December 10, 2007
Huh? Why? It can be very well due to pressure.
deepak mishra
December 10, 2007
@Kryptos:
I swear maan! I find myself spending more on Autos than on food and booze in here.
@Bob:
Am right now traveling and am on limited internet access. Will give it a shot once I get back.
@Nav:
@Shreyas:
Thanks for the logic lessons. A few posts down, I had commented on Misbah… thank goodness Akmal didn’t ask me how many six I had hit or how many catches I had taken or how many international matches I had won.
I had also written a lot of good stuff about FOSS.in in this site, that you seem to have marauded quite appreciably in the search of contribution, for which I didn’t require the qualification.
And let us not have word play. I mean saying something as weak as “if I were to be nasty I would do this” for a retort is as good as not saying it. I am not a great fan of subjunctives (hypothetical conditions), and I dodn’t intend to entertain them, be it a troll or my good techie friend.
//Making a generalization such as this on all organizers is unacceptable.
Correct. This is a logical point you have raised and I accept it. My bad!
//I would appreciate an edit to the post.
I see nothing in your comment, that makes me yearn for your appreciation. You have quite obviously abused me in my blog, when you could have clearly told me what was wrong and why, and you expect me to comply to you… Is that how it works in YOUR world?
Sagaro
December 10, 2007
@Taggy:
Correct! But then I don’t want people to blatantly shoot people down who use other softwares. I agree about whether it is paid and properly licensed part, but then that is not how I got it from him.
Like I said, I do support the open source movement, but I am not emotional about it. Maybe it is a crime to not be emotional about it, but heck I don’t give a damn!
And as for the VI part, I guess she was under pressure, cauze the later comments after yours claim it. So I guess it was my fault. Will probably change the post…
@Shilpa:
Correct. Would remove it asap. Sorry for being nasty.
@Gaurav:
1) Yup just figured out helping organize FOSS itself is contributing to open source. So I am sorry.
2) Yup just about figured that one too.
3) Correct I may have assumed things.
4) Please refer your third point “How easily you have assumed”. I have taken the tip, maybe you should take it too and stop assuming things about my thought process.
5) There are other significant parts of the post, which you should probably give a second look to. That said, I have issues with a guy who says I am a disgrace because I use Adobe and not suggesting something. Those are two different things. And maybe, maybe if I am not wrong about the meaning of the word ‘hypocrite’ then I wouldn’t mind debating who was more of an hypocrite, me or the guy who said I was a disgrace to open source for using adobe instead of gimp.
Correct! That person’s patch got approved… good show. Congrats.
Sagaro
December 10, 2007
@Sani:
Correct. For once I seem to be hating to write those huge comments in this horribly slow computer with a pretty bad internet connection. I should probably go ahead and do my trekking in coorg and you should probably go hack some softwares.
@Prabhakar:
Maybe it is better that they bombarded than keep quite and hold a grudge (not sure yet, whether they still hold a grudge or not). But hey, what irks is they seem to be unhappy about my generalizations and comments, whereas they seem to be doing the same.
I do have a choice of deleting this post, but can they delete their comments is what I am mulling about right now….
@Amresh:
This blog is not open source. I will most certainly not let your hands anywhere near my dash board and for that matter the world at large.
That said, the blog is also not part of FOSS and nor am I branding the tag. And hence, I have no obligations in fulfilling the statement.
Btw, if you do pay me 1200 bucks every four days, I might write code in this space and force you to read them all.
And here is one for the cheap humor (aka mokkai), that you seem to be enjoying: This ain’t talking, this is typing.
@Labsji:
Thanks! Will keep that in mind. I seem to forget that every time, but you don’t forget to kick me when ever I forget it.
@Deepak:
Correct it can be. I just realized it after reading those comments prior to yours.
Sagaro
December 10, 2007
Ennappa ivlo nalla payyanna post-a change pannitta? Anyway, thats gud for you. BTW, all the folks who are fanatics of open source have a job with a company which uses windows applications. Haven’t seen any company(companies I have been for the last 6 yrs) which uses any opensource platforms. Unless you get money from those paid applications, you cant spend your money & quality time to promote open source. Open source and proprietary softwares should coexist. Thats my view. Sorry for airing my view in ur blog
Prabhakar
December 10, 2007
@Prabhakar:
Lol. Nope, it was never about a war or hate or something (unfortunately they thought it was, which was pretty sad… I mean with them fighting and having word play and sarcasm (a few of them sucked at sarcasm too, but didn’t lose the opportunity to use it)), it was about my opinion and I changed mine after reading the comments… and hence the change in the blogpost (sorry to disappoint you).
That said, I totally agree with your’s and Taggy’s point of view. Makes a lot of sense.
Sagaro
December 10, 2007
Thanks for the edit, I reacted strongly because its close to my heart.
Shreyas
December 10, 2007
Maybe time for a reality check here:
First of all – I guarantee that you would reacted the same way as many of Team FOSS.IN did here, had someone criticised you or the proto.in/blogcamp/barcamp/whatever organization. It’s just not done, and is certainly not a good way of making (or keeping) friends.
Secondly, had you paid attention, you would have seen the video cameras in each hall. So guess who is actually going to see *all* the talks, instead of just the few that you attended?
Yep, Team FOSS.IN. No wonder we decided to focus more on running the event so that it was good for the delegates – we can always catch up later.
About Rusty & Friends – you don’t really know what the background was to that talk, right? It was *my* idea, I requested Rusty to do it, and he obliged, and he did a fantastic job of it. It was completely unplanned and unrehearsed.
The cheap shot at Sheela was despicable. Sheela is a highly intelligent, highly qualified and well respected member of Team FOSS.IN, works in a highly technical and responsible position in one of the largest IT companies in India, and will probably run rings around anyone with what she knows. But yes, she is gorgeous, so that MCP comment from you was justifiable, was it?
This team has worked for more than half a year on this event, trying to give people here in India the kind of conference experience that people have abroad. While you did say a few nice things about the event, you completely overshadowed it with strawman arguments and cheap shots, and that was rather unsavoury.
And you realise that the guy who commented about your Photoshop usage was NOT a FOSS.IN organizer or even volunteer? Team FOSS.IN has a very strong code of conduct, and we enforce is brutally. We do not compete or criticize – we cooperate and facilitate.
During the event, we helped many Windows users get on the network, install Windows Firefox and OpenOffice.org, and even Pidgin.
But you, in one extremely unfair paragraph, passed judgement on the *entire* FOSS community based on ONE moron’s comment to you, and he was not even representative of the entire community.
And yes, I like to talk to people, and I talk a lot. I wanted to tell them what we are doing, and why. If you got bored, what stopped you from leaving?
But you *did* want to hear what I had to say, didn’t you?
Give it up, Ganesh.This was a bad, unfair and extremely biased post, and strictly from a human perspective, you should have simply deleted it when you realised how wrong you were.
Qualified apolologies, with even more barbs thrown in, are no substitute for civility.
Atul Chitnis
December 10, 2007
@Shreyas:
No problem and sorry for the mind-fuck.
@Atul:
1) I might have tried to reason out to the poor mis-guided soul who was criticizing us, instead of questioning his IQ, his reputation, his contribution, his vocabulary, his caste, his religion et al.
Also for your info – I have criticized my own conferences … here are samples – Momo and
BlogCamp
So I guess your theory on I would react to criticism on my events fails miserably.
2) Maybe it is jut not done and it is not good way of keeping friends. Point taken. And i have said I was wrong for like nth time, where n tends to infinity. So if there is anything I can do, to make things better please do let me know. And if I can’t do anything to make things better, then let us not waste time discussing this any further, because the damage is already done.
3) Brilliant. I never thought of it (the cameras recording for volunteers) that way. Good! My bad, I didn’t give it good thought before opining on it. Thanks for the info.
4)Yup! About the Rusty stuff, I just learnt about it on the comments prior to yours. Like I have already suggested in the post, I liked the whole casual way he pulled it thro’ hitting hard nails along the way.
5)Thanks for the info on Sheela. Appreciate it. Unfortunately while writing the post i didn’t know it and my only opinion was that of the goof at the closing ceremony. And it wasn’t a cheap shot at Sheela or whoever. Maybe you are reading too much of my post and making out stuff between the lines. I can’t help it if you think I am a nasty fellow, who wants to make fun of FOSS.in… in which case I probably couldn’t explain to you that I am not trying to have a comment fight here.
6)I did realize he wasn’t a part of FOSS.in, which is exactly why the para read “Nope, it is not about the event, it is not about the organizing team, but a few attendees”. I am not even judging the event or the tem here. I am just saying my experience at the FOSS.in was ruined by a few folks who were attendees. Is that a crime? Why are you so keen on taking all my comments so personally and in a such a negative manner?
I can understand the personal part, for you guys have sweat it out for half a year, but the negative part is what am unable to figure out.
//passed judgement on the *entire* FOSS community based on ONE moron’s comment to you
Refer above para, or re read the blog post for why it is not so.
7) Actually I was contemplating to leave. 4 of my friends left, but I stayed back *not* because I *wanted* to listen to your talk, but because i assumed there will be other sections of the closing ceremony after your talk. And honestly I enjoyed the section where the volunteers were presented to the audience in the end, after your talk. But I would have enjoyed things more, had your talk ended earlier.
//This was a bad, unfair and extremely biased post
Nah! Maybe ignorant post which probably lead to some of those adjectives you have thrown.
//you should have simply deleted it when you realised how wrong you were.
I did mull over that for a while. But then I decided not to based on a few things. For one, it was just not about Sheela and GIMP, it had other stuff too in it.
Two, had I just deleted it, what about the damage I have done? If I had made an apology without the content, would it have made sense? I thought you guys would be more pissed if I had just deleted this post and comments (which have shed so much light on the Team FOSS.in and their efficiency and dedication) and not putting up a public apology.
So I thought maybe I will just trike out the parts, add the apology and leave it for a day or two for people who have already read it to know how a dick I have been and then I will remove the triked out parts and the apology… if that is fine with you.
//Qualified apolologies, with even more barbs thrown in, are no substitute for civility.
True.
Sagaro
December 10, 2007
// give it up Ganesh
What is this a war or something?
Sagaro
December 10, 2007
dude! i think you need to upgrade on the plugins. akismet does’nt seem to be doing a good job these days.
8 )
punIntended
December 10, 2007
I attended the FOSS.in/2007 at Fri/Sat, but looks its loosing its charm. Except 2 or 3 topics others were not interesting.
Even the food quality was bad. esp for those who were not from Karnataka.
Sanjay
December 13, 2007
@PunIntended:
Lol. But they aren’t spam. It is just a comm-gap… and I am assuming by their silence, that they are peaced out… either that, or they are probably waiting to drink my blood at next FOSS.in
@Sanjay:
Are you sure? For I found the topics on Friday and Saturday the most interesting of the lot. Tough I couldn’t attend on Saturday thanks to bike selling business, I heard the talloc and other sessions were brilliant.
Maybe you just ended in the wrong halls.
Can’t say much about the food too for I didn’t pay much attention to the taste and stuff, it was more on lunch time conversations with peeps that I was interested about…
Sagaro
December 16, 2007