Experiences at OSScamp Solan

The camp started off with my usual talk "What is Open Source" - an idea to broaden the concept of Open Source, which would ensure everyone is on the same page to begin with. Discussions took a great leap forward from the introduction, when the idea - how does a common man benefit from open source, turned up. It was an interesting discussion, where students were trying ot get over the theoretical freedoms of FOSS to its practical implementations. Apart from this, the discussion also helped in clearing out the confusion many students face - that open source is like some social work, when we discussed "How can you earn with Open Source Softwares".

 

I went forth to discussing how services and product companies work with open source softwares and the general demand for highly skilled people. Went on to discuss how experience with working on open source softwares and distributed development teams can help students build up their career growth spirals. From the looks of the participant, this sure was an eye-opener. Further on, programs like Google Summer of Code aroused a lot of interest. I wonder how many students take it forward.

 

After all this serious discussion, we plugged in our guitars to lmms and explored DAWs and music synthesis with FOSS softwares. We ended the day with discussions on Licensing and the role it plays in computing.

 

Day 2 was a series of how tos with FOSS projects, where participants showcased projects and discussed them. We also started actively working on a physical music library manager project being written in python by some of the participants of the camp. It looks like an interesting project in the offering too. Lets hope it turns out solid within its roadmap.

 

(with inputs from Mayank Saini)

 

Pictures from the camp can be found at Flickr (this link will take you there), while my presentation is embedded below.

Foss: Why should it matter to Students