Re-booting FOSS.IN

FOSS.IN is "India's premier FOSS event" (well, that's what they say.) So this is a brave move:

As we had explained, over and over: this is a FOSS developer and contributor conference. We are no longer a FOSS user conference.

As was mentioned last year - in the end FOSS is about Free and Open Source Software, and somebody needs to write that software.

FOSS.IN is about demolishing the contention that India is a land of FOSS consumers, with almost no contributors - that we only take, not give back.

Our objective is to enable and jumpstart more FOSS contributors from India.

But most people just don't seem to have understood that, and have submitted user oriented talks (even if they involve development).

...

To fix this, we are restarting the Call for Participation process.

As Open Source India rightly says:

I think it is about time that we stopped being a nation of downloaders and started "uploading." TCS releasing WANem as open source is among the great contributions coming out of India, but we need more contributions going upstream given that we produce almost 20 percent of the software developers in the world. Unless and until we start contributing, we cannot have a say in the development of technology.

I've always believed that India can become a real free software powerhouse: let's hope this bold move marks the first step towards that.