September 16th 2006 was celebrated as Software Freedom Day (SFD). I could not head to my home LUG (ILUGC) due to several commitments 
So decided to take an active role in FSUG Bangalore’s SFD Celeb activities. We had met two times prior to the event and discussed about the proceedings. The final plan was to have Sessions at three different colleges simultaneously.
The colleges were BMS, DSS and MVIT in Bangalore. Praveen, Shrikanth, Dilip and myself decided to go to BMS. Saurabh and the Sun Guys went to MVIT while Ramprasad and team went to DSS.
Dilip came home and picked me up and we proceeded to BMS College after asking a lot of Autowalas the route which supposedly Dilip “knew” 
We reached BMS at around 9:15 AM to see the Audi filled with Praveen, Dilip and myself only. Ahem… It was 9:30 and lo behold!!! The AUDI was jam packed with people not having place to sit and extra chairs been roped in. Great!!! 350 people packed in a 300 capacity audi!!
We started the days proceedings with the Revolution OS video being shown for 15 minutes. i took up the mantle and started blabbering the same old FLOSS philosophy, differences between Hacker and cracker, Free Software and Open Source etc etc.. Y0! I have become a seasoned professional in glueing (whatever that mean) my audience to the seat.. Keep it up tuxmaniac.. Surprisingly the students knew quite a lot and were very interactive. Something that I have not seen in many colleges. Keep it up guys. Questions like Multimedia on GNU/Linux, Importance of GNU/Linux for a person wishing to do a MBA etc were asked and replied to by Shrikanth, Praveen, Dinesh (Yes!! He came from nowhere suddenly! Felt surprised) and myself. Then I opened the students to the world of AIGLX/Compiz as usual and the rest was history.
Then came the most interesting part. A guy from Novell (Guess so… 
) came and started speaking about Open Suse and its advantages to students. Some nice quotes he told.
1. Companies like Debian, Ubuntu …. blah blah
2. Mono is a tool with which you can download Windows programs to Linux.
3. Microsoft has delayed Windows Vista release due to Novell :O
4. Anything that is Free wont last long (and he ended his speech by saying Freedom will last the life)
and many more.. will add whenver I remember some.. I was literrally clutching my fist.. Somehow I cooled down by opening my laptop and started playing “Four in a Row”. After this we took up the stage once again by organising BOF sessions and students threw their queries and discussed a lot of things. Hats off guys for the amazing enthu you guys showed. We had lunch at Angeti on Church Street and parted around 4 PM.
I simply cannot believe you didn’t take this opportunity to take the guy to the cleaners and create a good impression of Debian and Ubuntu. You are losing your charm young man.
C’mon, here was a golden opportunity to nail one of Novell’s loser Netware guys and publicly question the commitment of such people to Free software and its ideals. Bleh, you are turning into a sissy, or were there other considerations at work ?
I’m not defending the Novell guy here..
The way the Novell guy sold Free Software to the students is commendable. Leaving out the first point on Debian/Ubuntu which is Novell-marktg related (I don’t blame him for that) , if you take the other two points and see it from the angle of a non-FSF aware student, FOSS will appear more revealing. Let me elaborate on the points:
1. Mono is a tool ..
Most of the software students write today is written in VB or using the VC++ IDE. The programming-student’s first question would be “How do I get my existing software to Linux ?” Think in that angle and you will understand why the harp on mono is necessary.
2. Microsoft has delayed Vista because of Novell
Irrespective of the credibility of this statement, it’s important. Look at how Steve Jobs makes fun of Vista when he compares it to OS X. Glib talk, Yes! ; is it required ? Yes!
3. Anything that is Free won’t last long..
He is just giving credance to Novell’s business model. Perfectly fine. Novell is not infringing on the GPL so why are you bothered ? After all our day-to-day jobs doesn’t produce Free Software. Some of the jobs in Novell do produce Free software.
Ok, back to point one.. I could comment on it and justify it but you have a hanging comment there which gives no context on what the original statement conveyed regarding Debian/Ubuntu.
Talking about Free Software is easy as one can always pull in the “philosophy” argument. Marketing Free Software is a tough job and at times dirty.
tuxmaniac,
Dinesh didn’t come from no where, he was expected as I called him.
toufeek,
You are answering just to the points which tuxmaniac could list. The sessions were too much. Also we went there to talk to them about Free Software on Software Freedom Day not marketing Novell.
1. Mono – We are talking to a technical audience and we cannot get away talking crap, especially when talking to people who know more than what you talk, you have to talk about facts. Mono is a .Net implementation and you __CANNOT__ run VB or VC++ code in mono, you might want to use wine here. Your C# and VB.Net applications can be run using Mono.
2. Maybe it is true. Even I would love to believe it is true.
3. We didn’t conduct the event to praise what is Novell’s business model or belittle other Free Software projects.
Read my blog where I have written more about http://www.pravi.co.nr/2006/09/16/software-freedom-day/ and especially what Atul wrote here http://comversations.com/2005/01/17/the-corporate-eyeball-trap/
You would know how painful it is when you spent a lot of effort to organise such an event and some strange guy come and hijack it.
Even you agree marketing Free Software can be dirty, it need not be the case always but this was such a case and we don’t want such things in our events. May be you can organise an event and let people do dirty marketing.
Sorry I couldn’t control myself here. I had a tough time controling myself there but I manage it because I thought the sudents got a different view and we learned the lesson not to allow anyone to hijack an event organised by the community. I had a tough time to keep Srikanth in the hall. But this is too much, some one trying to defend it. It is very easy to write this comment right? Did you help in any way in making this event happen? May be again I’m losing my temper.
Well I can go on and on about it… The more I go the more I will have to be dirty as well so let stop here.
Praveen:
Regarding point 1, I was generalising on how students will be able to easily use their existing software projects on Linux. The technicalities of it need more detail and a generalized comment is not the right place to expand on it. But yes, you are right. Wine would be a better tool for Win32 binaries. I was talking about porting windows code to Linux for students.
Point 3 and the rest, I’ll take it offline.
toufeeqh _at_ gmail _dot_ com
Has read through at any forum about ?????
And now has found also photos
Has laid out them here http://floraufauna.in/nokia/image.jpg
Look, please..