Nope, it is not yet the time to reveal the new name.

But this is our first call to the Free & Open Source community – if you are interested in helping bring this year’s event to life, then the first thing you should do is drop us a line.

From this year onwards, the nature, the scope and the format of the event formerly known as Linux Bangalore will change (apart from the venue, of course), and we are kick-starting the event early to make sure that things happen as planned.

It is important to note that the event is no longer a “small, regional LUG meet”. The objectives of the event are to reach beyond borders – state and national – and will involve the community, industry, academia and national and international governments.

With this in mind, we expect the organising efforts to come from people not just located in Bangalore, but across India and the world. We have been extremely fortunate to have already received offers of help from people from Europe, Australia and the USA – a pointer at just how much our “little regional event” has grown in stature.

Paraphrasing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz – “This is not just Bangalore anymore”.

Last year, we had almost 3000 participants from India and abroad (a lot more than most FOSS events in India put together), and we expect that number to climb substantially this year.

We are going to be picky, so if you want to get involved, you will have to convince us that you are the right person for the job.

We are specifically looking for community members who can plan long term, and are not the kind who talk more and do less. People with organisational, financial, logistical, PR, networking, technical and people skills. We need people who can speak English, German, French, American, Portugese, Japanese, Chinese and corporatese.

If you have had past experience with organising events, then that’s a good start. If you have been involved with Linux Bangalore in the past, then you are well on your way, especially if you have proven organising skills.

Note that this is *NOT* a call for volunteers – this is a call for level-headed, clear-thinking, visionary team leaders. People who make the grade will eventually lead their own teams, focussing on various aspects of the event.

If you think you qualify, convince us. For now, use the old contact form on the Linux Bangalore/2004 site to mail us.

Tell us why you think you qualify to help put together one of the biggest Free & Open Source events in the world.

p.s. Despite its size and scope, this is still (and always will be) a community-driven event. Therefore *everyone’s* inputs are welcome. Keep an eye on the Linux Bangalore site, where information about (and re-directs to) the new event will appear. For now we are still using the old mailing list, so if you want to make suggestions, get on it – it will renamed to the new name as soon as we announce it (and no, it is *NOT* Linux Bangalore/2005).

After my recent article, I am being flooded with mail from people, most of whom have questions about various things related to broadband internet connections.

Many of the questions are similar, so I am writing an article that I will put up on COMversations ASAP.

It will take me a couple of days, so until then please be patient. It isn’t possible for me to answer each and every mail coming in, though I honestly try to.

Thanks for understanding.

In late January, I traveled to Calicut, to speak at the National Institute of Technology. Because of the strange flight-connections to/from Calicut — you can get there from Dubai, but not from Bangalore — I decided to travel by train, which takes about 12 hours, but is comfortable enough.

Now if there is one thing that scares me, it is loss of connectivity for any period of time. Whether via my notebook or my PDA – if I am not connected, I feel lost.

I need not have worried.

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So yesterday was the daughter’s birthday party – delayed by a couple of weeks because of exams.

Thanks to able assistance and prodding from various friends, Shubha and I decided give Anjali some culture: we bought her a Yamaha PSR295 keyboard, in the sincere hope that she will learn to play it and continue the line of family musicians (my mom and I both play instruments). Indications are that she will – by 2 am, she was doing Fur Elise the way I have never been able to, and was figuring out chords and note relationships. Things look good. Maybe she’ll form a band some day. She certainly has lots of inspiration around!

The party was great fun – tons of people around, and of course all of Anjali’s favourite male specimen. BTW – since Gaurav celebrates his birthday on the 12th of April, we decided to make it a dual gig, with two cakes and stuff. (We stopped just short of giving him presents, to encourage him to throw a party so that we can address that part

Tons of food, lots of singing and laughing, even some birthday bumps. Chocolate mousse and cake. Wife’s trademarked German Potato Salad. Chicken kababs. Good stuff.

I love parties with lots of friends around.

p.s. What’s Andre? That’s the name Anjali gave her keyboard, in the great tradition of people naming their instruments. Strangely enough, while Gaurav and JD gave their instruments female names, Anjali’s keyboard got a male name!

Ah well, it was a nice holiday while it lasted, but now it is over.

On the morning of the 7th of April, BSNL DataOne went down, and every single subscriber that I know of in Bangalore and Chennai (probably elsewhere as well) was either disconnected or experiencing speeds slower than a 14.4kbps dialup modem.

Calling BSNL on the 7th all day resulted in “saar, server down saar, will be fixed by 2/3/4/5/6/7/8/…pm”. Of course nothing got fixed, and by Friday morning, I was upset enough to go and do some investigation.

[Updated 9-Apr-2005 11:50am] More info
[Updated 9-Apr-2005 12:46pm] BSNL gives an “explanation”
[Updated 9-Apr-2005 18:00pm] Services Restored

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I am in Mysore on Saturday morning, to speak at the SJCE on FOSS, what it is, and how students could/should get involved and how they will benefit. The event is called Technologix-05, and I will be speaking in the morning.

Today my daughter Anjali (Geetanjali for long, brat for short ) celebrates her 15th birthday. So here’s wishing her a Happy Birthday, and no – she can’t have the car keys. Nor am I going to ask her what she would like to have for her birthday: when she was three years old, someone asked her what she liked, and she replied (without batting an eyelid) “Boys”. These days, the answer would probably be Rahul Dravid, in a pink ribbon (and not much else), so I am going to pass on that.

Others who celebrate their birthdays today are people from both my worlds:

From the Free & Open Source world, we have Apache founder Brian Behlendorf. Brian was present at my birthday in 2004, where I invited him to come and speak at Linux Bangalore/2004 (and he promptly accepted), so I decided to track his birthday – only to find that he shares a birthday with my daughter! Whoa! Happy Birthday, Brian!

The music world is quite crowded with Pisceans and Arians, and two people who celebrate their birthdays today are:

Rajesh Mehar, known on LiveJournal as FatMuttony, plays guitar, vocalist, percussionist and allround funny man with Thermal and a Quarter. He is so cool and so warm and so funny that just seeing him on stage makes you feel good – nevermind the fact that once he launches into a song, he brings the house down! Happy Birthday, Mutts, and the answer is Yes!

Those of you who know me personally, know of my love for music – especially the 60s rock and roll and blues kind. One person who totally dominates my universe is Eric Clapton – guitarist extraordinaire, singer, composer and generally influential person. When I was young, I wanted to be just like him. Today, I still do.

Some of you will remember my post about BSNL Broadband.

A lot of people wrote in and narrated their experiences. Some of them good, some of them bad.

Here’s my story:

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Yahoo has recently launched a new special search section that lets you search for material that is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

I did a casual search for the term bangalore rock music and was thrilled to bits to see Phenom listed right near the top of the search results.

Why am I so thrilled about it? Well, apart from the fact that Phenom is very special to me, it is the fact that this is where my two passions – free information and music – come together.

I met Lawrence Lessig in Berlin in 2004 at the Wizards of OS 3 conference, and was hugely impressed by both the man, and his vision. It was this meeting that caused me to recommend that Phenom publish its music under a CC license, which they eventually did in December 2004, when they released their album “Unbound”.

At the time of writing this entry, Phenom has had about 2500 downloads of their songs, and the rate is not only *not* slowing, but is in fact *increasing* every month! I have heard from people all over the world who have downloaded and heard their music, and (even more thrilling) thousands of people right here in India are being exposed to Phenom’s work – about two thirds of the downloads are from Indian IP addresses. Given that very few Indian rock music albums have even crossed a couple of hundred in terms of sales, and possibly a thousand overall, this is a major achievement.

There is huge amount of interest in not only the music itself, but the *reasons* why Phenom did this (publish under a CCL). While other music groups have published their music on the internet, none (to my knowledge) have actually done so under a Creative Commons license. The closest would be Thermal and a Quarter, who published their latest album under a *modified* CCL at the same time that Phenom released their album.

It is a matter of time before the press and other influential sectors begin picking up on this concept, and when it does, I hope that it will have as much impact on the world of music as the advent of Free & Open Source Software has had on the world of software.

And when it does, I hope that it will finally bring Indian rock music out of the shadows of film and pop music, and find its deserved place in the limelight. There is an incredible amount of talent here – real, original talent. So far, the music publishers in India have been ignoring it, but it is clear that this will have to change, once more and more people get exposed to, and clamour for, more Indian Rock Music.

David Hammerstein, a Member of the European Parliament, has sent a letter to the Indian government on the subject of software patents.

Will this make India see sense? Will it stop India from sending its “pride of the nation” industry into a complete hell that it has been safe from till now?

Stay tuned for the next gripping episode of “a country commits intellectual suicide”, coming soon to a browser near you.

For now, here is the letter:

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