I returned from Germany a week ago.

I am flying back there tonight, to bury the only man I ever looked up to.

This morning, I received the news that my mother’s only brother, and my only uncle, Lutz Barthel, had died in an accident.

Just 2 weeks ago, I sat with him in his favourite pub in Berlin, watching a football match on TV as Germany and Holland struggled to beat each other.

Just 10 days ago, he and I sat in my mother’s living room, discussing life and business, and his plans for retirement later this year.

At 63 years of age, he was so full of life, he made me (20 years his junior) feel old.

And now he is gone.

Life just isn’t fair.

Our Linux Workshop successfully happened yesterday. Ran a bit longer than we expected, but we gave the participants solid value. I am sure they will take days to catch up with everything. Luckily they have our extremely detailed slideshows and tons of documentation (along with the Fedora Core 2 CDs), so they should be OK.

Now I have two days left before I fly out to Berlin, Germany, on Sunday night, to speak at the Wizards of OS conference.

I expect to meet a number of people there whom I have only heard and read about, including Lawrence Lessig, Michael Tieman, Eben Moglen, etc. and of course meet a lot of old friends, like Volker Grassmuck (he being to WOS what I am to Linux Bangalore – if it works, the team gets the credit, if it bombs, it is all his fault , Harald Welte (who, apart from keeping the Internet safe by developing iptables, knows *exactly* how to satisfy my craving for mindless Science Fiction , Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (whom I first “met” online via a BBS more than a decade ago, when he was a schoolkid in Delhi, and who is now a renowned Open Source economist), and many others. Samyeer Metrani, the man tasked with the production of the Simputer, will also be presenting at the conference.

This will be my first trip “back home” since my beloved grandmother passed away in November last year. It will be a strange feeling, not having her greet me when I reach. My mother, who lives in Berlin, will of course try and make up for the vaccum, but some things can never be replaced, or forgotten.

When I get back, I hope to announce my next project, which I hope will have long-lasting effects on the Indian (and possibly international) software scene. Information will appear here when it is ready.

My first column can now be read in DataQuest (May 15th issue). The layout is still a bit raw, but that should change when the next appears.

Reader feedback was amazingly positive. I especially likes this one:

“I loved the complete change of pace for a mag like dq — it was refreshing to read something so differently written. Can’t wait for the next one! And I am inspired — am now seriously looking at getting myself a PDA. I always thought of PDAs as expensive ‘Digital Diaries’ — thanks for clearing that up for me!”

The same reader also complained about no direct contact info in the article, but was tickled when he googled for information and found it first shot.

Am busy as a beaver preparing for the Exocore Practical Linux Administrator Workshop that happens on June 3rd (i.e. next Thursday). We have some really cool stuff lined up that will definitely make things easier for people deploying services on their networks. The single biggest information request we get via the website and in email seems to be “how do I set up spam and virus filtering?” We hadn’t covered that the last time we did this workshop, but this time it is a big item on our agenda.

We are also adding all sorts to required goodies to the Fedora Core 2 CD set that is part of the courseware, so people won’t have to start hunting around for things – everything will available right there on the CDs.

This evening is the Bangalore Linux User group meet, where I am also doing a small session on Fedora Core 2. See you there!

I have been invited to speak at the Wizards of OS conference, to be held in June in Berlin, Germany.

This is a biggie for me. Apart from the fact that this is the first conference I will be speaking at in my home town (for those who came in late ), this conference has some really big names speaker there – including Lawrence Lessig, Ebner Moglen, Michael Tiemann and others. It’s an honour to be part of such a lineup!

In a related piece of news – my “third site” (atulchitnis.com) is now up.

For those of you used to the “informal” nature of my personal site and my articles site, the starkness of the “com” site is probably going to come as a shock. It contains nothing but information about me from the professional perspective.

In general this site just aims to be a “starting point” for people wishing to do business with me, the press, etc. It will also contain updated news related to my professional work, but no articles or personal stuff. Over the next few days will have a lot more info on it, including some of the “secret” projects I have been involved in.

My company will be conducting a one day course for people who need to learn how to set up comprehensive network services using Linux. We have held this course before, with great success. People keep asking us when the next one is, so here we go.

It is extremely practical in nature (as you can see from the content), and the Exocore gang will spend all day revealing stuff from its bag of tricks as each topic is discussed.

This is on June 3rd, and details can be found here. If you are interested, or know someone who could be, check it out.

I will be speaking at NIE, Mysore tomorrow (Saturday, 8th May) as part of their Ankura ’04 Techfest. My topic is “Open Source and Innovation”, and I hope to make it interesting enough for everyone. I am on at 1:30pm (looks like the organisers want me to wake up everyone after lunch .

If I can’t motivate you to attend, maybe this will: speaking immediately after me is the Project Comrade team, featuring Mrinal and his bunch of fearless roboteers – and a bunch of robots.

They have been a hit item everywhere that they have presented it, so if you are anywhere near Mysore, try and be at the NIE tomorrow.

I look forward to having a lot of fun, and meet lots of people!

Some news for those of you who have been wondering why I haven’t been updating COMversations:

DataQuest has acquired the rights to publish my articles, starting from the May 2004 issue (whether May 1st or May 15th I am not sure about), and you will able to read my articles in their printed issue twice a month.

As part of the agreement, I have agreed to “lag” my articles online by a month, which means that my articles that appear in DataQuest will appear only a month later on this site. This is a fair enough.

The other piece of good news is that all this gave me a major incentive to write even more, and there are lots of new articles queued up for publication.

I will be writing about mobility (handheld computing, wireless), Open Source (from the corporate perspective) and technologies that I perceive to be important. If you have any suggestions for topics you think I should cover, please let me know.

The best part of all this is: I am again working with Prasanto Kumar Roy as my editor – the guy who got me started with writing more than a decade ago.

I am alone.

Wife and kid left for Ooty this morning, for a summer vacation. Thanks to too many things that need doing at work and elsewhere, I was unable to go. Arranged for the neighbours’ kids to go along – so now we have 5 women heading for Ooty for a 5 star vacation, for 5 days.

I have been to Ooty many times before – as a kid with my parents, as well as a couple of years ago with Shubha and Anjali. I love that place, though it has really become crowded and noisy of late.

I wish I could have gone. Weather in Ooty is currently just how I like it – rainy, cool, green. I was hoping that I would be able to manage to go, but no joy.

Life sucks.

Microsoft just acquired the dubious distinction of being a formally indicted monopolist across the (commercially) two most important continents on planet Earth.

After being indicted for similar offences in its homeland (the USA) earlier, the European Union just slammed Microsoft for being an “abusive monopolist”, and a monster penalty of more than $600 million.

While the financial penalty won’t hurt MS (heck, it has more than $50,000,000,000 in cash in the bank!), the fact that commercial sanctions against the company will prevail in Europe and the USA, and that this will not be missed by the remaining parts of the world, will make it more and more difficult for MS to use its “abusive monopolistic behaviour”.

MS has already said that it will appeal, and this case will probably drag on for years, but that will not wipe away the indictment on both continents.

More information here.

That’s two continents down. Australia will probably be next – they are already busy as beavers ridding themselves of another imperial rule.

Asia will be more difficult unless cross-border organisations like SAARC get involved, which is extremely unlikely.

But Asia is also the one place on earth where MS is already being punished – with more and more governments and commercial outfits choosing to use Linux and Open Source solutions rather than the outrageously expensive and insecure wares that MS offers.

And they call *us* the Third World?

Am back from Goa, where both events I spoke at were great successes.

Time for a diary update.

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