LinuxThane 2006 Conference Report

To spread awareness of Linux / Open Source and equip the students with current knowledge about the available technology and happenings in the Industry, Department of Information Technology of B. N. Bandodkar College of Science, Thane decided in the month of November 2005 to conduct conference and announced the same to be held on November 24-25, 2006 naming "LinuxThane 2006".

Prior to the conference two preparatory workshops were also planned and accordingly the preparation for all three events started in November 2005.

The first workshop was conducted for teaching / non-teaching staff and students of the colleges in July 2006 while 2nd workshop, "Faculty Development Program" was conducted on September 15-16, 2006. Through these workshops need of Linux/ Open Source was conveyed to the participants. The first workshop was conducted by Mr. Abhijeet Kale, Incharge, Department of Information Technology, B. N. Bandodkar College of Science, Thane while Faculty Development Program was conducted in collaboration with Root Technologies, Training Partners of RedHat.

Finally on 24-25 November 2006, "Linux Thane 2006" Conference was conducted. Eminent personalities from industry as well as academia guided the delegates and thrown light on various topics with regard to open source.

On November 24, 2006, conference was inaugurated by Chief Guest Mr. Shankar Iyer Head, Global Learning Service, RedHat. Dr. Alka Irani, Chief Investigator for project, CDAC was present as Guest of Honor.
Mr. Shankar Iyer discussed the importance of Linux / Open Source Softwares and how their use is increasing day by day in various industries while Dr. Mrs. Alka Irani explained the importance of Indix Project, funded by TDIL Government of India and executed at CDAC, Mumbai. She also discussed Open Source cost outing solutions in Education using portal aantarabhaaratii.
After the inaugural function technical sessions started around 11.00 a.m. Mr. Siji Sunny discussed some of the issues that need to be sorted in order to make the Indix System work with latest X-server while Mr. Anal Haque Warsi, Santosh and Sobi from CDAC together discussed the service that can be used for storing, sharing & displaying multi-lingual documents in open format. The service is provided through Aantarabhaaratii portal by the Janabhaaratii project of CDAC Mumbai using Jana-Indix CD, developed & maintained by Janabhaaratii Project of Language Computing group at CDAC Mumbai.
After the Lunch session, Mr. Ramu Thyagarajan, Student of Pune University Computer Science Department pursuing M.C.A(in Final semester) discussed how graphics can be implemented in Open Source while Novell staff demonstrated the utilities provided by Novell SUSE-Linux.
Mr. Hiren Dand, B. Sc. (I.T.) coordinator of Mulund College of Commerce, Mulund, Mr. Sagar Kotekar-Patil, Lecturer, Ruparel College and Mr. Santosh Kumar Soni, Lecturer, K.C. College, Mumbai explained the technicalities of Private Virtual Machine (PVM) and Message

On November 25, 2006, the second day of the conference was started with the talk of Mr.. Jayanti Gokhale, Ex-Principal, Vidyalankar School of Information Technology about the world of Operating System for Embedded Systems. He pointed out the various technical issues and how embedded platform can be implemented using Linux / Open Source Platform.
Prof. R.S. Verma presented "Cost of software corporate user's perspective" which took the hypothetical manufacture limit. He focused on the cost of initial licensed acquisition & compared it with Foss.

Priyanka S. Kadam and Yashada V. Naik, S.Y.B.Sc. (I.T.) students of B. N. Bandodkar College of Science, Thane presented the results of their study on Open Source for Library. They discussed about the importance of Digital Library over Traditional Library and how Digital Library using Open Source Softwares will be advantageous.

Mr. Abhijeet Kale, Organizing Secretary of the Conference briefly explained about the computer setup and Linux Experimentation on VPM campus. He also discussed the problems campus is facing because of Linux / Open Source Softwares and how they are getting solved.

PLUG, Linux Pune Group then conducted an interactive session. Delegates were asked to be free to ask any kind of questions regarding Linux / Open Source. Various questions from installing Linux to whether Linux faces any problems because of Viruses were asked and were satisfied by the answers from Mr. Sudhanwa Joglekar, Secretary of PLUG and his team.

In the last session of the Conference, Dr. Nagarjuna G. explained to the delegates purpose, need and basic aim of the Free Software Foundation. While explaining a Free word, he emphasized that it should be taken in the sense of freedom. He went on explaining the importance of free software in education, industry & government, some of the compiling arguments that the ability to control the information & the accessing tools over long periods of time. The economic advantage of free software, he argued is incidental. He also clarified the legality related to free software.
In the Valedictory function, the guest of Honor, Mr. Aquib Zia, told in very fantastic manner that we are not against Proprietary Softwares but we must identify the need of Free / Open Source softwares in country like India where computer education is very much required.
Principal Dr. Mrs. M. K. Pejaver announced the next seminar on "Contaminants in Food and Beverages" to be conducted on October 06, 2007 by Chemistry Department of our college while with vote of thanks from Mr. Abhijeet Kale and promise to meet on same stage in November 2007 for LinuxThane 2007 the Conference was over.
70 participants from various colleges and around 120 students of our own college made this Conference a grand success.