The Sprint

It feels great to write my first blog about this year’s Software Freedom Day.

I usually hate celebrations and functions. But SFD2006 just redefined the idea of a celebration.

To mark the celebrations at SFD2006, FSF-AP conducted “The Sprint”. A sprint to localize a GNU/Linux Operating System into telugu. The activity was held at about 40 centers around the globe on the day with a participation of above 1000 of which the majority was the community students of various Engineering Colleges in the state. Its estimated that about 57,000 lines of code in English was translated into telugu at the end of the day, when a few teams overseas had just then begun their day.

The slogan “from community to community” was illustrated on the day.

What caught me was the varied responses and experiences that we had right from the day we started campaigning for the event. I had given talks at two colleges (SSIT and Institute of Aeronautical Engg) and also at VNRVJIET (home).

My talk at SSIT, an introduction to the free software philosophy, was the first ever conducted in the institution since its inception over a year ago. As such i had the attention of the principal and Head of Computer Science Dept. towards the activity. They were positively responsive towards conducting ‘The Sprint’ in the college as well as starting a GLUG there. Apart from that, the students there were also interested in learning new things and doing some extra-curricular activities. I had trained a couple of them for ‘The Sprint’ who would then teach others.

But on the day of the event, the Lab Administrator was not supportive enough to provide them with computers with CD-ROMs. Bhuvan and I had to go to the college and talk to the person. I found that he wanted to know “what way will these students be benefitted by doing some mere translation?”. He had earlier opined that FSF-AP was trying to get their work done by the students. We had to waste a lot of time trying to convince the person. He ended up arguing that all systems in the Lab with CD-ROMs were “servers”. There were 5 such ones, all servers. Anyway when asked, he said he dint know what “a cluster” meant. The students later pointed me to some computers in another part of the Lab with CD-ROMs not being used. The Admin finally had to “surrender”. We quickly setup the systems and started with the work. The best part was that students were still ready to do the activity in-spite of the discouragement they faced.

When Bhuvan and I reached Institute of Aeronautical Engg., we were surprised by the enthusiasm in the students and the kind of atmosphere that was created in the Lab where the activity was being done. I noticed some students standing outside the Lab, who i later found to be participants waiting for their turn. I could see people shouting out words that they found were difficult to translate. There was a person who would then note down the word and try to find the translations for them. There was even a team of two faculty members doing the activity. The team that coordinated the activity here deserves a special mention. Its not just because of the kind of effort they have put in conducting the very first activity of their GLUG smoothly, but also because they did it in-spite of the fact that their mother-tongue isn’t Telugu. A teacher, Kamala Kumari, was the person who had made all this possible in the college. Special thanks to her.

In the meanwhile, i had calls from and to VNRVJIET to know how things were going there. I heard people were fighting to get a turn. When we had campaigned in the classrooms at VNRVJIET, about 150 students had given their names for participation in ‘The Sprint’. But the turnout was more that that. It was a festival event for VGLUG, and i missed all of it. No regrets. I was part of other good things as well.

At 1600hrs, Bhuvan and I left for OU for the closing ceremony. We took the Medchal road from Gandimaisamma X roads on my brother’s pulsar with a modified exhaust pipe, roaring on the National Highway. We reached OU and met Kiran Chandra, Dr. Pratap Reddy and others. Exchanging experiences in different places, we found that the spirit was almost the same in all the places.

At the closing ceremony, head of the Official Telugu Language Commission, A.B.K Prasad addressed the gathering. Siddhartha (key: alexander+krrish) shared ” People were reminded that they belonged to the Land of Telugu”. A.B.K Prasad talked about things like how people started to forget the importance of Telugu when English started being incorporated into schools at early ages. He also cited examples from the Japanese language where, though rocket is called ‘rocket’ itself in Japanese, the technology and principles behind ‘rocket-science’ is imparted to students in Japanese itself. He also advised the youth of the state to work on language technologies by taking up university projects in this direction.

After the closing ceremony, we went straight to FSF-AP office. It directly started with bumps to Naveen, Chairman of Student Chapter. I made sure its all captured on my phone. Then it was Siddhartha’s turn for the success at VNRVJIET. Then for some reason, Naresh of APPS ASSOC got his share of the party. There was a reporter from Prajashakti who interviewed Kiran Chandra. Then we all got a chance to share our experiences to be published in the newspaper. Then we ate bondas, drank ‘chai’ and called it a (Software Freedom) day.