Invited Talks
-
Keynote address by Prof. C.R.Muthukrishnan
Date, Time, Venue: May 25, 2009, 10:30-11:30, Nilgiri Hall.
Title: Meaning, Purpose and Spirit of Open Source
Abstract:
"Open Source Software (OSS)" idea has come a long way in two decades. This evolution is seeing adoption of OSS in the corporate setting more widely. Is this changing the basic idea of OSS? what are the pros and cons? The talk will take a look at these issues.
About the speaker:
C R Muthukrishnan (crm) was Dean (1992-95) and Deputy Director & Director-in-charge (1996-2001) at I.I.T Madras. He was Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at IIT Madras from 1975 to 2003. He is Consulting Advisor with Tata Consultancy Services Limited since 2003 as part of the CEO’s team
He has served and continues to serve on several committees of CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), DST (Department of Science & Technology), MCIT (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology), MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development) and AICTE (All India Council of Technical Education). He has visited and has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon university, University of California, San Diego and Wichita State university. He is a member of the Board/Advisory Board in several companies. He has guided more than 200 students for B.Tech, M.Tech, M.S and PhD theses. He has over 35 publications in International and National Journals and conferences. He has organised many international and national conferences.
He was Honorary Editor-in-Chief of Computer Science and Informatics - the Journal of CSI (Computer Society of India), and President of CSI 2000-2002 He is a Fellow of the CSI. He is a Senior Member of the ACM, member IEEE and life member of the Indian Society for Technical Education.
He has a B.Tech from IIT Madras and M.Tech and PhD from IIT Kanpur
Muthukrishnan’s expertise includes operating systems, distributed computing, system performance and software engineering and CS Education.
-
Invited Talk by Prof. Prabhu Ramachandran, IIT Bombay
Date, Time, Venue: May 25, 2009, 14:15-15:15, Nilgiri Hall.
Title: Rapid scientific application development with Python.
Abstract:
In this talk we demonstrate why Python is an ideal language for rapid application development in the scientific computing domain. We show the wide range of applicability of Python and demonstrate several specific libraries and packages related to Python's suitability for scientific computing. This includes basic computing, interactive exploration of data, symbolic and numerical computing, 2D and 3D graphics, GUIs, web-based applications, high-performance and parallel computing. As an example, we consider a non-trivial problem that requires parallel computing and show how we can rapidly prototype a solution to this problem with Python.
About the speaker:
Prabhu Ramachandran is a faculty member at the department of Aerospace engineering, IIT Bombay. His research interests are primarily in particle methods and applied scientific computing. He has been active in the FOSS community for close to 11 years. He co-founded the Chennai LUG in 1998 and is the creator, author and lead developer of the FOSS India award winning Mayavi and TVTK Python packages (http://code.enthought.com/projects/mayavi).
-
Invited Talk by Mr. Shuvam Misra, Merce Trchnologies Pvt.Ltd.
Date, Time, Venue: May 26, 2009, 10:00-11:00, Nilgiri Hall
Title: Open source as one point on a continuum.
Abstract:
Open Source Software, or Free Software, is often regarded as a very specific way of developing and sharing software, as opposed to The Other Kind, which may be termed "proprietary" software. This oppositional model obscures the fact that OSS and proprietary software are both points on a continuum. It may be relevant to explore other points on this continuum in order to get a better understanding of how we, as contributors and users, may benefit from all types of software.
The talk will try to explore the variations of free software seen in practice, by examining specific software projects and communities. C-News, BSD Unix, the Linux kernel project, RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian, MySQL, some open source ERP projects, etc, will be analysed briefly to show the differences in these development and distribution models. This is not an attempt to discuss revenue models of OSS companies, but an attempt to compare different models of software development and distribution.
An attempt will be made to seek out general principles from these case studies to highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of these various models of software development and distribution, including open source and proprietary software approaches.
It is only after we understand these issues that we can adopt OSS in our specific areas of usage, be it in academia, research, or industry.
About the speaker:
Shuvam Misra has B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees from the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) at Bombay. He has been working with computers since 1984, and with Internet technology since 1990. He has worked in financial software development with Citicorp COSL, and in research projects in Unix internals and parallel processing at the IIT at Bombay. From 1994 to 1996, he headed the technical team which created India's first well-known Web portal, IndiaWorld, with Rajesh Jain, its founder. Since 1996, he has headed the company now known as Merce Technologies Pvt Ltd. Merce builds a suite of software products which provide an integrated IS infrastructure solution for mid and large corporates and academic campuses.
Shuvam has conducted numerous tutorials, seminars and workshops, and has been a featured speaker at many conferences, including talks at three separate Annual Conferences of the ISACA India, held in Mumbai, and the Singapore Linux Conference 2001, organised by the Linux Users' Group of Singapore. Shuvam is a Member of the IEEE (Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA), a Certified IS Auditor, a certificate conferred by the IS Audit and Control Association (ISACA), USA, and a member of the CII (Confederation of Indian Industry).
Panel Discussion
Topic: Circumventing barriers to FOSS adoption
More to come. Please check regularly for updates.