Am 19.07.21 um 12:07 schrieb Ankur Sinha:

On Sun, Jul 18, 2021 12:38:49 -0000, Abrar Wali wrote:

...

International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) has shown interest in Fedora.

i might have missed the context, but two questions, maybe Abrar can help out with answers

They have said they'll help

in what way they will help? Money, Venue, Meeting Space, Advertising...? Do we really need "outside" help and why?

but a meeting is necessary to clear the doubts and plan of action that is to be followed etcetera.

i am also interested what are "the doubts" mentioned?

cheers Joerg

Am 19.07.21 um 15:21 schrieb Abrar Wali:

Well, as far as I know, our campus is a chapter of ICFOSS and we conduct many tech festivals so the venue shouldn't be a problem although I'm not sure what exactly do you need a venue for? Fedora Events? FUDCon?

i do not need a venue from ICFOSS - was just guessing examples what you could mean with "ICFOSS help" ...

promoting the use of Fedora and FOSS in general than advertising it. It will be clearer after the meeting.

who will speak for Fedora in the meeting? maybe i totaly missunderstand the whole issue, but this sounds like you are reaching out to an non profit organization in the name of the Fedora Project to negotiate their help for the Fedora Project - at least this is what was written

...

I am also interested what are "the doubts" mentioned?

... like what is expected from their end and how will fedora help. I am not sure if they have done something like this so there'll be a lot of questions on their end.

... i am even more confused ... please do not bother to answer i think it is in good hand with Ankur to follow up here ... just wanted to get some context

cheers Joerg

Am 19.07.21 um 16:44 schrieb Abrar Wali:

I can assure you I am not reaching out in the name of the Fedora Project. While I don't know who will be in the meeting at fedora's end , I'm guessing it will be guys like Ankur and Akash or maybe even you. I am merely acting as a communication facilitator between two parties.

understood!

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 13:09:09 -0000, Abrar Wali wrote:

I'm sorry I didn't include it in the previous two emails. Anyways I was to write a draft that is to be sent to ICFOSS and before sending it, I sent it to Akash for proofreading and for making necessary changes if any.

No worries. Could you share the draft? What is it about?

The idea is that the whole community should be aware of what's going on. Folks that would like to can weigh in, but at least everyone has the opportunity to keep themselves informed.

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 13:27:52 -0000, Abrar Wali wrote:

Actually, I don't have it because I sent it to Akash and I'm waiting for him to proofread and correct the mistakes in it. Should I send the one that I sent to Akash or should I wait for him to send the corrected one? The Draft is basically what the outcome of this relationship between Fedora is gonna be. Something that'll give them the idea about the meeting that is to be conducted :)

I think this is the bit we're a little unsure of. Fedora is a community of volunteers, and most of our interaction (if not all) with other communities happens rather informally---mostly when we have volunteers that contribute to both communities. That way Fedora folks end up doing workshops at events etc. (we've done lots of such work with Linux Users Groups, for example).

The draft/letter and meeting etc. sound a bit formal. So, we're just wondering what's being discussed here really :)

I think Jorge noted this: any formal interactions with communities should ideally go through the Mindshare committee. So, worth taking a look here and keeping them in the loop. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/mindshare-committee/

As Jorge also noted, please do your thing, but yes, please do share the draft etc. here. There's really no reason why it should be discussed in private.

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 15:09:18 -0000, Abrar Wali wrote:

The intention behind it started as using icfoss to connect to free and open-source communities with interested developers, groups, and institutions in the Indian subcontinent. I happened to mention in my introduction that my campus is part of icfoss and about the draft, it's basically an introduction to what fedora is and how the community works since icfoss hasn't heard of fedora. I will send the draft asap.

That sounds very good.

Do we know what platforms etc. ICFOSS do use? What Linux distributions are they aware of for example?

I think this will have to go both ways. Just like ICFOSS have not heard of Fedora, few of us have heard of ICFOSS. So it's hard to sort of wrap our heads around how ICFOSS and Fedora can work together. Here's the website for those that would like to learn more. https://icfoss.in/

Abrar, as the person that's initiated this, would you be able to give us a short informal summary of ICFOSS? What sort of events have they done at your university for example? Tutorials, workshops, install festivals maybe? What bits from their ideas/plans overlap with the activities in the Fedora community? Are contributors to other FOSS communities active in ICFOSS (anything from the kernel to desktop environments like Gnome/KDE or pretty much any FOSS projects)?

International Center for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ICFOSS was established in 2011 vide G.O(Rt) No.150/2008/ITD, dt.23/07/2008 as an autonomous institution under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of Kerala. The Centre has the vision to leverage the power of FOSS for the enhancement of the quality of life of the people of Kerala, and to stimulate local employment, thereby maintaining Kerala’s strategic lead in this domain. The objective of the Centre is Propagation, Promotion, and extension of Free Software activities in the State, at the same time linking up with communities, developers, groups, and institutions abroad. The Centre has the vision to become a leading Research & Development as well as Academic Institution in a Free and Open Source model of knowledge development and thereby contributing towards sustainable development of the society.

ICFOSS has been approved by the Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR), Govt. of India as a Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (SIRO). Since we got the approval as SIRO by DSIR, we have moved to the present campus at the Sports Hub building at Karyavattom, Thiruvananthapuram with a well-built area of 27000 sq. ft with all amenities such as Academic Divisions, Lecture Halls, Library, Open Hardware Lab, Seminar Area, FOSS Incubation, Dining areas, etc. Facilities for Research Scholars, Students, and Young developers are specially provided.

The Center houses a prototyping and manufacturing laboratory supporting Open Hardware, e-Governance Lab, Development teams, State Nodal Agency for Malayalam Computing, State of the Art Production & Development servers, Language Technology Lab, UAV workstation, a dedicated team on Assistive Technology Lab, Center of Excellence in Blender, and Training areas. ICFOSS was successful in conducting a lot of R&D initiatives. As part of the LoRaWAN initiative project under Open Hardware Project, ICFOSS has designed, developed, and implemented the Automated Weather Stations (AWS) in six Panchayats in Kattakada Legislative Assembly Area. With this implementation, Kattakada becomes one of the first assembly constituency areas in India, which operates LoRa WAN-enabled AWS. As per the Kerala Government directive on applying technology to develop assistive devices for people with disabilities, ICFOSS started initiatives for the betterment of the visually impaired. The initiatives for the visually impaired are carried out based on the concept developed by ICFOSS AKSHI (meaning eye). By associating with the schools for the visually impaired, ICFOSS started the research and development of learning aids for the visually impaired students. ICFOSS is currently developing word learning devices for the visually impaired students. The team is also exploring the development of general utility devices for the visually impaired community. These activities are based on the directions put forward by the experts of the Visually Impaired schools, all over Kerala.

ICFOSS is also conducting Women Hackathons, as part of the Gender & Technology initiatives with the intention of attracting more girl students and women in general to Free Software programming. This will prepare the women to use free software effectively, deepen their understanding of free software concepts and build an appreciation of technology and enable them to contribute to free software projects as well as develop their technical capabilities. ICFOSS also provides Women Hackathon Fellowships every year (maximum of 5 fellows), to individuals with general technical skills, understanding of free software, interest in gender issues, and having leadership qualities. ICFOSS also offers training to women in various areas of FOSS research through winter and summer schools.

Back-to-Work is another initiative under G&T. It is an intensive training in various free software domains for women who have a career gap in their profession to restart their career. We have conducted two such trainings as a pilot run. Through this programme ICFOSS’s effort to facilitate placement for the participants in reputed companies/organizations has reached a positive outcome. ICFOSS has helped over 3000 government employees transition from windows OS to Linux Based Operating Systems by conducting various workshops.

To promote the use of FOSS technologies and applications among students and faculties and to encourage them in contributing towards the community development in FOSS, ICFOSS has initiated the setting up of FOSS Cells in educational institutions, in the year 2015.

The Cell’s activities are bound in participation with the members of the institutions and ICFOSS. These deeds of the Cell aims in promoting FOSS activities through a group of interested students and teachers of the institution, on a voluntary basis. The vision of the FOSS Cell is to encourage and promote the use of Free and Open Source Software and related areas such as Open IoT / Hardware, Assistive Technology, Language Computing, Open Drone and GIS, etc., amongst the students and teachers of the institution to make it utilize in all possible ways.

Each FOSS Cell shall accomplish this by associating with ICFOSS and its programmes, as well as with other FOSS community, industry, and research organizations, and taking up programmes including training & capacity building, student projects, lectures & seminars, conferences, and exhibitions, by participating at the institutional level as well as for inter-institutional, state, national and international levels. The Student Ambassadors of ICFOSS will support this mission. Aforesaid, if and only if student ambassadors are not available for a particular institution, ICFOSS can directly assist to the extent possible.

As of now, ICFOSS has set up almost 96 FOSS Cells across the state which includes Engineering Colleges, Arts and Science Colleges, Polytechnics, etc. Every year thousands of students are getting impacted with the importance of FOSS. ICFOSS has advocated for the use of many Linux distributions over the years in government offices, schools, and universities.

GNU/Linux Install Fest , and setup of Red Hat Academy labs along with GEC Summer of code, e Certification Programmes in Engineering with Python, Machine Learning through FOSS, System Administration & Networking using FOSS are some of the initiatives of ICFOSS conducted throughout in aforementioned FOSS Cells.

ICFOSS has been working with the different communities for a very long time in the propagation, promotion, and extension of Free Software activities in the State. As an organization that handles different and unique challenges which are very difficult to address also, but to overcome those challenges ICFOSS has adopted different strategies and organized different types of events across the state to achieve its mission. Every year a lot of students are getting triggered and empowered with the philosophical aspects of FOSS through the initiatives of ICFOSS and FOSS Cells. We have witnessed a lot of students building a strong and competitive career with the exposure they have gained in working with FOSS Cells. ICFOSS extends the support and reaches out to the different communities through various events, capacity building programs, conferences, women empowerment programs, internship and project support for the student community, etc. As per requirements, many capacity-building programs and seminars on EXPEYES, GNUKhata, Scilab, ODOO, Blender, Latex, Drupal, etc were conducted with the agenda to propagate and support the migration activities. Almost all the FOSS Cells are initiating for I-Install campaigns, which aims at promoting Linux/Ubuntu migration followed by a skill development workshop. Each and every FOSS Cell is working independently with the same objective and creating the impact together. Workshops on the topics such as Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Python, IoT, LateX, Blender, advanced Ubuntu, git, etc are conducted every year according to the requirements from the community. From 2015 alone ICFOSS has impacted more than 8500+ students alone.

The following links should provide more details:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UZdkfk-C1gPWqtkobLD4ou_4PmqYqlW9/view?usp=s...

https://icfoss.in/events http://www.newsexperts.in/icfoss-release-debian-10-buster-system/ https://icfoss.in/event-details/75 https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/240318/red-hat-ties-u...

Am 19.07.21 um 15:09 schrieb Abrar Wali:

I'm sorry I didn't include it in the previous two emails. Anyways I was to write a draft that is to be sent to ICFOSS and before sending it, I sent it to Akash for proofreading and for making necessary changes if any.

just curious - is this in any way coordinated with the outreach and the current Ambassadors revamp activities? I can see you have not joined any FAS group in Fedora yet - so i am still not sure about your ICFOSS activities and the intentions. It might be that i miss context, so please no offense - but IMHO the focus should be on rebuild and re-structure our base, before sending someone completely fresh reaching out for outside help?

thanks and cheers Joerg

Am 19.07.21 um 15:43 schrieb Abrar Wali:

None taken. I'll let someone else reply to your concern. Although I'm not sure what you mean by not joined any FAS groups & how to join one?

all good - i think i am not helpful with my questions, do your thing

cheers Joerg

Hey Shamil, Thank you for introducing these concerns to the community. I think all of these issues that you pointed out about ICFOSS are mainly due to ICFOSS being a government body and I think many people would know the ways of the Indian government . I wasn't aware of FSCI until yesterday and I think it's great something like that is present in the FOSS society in India. Although the aim here is to connect to free and open-source communities with interested developers, groups, and institutions and join the fedora community and maybe FSCI can get on board with this too. Fedora is great and I personally think people should know about it more and engage and learn how the community works and then they can decide . There's so much to learn, amazing experience to gain.

Now about ICFOSS, most of the work would be carried out in the different FOSS Cells like one of my campuses, ICFOSS has connections and means to reach a wider audience. I don't know about other communities but ICFOSS has a coordinator in every FOSS cell in the institutes and their job is to conduct any kind of FOSS event possible within their campuses. I can't take any names but recently I have contacted multiple FOSS cells that are associated with ICFOSS and they are sitting idle and not conducting any activities. With a community such as fedora, it can inspire such people and we can get a great community from India. I am missing something or wrong somewhere , do let me know. :)

Thank You Abrar Wali

On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 06:19:43 -0000, Abrar Wali wrote:

...

So, to me, it seems like they are now trying to grasp at the straws and now offering to help fedora india to make it seem like they are doing "something" while they still haven't fulfilled their promises made months ago

I forgot to mention that they didn't approach the fedora and neither fedora approached them. It's a discussion going on to connect to more people and expand the community in India

Yes: we're still unclear on exactly what the connection is. So let's first figure that out and then look at what needs to be done next.

I think we all know this: everyone can use/share/modify Fedora, and become part of the community. It doesn't require any formal conversations at all.

On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 02:47:40 +0530, Shamil wrote:

Hello,

Hello Shamil,

Thanks very much for that. It's very helpful.