For the First time in APIIT history we are going to celebrate the Software Freedom Day as a FOSS community. This event will be held on 15th Friday where Global SFD will be celebrated in many countries on 16th Saturday. And majority of us will be busy working for the FOSS-SL/LK-LUG SFD2006 at Majestic City, Crescat Boulevard and Excel World.
The organizing is done by a bunch of 2nd year APIIT Students (FOSS enthusiasts and Linux Users) and I will be the General chair to host this event. We were attending so many FOSS events happening around Sri Lanka including FOSS2004, FOSS-ed, FOSS2005, ApacheCon2006 and we never got a chance to organize such an event at our University premises.
Now that we have enough knowledge, skills and contacts we are sure that the event gonna be a success. I was supported by both Lohita and Gunith through thick and thin. Ilham, Asanga, Hasantha, Randika also in the supporting crew.
The Agenda was seemed to be good and we were given the approval from the Head of Computing. The budget was passed by the SAC (Student Activity Club) and we just had our official meeting at the TLC (The Linux Center). Both Ven. Mettavihari and Suchetha helped us and gave marvelous ideas while directing us in the correct path by showing us our mistakes.
Suchetha was overwhelmed and eager to help us. He managed to ring few speakers who were in our Agenda and get them ready for the event immediately.
Ven. Mettavihari handed over some Banners to decorate the place and GNU T-shirts and / TUX soft toys to trade during the event.
We decided to give away 200 free Linux CDs to delegates and we couldn’t come to a conclusion which distributions to be given.
Some suggest we give away Ubuntu and Kubuntu so that delegated can understand the significance in Gnome and KDE. Some suggest not to give neither of them coz they are freely available in the Web. Randika wants to give some Networking/Security/Firewall stuff but it’s not gonna work with majority of BIT and BABA students.
Finally we came with Kubuntu, e-Live, PHLAK and Knoppix or Documentation/Apps. Each distro will have 50 copies and these will give away randomly to delegates. The bottom line is we want them exchange each CD to build friendship and exchange their expertise knowledge on Installation and Trouble Shooting of the Linux Distribution they received.
That’s enough for today and will add more. This is only the start down a long road..I will blog more about this effort as we move along.
