Thursday, September 27, 2012

It Happens because it happened

"It took about 5 days to think over those points that what was the mistake which I made such that  I was failed in making a strong community."

This blog post is all about the situation which our open source community facing right now. 

Open Source which include so many features which made programmers work and contribute on this field. Day by day  increasing job opportunities also made other peoples to start contributing. This generated the trend of having Groups like LUGs, Special Interest Groups, Clubs, etc. in college to reduce the gap in between professional life and students life followed by spreading the practical knowledge and make students updated. That's really awesome the aim was so much goal oriented and practical due to which many college and societies created weather they are official or unofficial Aim was just to share and contribute.

Those communities also started having community events, hackthons, knowledge sharing session and many more. Many or almost 80% events free events which have no restrictions of age limit nor any  academics limits. The community events mainly managed by interested people and students who are themselves a part of that community or group. Now the biggest question arises What those guys getting by organizing such activities or events?

Just think once about this What those guys getting by organizing such activities or events? May be they are being paid by some outsiders for these events or May be they will get a good printed colorful certificate which they can show in Placement interview and say "Sir, i am a Ethical Hacker". You know why I use to do such events and activities because I Feel Good. It give me satisfaction when I see some buddy getting benefited by sharing things among them that really gives me lot of satisfaction.  

Having communities in college and doing activities for formalities never gives a 100% result or never reach to success or it will probably never reach there where it was expected. Or It can harm other 
events also.

Second thing if the event is a community event than try to understand the mean of community. If the event is made for a group of people than it will never give any profit to any individual. In my opinion those who think like that they should immediately leave such groups may be they belongs to some other planet.

Monday, September 17, 2012

My Encounter with Open Source




If someone ask me who inspired me to write this and from where I started all these open source stuff. Then I could not explain all in one line which is too much precise regarding the open world. In which I spent my precious days of my engineering life must say a life of a open source geek.

Let me explain bit more about the open source and Linux for those who get confused with these two different words which could said to be the two faces of single coin. Open source refers to that which is available openly or freely. Free word makes confusion in money minded peoples ha ha its a joke . Freely never means as in free of cost its FREE AS IN FREEDOM. Those software which are available freely said to be the Open Source software or Free softwares. From now onwards we will say free softwares only this term was released by Mr. Richard Mathew Stallman in 1983 through free software foundation (FSF). This is important tell about him because he is one who started all this. Free software mission is a philosophy to provide flexibility to a code of any software such that anyone can use the code, can share the code, anyone can do changes in the code and can share the that changed copy of the code. Now this fascinated me towards this world of openness. I think now I am successful in explaining about the open world.

Now come to the second face of the coin Linux. Ok I will clear the one of the biggest misconception regarding this also. Linux is not a name of bird or animal obviously we are not discussing about those again it was a poor joke. Linux refers to the Linux Kernel. Kernel is the core part of an operating system. It could be any operating system. Readers don't get confused with Linux now i am explaining why it is a second face of the coin ? Because Linux kernel code is available as free software. Fascinating it was the second point which attracted me using mean. Now anyone can make predictions that operating systems which using Linux as their kernel are also under free software which released under General Public License (GPL). GPL provides freedom to a piece of code which i already explained to you. GPL released by RMS in 1985 under which he started making GNU Operating system which was a clone of UNIX operating system. GNU is a recursive and funny term GNU's Not Unix that means they were making something which was not unix but quit similar to unix. Until 1990 they assembled all the part of the operating system but left out with the kernel part. In 1991, Linus Torvald in MIT submitted Linux Kernel as his project. Which after that became a part of that GNU OS or we can say GNU/Linux. We lost the word GNU and saying Linux which is incomplete without GNU. Its boring is it? But it is important that you should know basics.

Now reason why to use Linux? What i think if you are not thinking this question into your mind then i must say you are not reading my whole article carefully. Oops, It was a joke. If you are using Linux in your desktops or laptops then i must say you are using a code which is being written by some of the best programmers of the world and nurtured by the best hackers. As its free availability provides programmers to live in freedom and freedom to add best functionality in it. It is Faster than other operating systems which i personally experienced after losing my 80Gb data i mean using it. Oh don't scare i am not trying to misguide you. Just want to tell the best features of this piece of code. Just be careful about the instructions rest Linux work will do by itself. If you want to use your CPU efficiently then Use Linux. An operating system with no viruses. Yeah this is a fact or you can say myth actually viruses means those codes which harms your computer or affects your computation in Linux we can't say viruses not there but it will not harm your computing. If something not harming your computing world then no problem. I am using linux from past 3 years and i never uses any of the antivirus or any Dr. spyware kind of things. Because i choosen the red pill of my world of computing. Now its time of you guys to decide which world you want to use the world of restrictions or the world of freedom. 


NOTE: A copy of this blog also printed in annual magazine in FICTION'12 by CSIJMI (Computer Society of India Jamia Millia Islamia)