FSUGTSR: A Window to Freedom

Its the time of the year when all that happens, is for good- Its December. And December fourth shall also be remembered by few of us for being the day of FSUGTSR renaissance.

FSUGTSR , i.e, Free Software User Group, Thrissur made its first(citation needed) contribution towards the common goal- A Free and Open Source Software Society, today with the one day event " A Window to Freedom". COSTFORD, CenSE, P G Center and I C Software were the sponsors of the event.The program was held at Sahitya Akademi Hall, Thrissur and was inaugurated by HOD of Computer Sciences and Engg. Dept., Govt. Engineering College, Thrissur, Prof. K.V ManojKumar. Mr. Jayan from COSTFORD, sponsor of the event, presided. K. Venu presented an in-detail description about Politics of free software. Krishnanunni, delivered the vote of thanks.

Audience was a mixed lot, people from different walks of life- students, office-goers, teachers and lot many more. Talks followed the Inaugural session. Hiran spoke on the philosophy behind Free and open Source Software. The session by Mahesh was all about the Gnu/Linux Operating systems. Hussain sir followed with a talk on Malayalam Computing.Aswin, my junior at college, took the session on Compiz fusion and desktop environments( check out his blog to view some interesting visual effects supported by Gnu/Linux). Suresh sir summed up before the break after providing an insight into Malayalam Input Methods.The post-lunch session was initiated by Alex Poovathingal and myself on Installation of Ubuntu 8.04 Ultimate edition.Jain introduced Commonly used GNU/Linux Tools, especially Firefox, GIMP, Stellarium and so on.
The tail was Unni's session on Troubleshooting.Day ended with an open discussion on future proceedings of FSUGTSR. Pramode Sir from I C Software, Renjith Sir from P G centre and others participated in it. The Crowd response was positive and supportive throughout the days' events.

The whole concept of "Free as in Freedom, not Free Beer" registered well in their minds as we were charging Rs.30 towards copies of Ubuntu 8.04, Debian Lenny and Fedora 10 :) . BOSS DVDs were being given free of cost.
Join our mailing list at discuss@lists.fsugtsr.org for being part of FSUGTSR and its future ventures.

The media coverage was excellent as evident from the 400+ crowd which had gathered. All leading news papers had reported prior to and after the event as well. Here's the link to The Hindu’s e-news bit on the event.

http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/05/stories/2008120550580200.htm

In toto, FSUGTSR has made an impression in the minds of public in Thrissur which needs to be kept up by the works that should(read as would) follow....