While I can't speak for Kenneth Gonsalves, he was really not interested in FOSS.in.
Thanks Shakthi for the update. Checked that Kenneth was involved with NRC-FOSS. Was this the alternate group? (NRC-FOSS - FOSSEE Lab at IITB and ICFOSS, are all govt funded and seemed aligned and different from the FOSS.in group (?)).
While I was digging more last night, I ran into this (http://atulchitnis.net/2006/happy-10th-anniversary-pc-quest-linux/) - It seems no one person is more responsible to popularize FOSS in India other than Chitnis. Also, he was more an evangelist rather than an activist (or rather, he was firmly not an activist, which pissed off the Free Software guys I am assuming). Other than Chitnis, frequent visits by RMS (and remote mentoring?) has also helped us to get us to where we are.
I am wondering what is the legacy. What is the state of FOSS activism / evangelism in India today? have there been any more movements since the OOXML? I don’t see anyone taken over Chitnis as the chief evangelist for FOSS? Would love to get some views on this.
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ps. An interesting footnote - I found no less than FOSS 4 accounting apps / attempts (AVSAP, by Kenneth Gonsalves, GNUKhata, Aakash Business Tools and VahiKhata by CDAC). Seems like the holy grail of Indian FOSS!
pps. And if you did not know, the CDAC Open Source initiative for Cloud Computing is called “Meghdoot” :) - Could not find any repos (maybe an RTI is required)