JTD, I was just looking for a starting point before trying something new. There has been no follow up (at least on the mailing list) on the meeting at IIT. Also sad to note that you think the only use of FSF India is philosophical and there is nothing else to be done.

Will post on this list as and when things move. Anyone on this list doing any advocacy / outreach work, please let me know. best, Rushabh -- @rushabh_mehta http://erpnext.org On 28 January 2014 at 3:20:44 pm, J T Dsouza (jtd1959(a)gmail.com) wrote: On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 12:41 PM, Rushabh Mehta <rmehta(a)gmail.com> wrote: recently. Recently there was a workshop on Openstreet map at HBCSE There is a continous on going program on education at Khalapur under the aegis of HBCSE, using OLPC and 100% FOSS stack. Earlier a meet at IIT on i dont remember what. Several FOSS mentorships ongoing at IIT. I think we are barely scratching the surface as far as promotion of free You will always be scratching the surface. The FOSS ecosystem is massive. > Even the FSF India website is dated. FSF is focused on Philosophy of free software. Afaik nothing has changed since introduction of gplv3. > > Clearly new energy is required on THAT is always welcome. There never is enough. > > and revenue is also increasing year on > year, but it is still not enough. If > > we divert attention in too many things, then we may lose the advantage > that > > ERPNext has built up. Also, there is a lot to be done. > > > Business development is part of a business. Every state government > > spends tens crores on education. The smartness is in campaigning for > > FOSS with ones business goals in mind. > > If you take funding from let's say the FSF, it would be wholly > unprincipled to project your company > > / services in such programs, unless you too were contributing > financially. > We are not taking or wanting to take any funding from FSF. Thankfully we > are able to sell hosting services to the user community. Our goal was to > voluntarily go to these organizations and not to promote our software but > Linux Desktops, Office tools, Mail and Web Servers - the basic stack. IF you dont have an interest other than altruism, that is fine. But if you do have an interest, it helps fund the costs of such work. I cant see the point you are trying to make, vis-a-vis your internal revenue statement. > > This would be ideally done under the umbrella of Free Software Foundation > > of India (or if they are very religious/suspicious about us who have to > > earn our bread and don't live off grants, or there are too many > > ego-mountains to be climbed, then we could form a new group). > > That one is a Pointless rant. Afaik, Nobody on this list is living off > > someone else's largesse. > Agree - its a rant, but I have mailed a lot of people individually, and > from the response (or lack) I can clearly sense that we are "outsiders". I can guess why from the contents of this mail why it is so. Besides this is the first set of mails I have seen from you on the list. > Either ways, its surely something for people to introspect - we need to > pool resources if we have to fight commercial interests. What commercial interests?. And pool what resources for what purpose? Hand waving is all fine, but doing things like organising a workshop for let's say engineering students on the use of CAD software requires one to propose a specific program and required resources, clearly stating what YOU are contributing and what additional support you require from the community. > -- > -- > http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers -- http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers -- http://mm.ilug-bom.org.in/mailman/listinfo/linuxers