The 5-day, three-city Open Source India Week 2008 (OSIW) travels to its Delhi leg on February 14 & 15 next. India's biggest Linux & Open Source conference and expo, formerly held under the banner of LinuxAsia for four years, has expanded across three cities – New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and now spans week-long 17 Events with 100-plus speakers and mainstream exhibitors showcasing solutions for business, mobility and human welfare.

The Delhi programme includes the TechZone – workshops and technical sessions on solutions for mobility, open source in the service of people with disabilities and parallel sessions on entrepreneurship, the business of Open Source. In addition, Software Development Talks will update software developers with the latest trends, technologies and methodologies in the open source world, while IT Implementation Talks will equip IT managers with latest open source solutions and best practices. A dedicated seminar on the topic “FOSS technologies and applications for people with disabilities” is the highlight of the programme.

The OSIW is being put together by the Forum for Open Source Innovation in India (FOSII) and is supported through sponsorships by Microsoft, Novell, RedHat, NRCFoss, Intel, naukri.com and others. Speaking on Microsoft’s involvement with the Conference, Radhesh Balakrishnan, Director Platform Strategy, Microsoft said, We believe multiple platforms can and will continue to co-exist, and that customers will choose those options or combination of options that suit their needs best. We believe that we should be able to deliver seamless experiences even in such heterogeneous scenarios. So we engage with the open source community through industry collaboration as well as open source development, i.e. promoting interoperability with open source software through engagements organized by the Microsoft Open Source Software Lab and on the Microsoft community Web site, Port25. During OSIW we intend to share our progress on this journey and further work on enhancing our collaboration with the Community in India.”

The CXO Summit, an exclusive feature of the events at Delhi sees the top IT decision makers from the government, enterprise, academia and SME sectors gather to share best practices related to Linux and open source. The Summit aims to provide a forum for the “users” thus creating a platform for the yet-to-try open source prospects to get a realistic picture of challenges and opportunities that open source presents. Delhi also sees the ManageIT Expo, an exhibition of solutions - open source and otherwise – that help IT managers better control capital and operating expense and manage IT resources.

The Conference speakers include such leading lights as Klaus and Adriane Knopper, co-developers of Knoppix; Dr. Anthony Wasserman, Executive Director of the Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI), Louis Suárez-Potts of OpenOffice.org. Indian speakers and industry leaders include Nandkumar Pradhan, CEO of Red Hat India; Sandeep Menon, Head of Novell; Vikas Kanungo, Chairman - The Society for Promotion of e-Governance, India; and C Umashankar, MD, ELCOT. One of the star speakers is David Axmark, co-founder of MySQL, a firm that was recently bought by Sun Microsystems for US $ 1 billion.

Speaking of the Conference, Mukul Mahajan, member, FOSII (CEO, Tetra Information Services Pvt. Ltd.) , said, “The LinuxAsia series being held for the last four years has been a great success, with evangelists, enthusiasts, industry and students alike. We have had over 5000 IT professionals and over 9000 IT students participate in our events. This year we decided to expand the spread of the event by making it the Open Source India Week and also taking it across more locations. This is an attempt to broad-base participation, provide a platform of exchange for all stakeholders in the open source community, and strongly encourage applications that benefit mankind in some way. That is why, the special session this year is on solutions for the disabled.”

The workshops, seminars and expo will be at Pragati Maidan in the capital on Feb 14 & 15, while the CXO Summit is being hosted at the Hotel Saket Sheraton on Feb 15 only.

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The Forum for Open Source Initiatives in India (FOSII) is a body that aims to accelerate the adoption of Open Source (OS) by fostering innovation and development within the country. Set up by a group of individuals from the Linux/Open Source community, its membership comprises senior industry professionals, technology journalists, enthusiasts, media-persons and others from the OS community.

The Open Source India Week (formerly LinuxAsia) Conference and Expo is an initiative of the FOSII. The event is managed by the EFY Group, a multi-faceted media house, publishers of LINUX For You and Electronics for You magazines.

Media Contact:
Rohit Srivastava, MelCole Public Relations
(011) 29834428, 29833118 Rohit_Srivastava@melcole.com