Notes from 2023 India FOSS

This is most probably the only event I have attended this year and it was fun as always. Met some cool people, had some interesting conversations with students in college and how they are promoting using Linux & BSD systems within the institution. Which I like a lot. I remember my time in college, where I would introduce people around me to linux and how they would all look so baffled as to what that was. My college was third tier, that means there were not a lot of good and interested kids around me in the classes. But I would always find people like me interested in tech, met some AI people, some blockchain people throughout my college. I digress,

This year’s IndiaFoss started with the presenter talking about her personal experience with the FOSS community and how it has been a wonderful experience for her to lead the IndiaFoss movement just an year in. All the things she got to learn and other things she helped improve within the operations and tech side of things.

Then she moved on to talk about some of the technical debt that the IndiaFoss organization’s tech platform had accumulated over time due to improper management and not having enough resources to do a look back and clear things out.

Then an engineer came on-stage to talk about exactly what the organization has been upto in the last few months leading up to this event. He mentioned they have been simplifying, open sourcing the code for the main website and moving away from the frappe’s closed ecosystem for hosting that landing page, I guess. He also announced:

• Foss Profile: This is kind of IndiaFoss’ version of read.cv or bento.me platforms. A collection of the digital footprint of a person to maybe build a job profile. Which can be a great talent pool considering this community has a lot of extremely excited and hardworking people.
• Newsletters will be hosted on the new frappe platform. Listmonk is being used other ways unmentioned.
• They are starting an ecommerce store for selling Merchandise by Jan 2024.

There were two tracks distributed in 2 auditoriums.

Session 1: Akash talks about Vyaakaran

He talks about his own programming language in 2021. Mentions compiler design course in his college. Lots of free time. A language to understand formal languages and automata theory. The course this was in is called Theory of Computation.

What is Formal Language and Automata theory? A branch of CS that deals with abstract machines (Automata) that can understand a pattern defined by a set of rules (language).

• Real world applications
  • Regular expressions, state machines
  • Compilers, parsers
• No practical, visual tools for learning about automata and formal language. Theory can feel limiting.
• Why?
  • Small niche
  • Can be extended
  • Would be useful in learning compiler design
• What is Vyaakaran? A tool to visualize formal grammar, and state machines. Learn about context-free grammar.
• This could be a great REPL kinda tool while making a programming language.
• How?
  • Built with typescript in 2022. But learnt a lot, and helping a lot of other students to learn as well.
  • Vue 3 for interactive editor
  • Svelte - for static
• The new version could run a Turing machine.
• Things he learnt
  • It’s ok to reinvent the wheel.
  • People will stop you. When you build, you learn more about the underneath of how things work.
  • Peeling a layer of abstraction.
  • Take things like a challenge. Very rewarding, even if you fail, it still makes you a better engineer.
  • A FOSS project is not just a collection of files. It’s an emotion of the developers.
  • Vyaakaran is a manifestation that came out of learning.
• DSLs are fun
  • Domain specific languages
  • Used by both programmers & non-programmers.
  • Can be more powerful and easier than complex UI.
• Vyaakaran has it’s own DSL: Lexico (search library with operators). He made Vyaakaran open source on stage. Very good stage presence and work.

Session 2: Arpit Tripathi on Private 5G with open source 5G cores

He was a part of the first 5g usecase lab to be awarded. Yesterday Modi awarded 100 more labs.

• What was the motivation?
  • General usage: WiFi
  • Handover between two devices is better in 5g
  • Security: WPA. Uses AKA protocol.
• Deployment: types
  • Not every enterprise has the resources to invest. Therefore there are certain deployment models like 3gpp.
  • 1st: exclusively inside the premises.
  • 2nd: cloud native core functions over cloud
  • 3rd: the RAN is shared. Look out for RAN?
  • 4th: enterprise slice model: mentioned 5g network slicing.
• Industry 4.0 goals.