Overview
Are You Ready
O
n India’s 60th Independence Day in August 2007, Sun Microsystems India had a special gift for all college students in India—a unique contest, which it aptly called Code For Freedom. Here is what the company had to say: “Sixty years ago, India awoke to freedom; today, we call upon the young minds of India to awaken to the clarion call of open source. The open source movement is emerging as the new world order making a sweeping impact in the technology sector across the world. Today, open source products such as Apache Web Server, Open Office and Linux have dwarfed several proprietary software corporations. and making opportunities available “Sun Microsystems, a front-runner for students to participate and in professionally backing open source win through the CFF. CFF is not and one of the largest contributors to just a contest, but an avenue to this movement, takes this opportunity propel the technical skills of each to invite the young, dynamic academic of the participants. This year, Code community of India to come and For Freedom is aimed at projects Sun calls on students to become a part of the exciting open that would involve open source start coding. source wave. We encourage you all to technologies. The CFF team of Sun embrace the open source technologies Microsystems has been working with open hands and help take these towards making technologies and communities to greater heights. the contest available to every corner in India.” “With this vision, Sun Microsystems is happy to announce the Code For Freedom contest where students Contest details across India contribute to the technologies that are The contest is open to all university undergraduate and postempowering the participation age. Participating in this graduate students from all over India. The contest format is, contest will provide you with precious industry experience however, different from last year. while still learning in college. And there is more. We, in In 2007, the focus was on the development of Sun’s turn, reward you for your valuable contribution in taking open source products and participants had to contribute the first steps towards the open source movement. to open source technologies. This year, the focus is on the “Come. Be a part of this phenomenon called open source.” adoption of the products. The contest was a roaring success with lots of highAs part of this contest, participants will have to work on quality contributions to open source projects. I, myself, was a project using Sun’s open source products. Technologies a participant and had the additional role of being a mentor to that students can use include OpenSolaris, NetBeans, Java, many prospective contributors (being the co-ordinator of the GlassFish, MySQL, Java DB, PostgreSQL, OpenDS, Open NetBeans Community Docs at that point of time). xVM, Open Portal and some others. Exact rules, regulations and technology details Code for Freedom 2008 are available at the contest website at in.sun.com/ Riding high on last year’s success, Code For Freedom 2008 communities/univ/codeforfreedom. (CFF) [codeforfreedom.in] was launched on September So, hurry up and celebrate freedom! December 31st is the 20, 2008—one of the ways Sun celebrated ‘Software last date for submitting your project proposals. Freedom Day’ this year! By: Amit Kumar Saha is passionate about writing and Here is what the program manager, Bhuvaneshwari blogging. He works for Sun Microsystems, India. He blogs at Panchapakesan of Sun Microsystems, India, had to say: http://blogs.sun.com/amitsaha. “Sun is rising towards making the students’ life brighter
to Code for Freedom?
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November 2008
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