From rxpgnews.com
Free and Open Source Software gets new 'poster girl'
By Frederick Noronha, RxPG News Service,
Nov 28, 2006 - 2:33:26 PM
Bangalore, Nov 28 - India's Free and Open Source Software - movement just has got a new poster-boy, or rather girl -- Suparna Bhattacharya, the star of the just-concluded FOSS.in event held here and presenter of the inaugural keynote, is seen as one of India's most respected Linux kernel developers.
For a growing network of techies taking to Free and Open Source Software in India, the find of a woman who has achieved so much so quietly came as a big surprise. And long-felt gender issues become a little less painful, thanks to 35-year-old Bhattacharya's 'we can do it' proof.
Commented FOSS.in project lead and tech guru Atul Chitnis: '- is an Indian, working in India, contributing to the FOSS world... Not only is she everything that FOSS.in wants to achieve -, but she proves that it can be done.'
The Linux kernel is at the heart of the GNU/Linux operating. Linux is now one of the most widely ported operating system kernels, running on a diverse range of systems from the hand-held iPAQ computers to the massive mainframe servers and supercomputers.
Kernel programming is considered complex.
Amidst intense applause, the soft-spoken and lightly built Bhattacharya took the stage. One of her first slides read: 'In case you are wondering why I am the keynote speaker, you are not alone.'
She declined interviews with 'I'm more comfortable discussing technical issues', and only relented after awhile.
Once on stage, obviously overawed by the adulation, in a full Indian Institute of Sciences hall, she explained -- sometimes speaking too fast for foreigners in the audience to keep track -- concepts like 'beauty' and elegance in coding, 'minimalism' - in software, and ephemerialisation -.
Bhattacharya herself plays down her own achievements. She has been to global hacker conferences -- usually held in Ottawa, Canada -- for five years.
'I never felt the difference -. People tell me I've been very lucky,' she said in a hall so dominated by young male geeks that you'd be lucky to see 20 women in 750 seats. She said the corporation she works with, IBM, has a couple of more women working on the kernel.
'Probably people didn't know my gender from my - name. In any case, the Linux world is very diverse. The colour of your hair doesn't matter. It's just the quality of your code,' Bhattacharya told IANS.
Bhattacharya, who grew up 'mostly in Delhi' and then went to Indian Institute of Technology --Kharagpur, feels Indian contributions to the world of alternate computing -- Free and Open Source Software -- might be under-recognised because coders from this part of the globe tend to be not 'very vocal or shy'.
'It's easier for me to talk technical stuff...Some amount of humility is a good thing, I sometimes feel.'
But others see it differently, and take pride in her achievement.
Ubuntu-India developer Baishampayan Ghosh said of Bhattacharya: 'She is one of the very, very few - kernel hackers in the world, and a very unassuming person.'
IBM India, by some counts, is seen as the fourth largest employer in the Indian IT industry -- after TCS, Infosys and Wipro. India also has the second largest workforce for IBM now, second to IBM US. It is one of the mega-corps that is investing heavily in Free and Open Source Software.
IBM has facilities in all the major cities of India -- Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Gurgaon and Hyderabad. IBM has a Linux Solutions Centre and a Linux Competency Centre, both in Bangalore. Bhattacharya is attached to the India Software Lab.
Some unofficial statistics say IBM India's 43,000 employees are expected to grow to 100,000 by the end of this decade.
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