“I start with an idea today. I will tell you and you tell me what do you think about it.

I would like all of you to write about this two day event – how did you hear about it, what was good, what was bad, how to mke it better next time, what you learned, how you are going to use what you learned, how you are going to teach others…

If you have a blog, post about it, if you wish to start a blog, start now, ask people who already post about how it is. Or if you don’t want a blog, just write an email to any mailing list, smc, debian, mes fsug, or even add it directly in the wiki, read what others have written and comment on it, add all links to wiki, create a press release as a team. These are possible, it all depends on our will, today lets make a small history make this two days memorable for ever, not just for you, but a wonder and inspiration for so many. It is possible, and much more is possible, challenge ourselves not limit. I would be happy if some of you start maintaining packages, very happy if all of you do it, I would happy if you teach other to package and teach them to teach others this is how we write history, this is what revolution is, when people realize how much they are capable of and start acting like they believe in themselves and shed all their fears, just see how Tahrir Square changed history or Egypt. You believe you are part of something great and you belive you are making a difference and you tell others what you believe and what you do and you will see the difference. And we achieve something it will energize us to do even more. You might know the story of birds trapped in a net, there is a song in Vietnam Colony how they escape. This is our inspiration to change things together and build a new world based on collaboration. You can decide it today.”  

I was thinking about another Kerala trip as my friend and NIT Calicut classmate Pramod invited me for his marriage on 1st May. Since it is a long trip of more than 24 hours from Pune to Kerala by bus, I thought I should plan some Free Software talk so that I have more motivation for such a hard trip. I was very happy to see great enthusiasm for gnome release party on my last visit.

Group Photo of Debian Utsavam participants

I asked a few people if it would be possible to organize something on such a short notice. I was happy to get a positive response and we fixed the event for 28th and 29th at MES college of Engineering, Kuttippuram. But I can reach there only on Sunday if I leave Pune on Friday and take one day transit in Bangalore (I take this option because I get to meet my friends during day and I have to travel only at night). I asked around if someone can volunteer to take some basics session on Saturday so that particiants will be ready for the packaging session on the next day.

Nakul readily volunteered to take command line and shell scripting sessions. Since Ershad was coming, he agreed to take Free Software introduction. I have to mention his great grassroots Free Software promotion work here. Though he doesn’t post much about it on smc or plus lists I came to know about it from people who attended the sessions. (A request to Ershad to blog and talk about it on mailing lists). Since Labeeb was also there in Kerala he agreed to introduce Debian.

Haris volunteered to take a session on building from source. He is very enthusiastic and he writes beautiful blogs. Read his account of the two days here.

Since I was not present on day 1 you can read about it from Haris’ blog. Raju sir told me I could stay with him and I went to his place directly on Sunday morning. I reached Mannuthi at 3.45 am and he picked me up. I slept a bit and after breakfast we came to MES. One thing I really liked there was the fluroscent moon and star (I guess there were planets too) stickers on the wall! You feel like you are watching the sky at night!

We reached MES by 10.20 and they had already started discussing about personal privacy and tracking on the internet. I started with reading a note I wrote the previous night in the bus.

Read the full note here.

I asked them about what they learned on the previous day and I asked them a few questions like why we need to package software, who creates packages etc. I started discussing basic ideas around a package’s lifecycle from upstream tarball to a stable release. A few points I covered include “how and when a package first enters debian. Concepts of RFP, package maintainer, team maintained packages etc were covered.”

Distributions

There are many Free Software projects out there and role of a distribution like Debian is to provide a collection of these software in an easy to distribute and manage format. Distributions like debian make sure the software is in good condition and pass it through thorough testing before it is given out as a supported software. Since there are many distributions out there with different policies and packaging formats (deb, rpm, ebuilds etc). Also each of this distributions may be including different versions of its dependencies. So people specialising in packaging makes the job of upstream developers easier by making an easy to install version of the software available. Distributions include many Free Software but every day more Free Software is released. So who creates these debian packages? How does a person ready to create a package know there is a new software? What do one do when a software they need is not available as a package? How can one install such a software if it is not packaged?

Life cycle of a Software in Debian

Most Free Software projects release their work as a tarballs – a compressed file of all the source code with instructions to compile them. Many times people read about new software from news sites and some of them savvy enough start building it from source. If you are already familiar with development tools it may not be difficult to do. Some of those users may create a debian package. Sometimes people just request a software to be packaged. It is done by submitting a wishlist bug against ‘wnpp’ pseudo package. wnpp stands for Work Needing and Prosective Packages. Such requests for packages are commonly referred as RFPs. So there are two ways a package enters debian.

1. Some one who know about debian packaging creates a debian package from a source tarball provided by upstream developers.

2. Someone files an RFP in debian bug tracking system and people come to know about it via wnpp and then creates a package.

For small packages a single person may create a debian package alone and maintains it by providing newer packages when some bug is fixed or a new version is released. Sometimes there are many applications created by one project (eg GNOME, KDE) or packages are similar (for example packages written in one particular language like perl, python, ruby) or they are used in one particular area (for example software useful for medical doctors or useful in schools), in these situations a team maintains these packages.

I really like this team maintenance idea because you can help updating any package when you have time and other team members take care of it when you are busy. With teams distributed around the world most of the time there is someone available usually to take care of the packages. But more hands to help is always welcomed by the teams as it helps spread the load to more people and reduces work for each person.

“when does a package move to testing. Package priority and condition of release critical bugs were explained.”

All packages are normally uploaded to unstable branch. When a package is uploaded, their maintainer tells how important this upload is. For normal uploads a priority of ‘low’ is set and for critical fixes ‘medium’ and for security fixes ‘high’ priorities are used. Packages are kept for review in unstable branch for 10 days for low priority packages, 5 days for medium priority packages and 2 days for high priority packages.

Many people including this author use unstable distribution as their main operating system every day. When they encounter bugs they report them. I have to clarify what unstable means here, it means always changing and each software itself is stable (either the upstream developers or debian developers decide it is stable enough for every day use). For software which not stable for every day use experimental branch is used.

After 10, 5 or 2 days depending on package’s priority their status is checked (this is done by a software called britney) to see if they can be moved to testing branch. First condition it checks is if there is any release critical bug reported against this package. Second condition is its dependencies are already in testing. If both these conditions are met it will be moved to testing. So new packages keep coming to unstable and testing all the time except when testing is frozen for next release. So we can call both unstable and testing branches as rolling releases.

Every time a stable version is released goals for next stable release is set by the project after discussions with different teams. Each team may want a particular version of their software in the next release or project as a whole may decide on a new feature. These release goals are collected by release team and published early in the release cycle. When testing is very close to achieving these release goals release team declares testing is frozen.

At this point britney keeps all packages in unstable and only bug fixes are allowed into testing. Sometimes release team allows a few exceptions, but usually freeze time is spent on fixing bugs by all developers. When all release critical bugs are fixed in testing a copy of testing is released as stable. At this time normal movement of packages from unstable to testing is resumed and preparation for next stable release starts. Stable release is officially supported by the project and recieves security updates only, no new versions are uploaded into stable.

“when does it goes to stable. I told them about release goals and freeze. I told them we release when we are ready and that means zero release critical bugs.”

This time I did not take my favorite package lekhonee-gnome and instead I chose to introduce gem2deb tool. We took mixlib-log gem and easily created a deb file with just one command gem2deb mixlib-log. But there was a catch, they were running squeeze and gem2deb was not present in the normal repositories.

I just told them to install gem2deb, some people tried to install it from sid repo but failed matching correct dependencies (most of systems had a messed up sources.list file, presumably from yesterday’s apt session). Some figured they can install it from source and they downloaded gem2deb tarball from github and followed instructions in README file to build it. First application of what they learned yesterday. And dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc command given there came in very handy when they had to rebuild mixlib-log package.

Every one created a deb package with one easy command ‘gem2deb mixlib-log’. On some systems proxy was not set correctly so gem2deb could not download the gem file using ‘gem fetch mixlib-log’. So gem file was downloaded from rubygems.org and them gem2deb was run against this file.

Every one used lintian to check what is missing in packaging as per policy and they used help of New Maintainer’s Guide to fix those errors and warnings.

[TODO] chosing a new gem file to package or update to gem2deb based packaging.

(Posting it as incomplete, I may add more points and few more details later)

Links:

1. Wiki page of the event
2. Photos
3. Debian Handbook – a complete book on Debian

Changelog:

30/04/2012: First draft, outline

01/05/2012: Expanded on debian development stages

02/05/2012: added link to Haris’ blog, editing changes, splitted big paragraphs to small paragraphs.

03/05/2012: Link to the note I wrote added.

10/05/2012: Diagram from Debian Handbook describing the release process added.

PS: I think, I better make a book out of it because its going to be a big post otherwise

Note: I was just trying to dump my thoughts as I wrote this and I was in a hurry on the way to a friend’s wedding, plus it was typed in my almost-dead ‘first android phone’ my phone. So excuse if you see anything not in place. Thanks to Shirish for some corrections.

‘I call my dad Maithreyan only. And my mother Jayashrichechi (chechi is elder sister in Malayalam). They are not legally married. Rather, I call Jayashri chechi’s father and mother as dad and mom. I lived with them till I was 15. In a very conservative atmosphere. Maithrayen and chechi lived two houses far.” Kani remembers it with a smile in her small house.

This daughter is also in a different path as her parents. Started acting in plays since 15. Kani acted in movies when she felt it was not enough to live.

”There is only one thing Maithreyan and Chechi told me, don’t respond if you are asked about caste or religion. None of the school certificates have my caste or religion.”

Your father and mother seems different?…

Certainly. They have given me all the freedoms. In our country when a girl has to ask so many people for permissions even when choosing a frock. I’m not saying that is bad. But, there won’t be a place for that girls wishes.

But, it is not like that in my case. Even if I feel like smoking a cigarette, I don’t have to ask anyone. That doesn’t mean I believe smoking cigarette is a bad thing. But even that wishes I don’t have to let go.

Maithreyan and Chechi will tell about its bad effects. but, they never push their decisions on me. I’m not saying there is no difference of opinions. We criticize each other and get angry. But, only for a small time. If I feel like doing something, they only say ‘do it if you like’. But, suppose I do something on my own. If there is a problem in that, they won’t move aside saying, ‘you decided it, you deal with it’. They will be with me.

Are you also opposed to marriage like them?

I have not decided anything now. My dad and mom won’t say ‘you are this old, why don’t you get married’. They will say live with anyone you like. It is my choice.

How did you get into acting in plays?

I used to participate in Sanskrit festival in school. I used to act Kavalam Narayanappaniker’s plays.

Even before that, feminist movement in Thiruvananthapuram ‘Sakhi’ organized many street plays. When mom and dad goes for that, I used to go with them. I was studying in 5th then. I did not have any reluctance to act like this, then.

I learned about requirement of a girl actor in ‘Abhinaya’ theater research center of Thiruvananthapuram when I was in 10th.

By then I had a feeling that play is good. Then, as I grew up, I became very body conscious. I was not in a state to decide anything. After seeing my state, Jayashri Chechi said, ‘you just go and check there. Don’t act if you don’t like. I started liking plays when I reached ‘Abhinaya’. I thought I can make a it my profession.

At last, I went to study in Thrissur school of drama. I acted in one or two plays. it was then that play director Abhilash Pillai came to take ‘Khasakinte Ithihasam’ (History of Khasak). He told me about ‘International school of Jacques Lecoq‘. So I joined a one year course.

I learned more about acting when I went to France. Perspective about life also changed a lot. I only wanted everyone to talk good about me. I even moved aside even small things I wanted to do. But life in France changed all that.

Here we do even things we like secretly saying it is against culture. A small example. I go to a public space. Boys can drink there openly. But if any girls drink at all? It will be a big problem. Earlier I used to give up even if I wished to do it.

But, after that I occasionally drank as part of socializing. But, I don’t drink now. I don’t like its taste, that’s the reason. I don’t think there is anything bad in drinking.

In short you became a rebel after coming back from France?

I don’t think living as one wish is rebelling.

There was a letter from Maithreyan, recently. It read like this, ‘you also have a right to smoke and drink like anyone. Smoking cigarette is comparatively bad. Because, it affects others too. There is nothing wrong in drinking socially. But please don’t drink like it is bad in secret.

I don’t compromise on things I like. I am careful to create a space for that always. Suppose when I travel at night and someone try to grab me. I will try not to provoke him by saying ‘I don’t like anyone touching me’. There were many experiences like that. When traveling at night, one or two men come to me and ask ‘where are you going this night?’. I say something like ‘Aiyyo, sorry brother, I came here by mistake’ and leave.

When you decided to try a hand at movies?

When I was back from France, Shankar Ramakrishnan asked me to act in Island Express in ‘Kerala Cafe’. After that I did ‘Cocktail’. It was the role of a prostitute. Then, Naxal girl in ‘Shikar’ (Prey), then small roles in ‘Karmayogi’ and ‘Urumi’.

Do anyone come with you in film-play sites?

I go alone wherever it is. I didn’t feel girls are not safe be it in play or films. So, if someone likes me physically. When I say I’m not interested, I have seen only people who say ‘ok’ and leave, in both fields. Nobody behaved badly with me.

Name also seems different like the person?

Maithreyan and Chechi named me Kani. When I was enrolled in school, Principal asked, ‘What is her initials?’, so Chechi added an initial just like that, ‘Kani K’. When I reached 10th, teacher asked me, ‘I need expansion of your name.’ When I came home and narrated this, Maithreyan and Chechi told me ‘you pick anything you like.’ So I chose ‘Kani Kusruthi’. (Kusruthi means playful in Malayalam). My passport and all has that name.

Future endeavors?

There is a famous theatre group. Footsbarn. I’m with footsbarn for 2 years. Go inside and outside India with play acting. That is my plan.

Originally appeared in Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi

Actually, you’ve lost. You’ve lost this war, because you… along with everyone else in this half-decayed republic of ours, allow a specific hot button issue to cloud your judgement and allow public sentiment to be unanimous concerning one specific topic.

Pedophiles.

You may be wondering what the hell Pedophiles have to do with Internet Censorship. The answer is; Everything. You cannot win, you are going to lose your internet freedom. You will be monitored, you will be followed and every act and idea you commit to the web will be logged and archived in the halls of Government.

All because you’re afraid of Pedophiles. If you aren’t, then maybe I am using the Royal “YOU” to comment on the public at large; the ignorant Baby Boomers who don’t understand the interwebs, the vacuous youth who haven’t learned the hard way that real opinions don’t make you many friends and often alienate you.

The sort of “YOU” that cannot argue that Pedophiles, just like Homosexuals, have a right to Exist.

It’s that “YOU” that is responsible for the death of the internet.

“But Wait, Heretic,” You might say. “The Net isn’t DEAD yet, we beat SOPA! We Beat PIPA!”

Wrong. You’ve insured your defeat. Consider the following;

http://investmentwatchblog.com/threatening-new-bill-worse-than-sopapipa-this-bill-entitled-the-protecting-children-from-internet-pornographers-act-of-2011-is-a-bill-with-overly-broadened-language-that-greatly-threatens-all/#.Tx0xqPk8d8G

No no. Follow the link. Copy-pasta if you must. You read it. You understand it… and realize that it is from the same corporate schill that propose SOPA and PIPA.

“What is this thing?” You might ask. Well if you’re part of the vast illiterati, I’ll explain you the thing (Bad grammar intentional).

H.R. 1981 is titled “The Protect Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″.

It is a bill that requires the following; Your real, legal I.D. name, personal home address, IP address, browsing history, search terms you’ve searched and the complete details of your online habits are to be made trackable and must be logged by all ISP’s.

“Wait a second!” You might argue, “That has nothing to do with Children!”

At this point in the discussion is where I typically chime in with; I told you so.

For the last twelve years of my life, I’ve been arguing rationality in the face of rampant, frothing at the mouth hatred concerning Pedophiles and the various scaremongering news articles that are propogated and proliferated across the news media services and sites.

I recognized that this one topic, out of any topic, is where people lose any sense of proportion or reason; people cease thinking or functioning when a discussion starts involving, “People that diddle children”. Or people that might, hypothetically, because of pornography they look at, decide to diddle children.

“That’s monstrous, Heretic,” You might say. “Why would you defend people such as this?”

The answer is I am defending you. I am defending humanity, because if you allow a portion of humanity to become classified as sub-human, you allow the Government to abuse that concept for it’s own gain.

I am defending Pedophiles as human beings, because if I don’t, someone will be next. And then another. Who would it be? The Furries? People into BDSM? Japanese Hentai fans with their schoolgirl fetishes?

It turns out, no. They didn’t just move on to other fetishists and people with peculiar or abnormal paraphilias. They skipped them and decided to bilk the public.

Oh, fat surprise.

This bill will pass. It will pass because nobody in the Congress or House will vote against it. They won’t vote against it because it’s to protect children from Pedophiles.

And there you have it, folks. Because Pedophiles are universally reviled by society, you have your reason that all of your freedom gets to be stripped away.

Not because you are guilty, and it certainly isn’t because you might have child pornography on your computer.

H.R. 1981 isn’t for pornography, it’s the mechanism of control. It is the perfect tool to combat piracy, to punish the public and to create… as some writers would term it… Total Criminality.

You’re a criminal because you’re on the internet.

Who is to blame for this? You are. You are because you didn’t defend the most reviled people in society, did not argue for their rights, did not protect them from having their human rights stripped away.

You can blame yourself for the death of the Internet, because you never put yourself on the line to take the stand nobody else would take.

But I’m sure it’s fine. I’m sure you’re okay with this, because after all, some of you MIGHT be pedophiles.

So when your children ask you when the internet died, you can look them straight in the eyes and tell them it was murdered by everyone who couldn’t stand to think of Pedophiles existing on earth, and how the very idea of such a thing was enough for us to hand our betrayers the keys to the house.

If, on the other hand, you aren’t okay with this bill… I encourage you to fight against it. I say this while laughing, because good fucking luck; the entirety of the U.S. super-ego will crush you into a fine powder rather than hear anyone object to a bill protecting kids from Pedophiles.

Oh, and if you do want to fight the destruction of the internet, why don’t you share this with everyone you know. Print it and give it to your mum, pass it out to the elderly and the infirm, read it to your teenage children, make people understand.

Though I don’t have much hope of THAT happening.

This has been your Heresy of the Day.

Note: Repost of a diaspora update by The Heretic Of Ethics

अधिक जानकारि के लिए http://piratepad.net/18octpune देखे।

PS: Thanks to Sandeep for spelling and grammar help!

NMAMIT, Nitte

Just back in Pune after 4 days in Nitte in between Mangalore and Udupi in Karnataka state. The best part was the awesome food we had every single day! I never liked Sambar in my 3+ years in Bangalore, but it was so awesome here! (I don’t know how many times I can use the word ‘awesome’ in a blog!) I still think the “Mangalorean Pomfret Masala” was bliss!

Of course meeting awesome people is given, for any Free Software conference, so I don’t have to highlight that Chandan had interviewed Jonas Smedegaard and it was excellent – both questions and answers! The best question was “what is your message to Canonical/Ubuntu?” We had to cut the interview and let him think about an answer. He said “When a kid leaves their home, we just say best of luck with whatever you do. Ubuntu is like a kid leaving home to debian – so best of luck!” It was so thoughtful and graceful, at debian ubuntu has always been a strain – how do we deal with it? It looks like most people have swallowed the bitter pill and adjusted to Ubuntu being more popular. Jonas kept telling Ubuntu is also a debian user and we have made an oath “Our priorities are our users and free software“.

There is much more to write, hopefully I will find some time to write more later.

With mobile phones and internet becoming more prevalent, collaboration has become easier. Wikipedia, Free Software, Free Maps etc are examples of this. Collaboration of large number of common people now have the power of beating wealthiest corporation (Free Software communities can beat Microsoft today). Also use of twitter, facebook and other social media tools in Middle East and North African uprisings shows the power of these tools in effecting social change. Frantic efforts by governments to curtail free speech on the internet is another indication of its effectiveness. I believe it is right time to take this to as many fields as possible.

Currently we cross-subsidise diesel and natural gas (cooking gas) with higher prices for petrol. The thinking behind this move is that, diesel and natural gas affects common people and also its price has a big impact on prices of commodities. But SUVs and luxury cars run on diesel and that picture is changed now. But still the price hike poses questions about government’s spending priorities. There is also a green demand for spending more money on renewable energy sources like solar and wind instead of continuing to subsidise polluting and dangerous energy sources like coal, nuclear etc.

We are doing a cycle rally in Pune coming Saturday at 5:00pm from Deccan Corner. Join in and register your protest. It is organised by Lokayat, an activists collective fighting against all injustices in our society. Visit lokayat.org.in to know more about Lokayat and get involved.

Petrol price hike: What do you think should be done? – story by Rediff.com

The highlight of the event was that it was a zero budget event. MES College of Engineering provided us lab and hostels, every one paid for their own travel and food. I hope to see more such events – small interested audient, less burden on organisers, more interaction and effectiveness. Instead of less big events, let’s start doing more small events.

I really liked the enthusiasm of the participants and we made sure those who completed a step helped others to complete. We proceeded to next step only when every single person completed each step. This is something I usually focus on wherever I take classes, but it is not effective with big audience. That is one reason I like small audiences. Normally only the brightest gets to follow everything and those who have less exposure feels left out. This time even if one is smart and completed a step, he/she has to help others if they want to move on.

First day we focused on different problems and complaints people have about Free Software and GNU/Linux. Instead of normal focus of a Free Software event on features of Free Software, we focused on what is not working in Free Software. Our focus was not in selling Free Software to the audience, but to make sure Free Software will become popular if we fix these problems. Normally audience just have complaints and speaker is always defensive. Here audience had to analyse the problem with the speaker, find out the root of the problem, and plan how to fix it.

One common complaint we always here is about dependencies and software installation. So we focused on two parts to solve that problem. First was lack of good internet connection, so apt-on-cd and keryx needs to be popularised. Second one is having to install from source. We concluded that once all software is available in a repository this problem will go away. So we decided to package all available Free Software. Starting with popular software that is in demand. We also figured out it will need many more packagers too. So if you want to help out, join our packaging effort. We have online packaging sessions every Saturday. Those who learned packaging, consider teaching it to others.

Food was really good, I was happy to get puttu (rice steam cake), beef curry and ghee rice. Lime juice was very good too, I miss it in Pune, where most places give old lime We stayed in their hostel. Bhushan, Abhishek and Ranjan came from Magalore standing in a train! Their enthusiasm cheered up everyone. I planned my vacation around these dates so that my travel expense would not be an issue. We missed Pavithran as he had fever and could not come.

Second day we had more people joining. This rarely happens in any conference, most of the time people drop out after first day. Last year we had a tough time manging a crowd of about 200 on the first day, but almost half of them did not turn up on second day. First day I explained debian release process and I made sure every on understood the process by asking each of them to explain it. I was happy to see most of them got it. Second day I asked Sajjad to summarise discussions on first day and explain release process. He did a pretty good job of explaining various concepts. Sooraj’s explanation of dependencies by taking example of average depending on sum and division was very good.

Then Jishnu started explaing control file and we asked every one to refer debian new maintainer’s guide. The whole day was spent on creating these files. Most of them were not used following a document and doing it themselves. Many times I have to ask them to read the document again when they make mistakes. Most of them made mistake about standards version, they used upstream version. Explanation of sections is a bit mis leading in new maintainer’s guide and most people ended up choosing main. I explained it and asked them to read the whole paragraph. I felt new maintainer’s guide could be improved a bit. We will try to send some patches.

Over enthusiasm resulted in a few RFPs being filed for lekhonee-gnome. We told them just create a text file, but many already sent RFPs! I told them how to close a bug and all of them closed it. Though it added a little bit of noise to BTS, I hope it has helped in the long run, hopefully these over enthusiastic folsk would help close more bugs!

We skipped copyright file as many wanted to leave. We just created a blank file for copyright and moved ahead with changelog and rules. Both these files caused bit of problem with formatting. Many did not have dch installed and they eneded up figuring out extra space or character causing error. Whitespaces instead of tab caused rules file breakage. We fixed all of them and I was happy every one had a working deb at the end of the day. First day we were explaining anatomy of a binary package most of them saw the control file, I think it would have been a rewarding experience for all of them when they opened up the binary file and saw their names inside it.

Third day was coordinated by Vasudev Kamath online. I had to leave for Sujith’s marriage. I have to mention about Sajith sir here. It was really encouraging to see a lecturer sitting through the whole session. I was happy to meet Raju sir after a long time. I remember two of my previous sessions at MES. I am sure we will see more contributors from MES. Anish and Sooraj had come from Thiruvananthapuram. Manu was running around fixing proxies all the time. I was happy to meet to aethiests there – Aneez and Nakul. Aneez was calling me agnostic I remember few more names – Shuvaib, Jasir, Muzafir, Jamal, Sunaiba. If you don’t see your name here, sorry, please shout your name as a comment Overall it was a really memorable experience. Now looking forward to Mini DebConf India tour stops in Mangalore, Pune and Ahamedabad.

Update: Jishnu told me there were about 12 students on third day. Ershad complained that I missed his name Ershad was playing with GNOME 3 release party balloons with every one and took pictures too. He has uploaded photos on diaspora and facebook, I will link it here once I get net access on my computer (now using my mobile and wifi sharing is too slow that only ping works and even that takes 5000-6000 msec for response).