I was really looking forward to IndiaFOSS this year. For once, I had even planned my schedule in advance to avoid my usual last-minute scrambles.
However, I ended up going to way more talks. But at least I got to show off my organizational skills every time someone asked the “what talk are you going to?” question.
The conference was so much fun this year that it felt important to document everything. So here’s a rough note on the conference, what I found interesting, and more importantly, what I’m excited about for the future.
Day 0 Maintainer Summit
This year, we held an experimental, unconference-style “Open Source Maintainer Summit” before the main conference. My first thought when we floated this idea months ago is neatly preserved in an email:
A “Maintainer Summit” is a great idea. Regardless of how many people show up or the structure of the event, it would be good. Having maintainers come together, meet each other, and get introduced can itself be considered a good outcome.
And I think it delivered. Great job, organizers! Also, I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to help, but this was the best and most important part of the conference, at least for me.
A lot of the discussions primarily centered on open source sustainability. Financially supporting open source projects, managing user expectations and scope, handling maintainer burnout—it all came up.
What became immediately apparent is how much the Indian open source community cares about open source sustainability. I felt optimistic to see patrons like Zerodha, punching four weight classes above in funding open source projects and maintainers worldwide.
Some of the traditional maintainer problems are amplified in the Indian context. And nothing is more problematic than our inability to say no. Saying no to features because you don’t have time, saying no to the rude people who take, take, take and give nothing back, saying no to “can you do a quick review and merge?” requests.
When the maintainer summit ended on this note, it was slowly turning into a support group, and it seemed like everyone needed it. Petition to rename the Maintainer Summit to “Maintainers Anonymous” next year.
Me: I’m Navendu, and I’m a Maintainer.
Everyone [in unison, very bleak]: Hi Navendu.
Please don’t cancel me.
I also had similar conversations with maintainers who were unable to attend the Summit at the conference. I received some strong responses from the Malayalee FOSS community, something along the lines of “avanmarod poyi pani nokkan parayanam” (don’t worry, I will make t-shirts for every other Indian language next year).
For maintainers reading this, please also read this.
Talks
While I was there for the people, I still managed to sneak into at least a couple of talks in my schedule.
I always enjoy hearing stories about open source. It’s what got me into the spirit of open source back in the day when I was starting out, listening to maintainers on The Changelog. The talk by Prashanth on building an open source platform for scriptwriters and the story behind it provided insight into a part of the ecosystem that is not often seen.
Another unexpected (I guarantee nobody expected it to turn out the way it did) fun open source story came from the depths of the Indian judiciary, courtesy of retired Chief Justice Yatindra Singh. It was about his mission to get Indian courts to adopt open source software. It was surprising to learn that courts in Kerala still insist on using proprietary software in an otherwise successful FOSS adoption story spanning multiple decades.
BTW, all of these talks were livestreamed and are available on YouTube. I know how hard it is to get the video right, and this is an impressive feat for being an entirely volunteer-run event.
I was also part of the public policy BoF session. If you didn’t know, FOSSUnited offers scholarships for people in FOSS/tech to participate in a three-month public policy course. I was part of the third cohort a couple of years ago, and the program has been running successfully since then. The BoF was a gathering for the participants to share their experiences and connect.
Telegram channels should meet IRL more often, I guess.
Another cool aspect of IndiaFOSS is that it does not get hijacked by sponsored talks. Believe you me, that this is not the norm, and many conferences are just an amalgamation of sales pitches masquerading as talks. I’ve been to FOSS conferences where organizers have basically “sold out” and the conference gets dominated by one bankrolling sponsor. IndiaFOSS has had a strong stance against this from the beginning, and it was reassuring to hear from the team that they are doubling down on this following conferences like FOSDEM.
Kailash’s talk on his new, experimental markup language, HUML (Human-oriented Markup Language), was interesting to me even though I’m fine with YAML because it’s a true hacker project, like his other projects. It’s the same pipeline for every hacker: something bothers you, you fix it, you share your fix with the world. I want to look at the project in detail over the weekend, even though I’d rather not learn the nuances of yet another markup language (I had to).
Ram’s talk (very boring BTW, IYKYK) on DCOs and CLAs was definitely a must-attend talk. I feel like these are some footguns that you don’t really think about until, well, you get shot in the foot. I’m an MIT/Apache guy who is happy when someone contributes to my projects. I don’t bother with the legal stuff at all in my personal projects, but as an open source contributor, I’ve clicked enough checkboxes and “Accept” buttons without reading the CLAs, so maybe I should pay more attention.
Booths
I’m averse to booths now, having collected what could only be a lifetime’s worth of stickers and a closet full of t-shirts (you would not believe the number of black t-shirts I have with logos slapped on them). There were also a lot of people at the conference (2,500?) this year, and everyone was at the sponsor booths.
But I still managed to check out the hardware booths, which had fewer marketing teams and more enthusiastic engineers. The community booths were also really nice and felt more active.
If any of the sponsors are reading this, don’t bully people into giving you GitHub stars (you know who you are). If you have to, know that your product is shit. I understand marketing, I’ve been there, but this is borderline abuse. I will be nice this year, but next year, I’m going to be the open source police.
People
It has been a year since I went to any tech conference. Before that, I was a professional conference attendee, so my number one agenda was to meet old friends (and make new ones).
Most of the value came from all the hallway conversations. I stumbled into some, and I was roped into some others. Anyways, all good and fun. I also met some online friends who I’ve known for years, to the point where we were convinced we had met IRL sometime before.
I think I had more conversations with the maintainers I met on Friday throughout the conference. It’s usually hard for me to find people IRL to relate to (in tech, I mean, I’m not a sociopath) because I refuse to leave the comforts of suburban Kerala, and meeting a lot of them might have put me on overdrive.
I’m sure only the organizers are reading now, after all my bad jokes. I apologize for spamming the Telegram channels, guys, but I hope you find something useful here.
The best thing I saw at the conference was the number of young people (young-er; I’m still young, okay?). We talked a lot about open source sustainability at the conference, but the most important part of sustainability was rarely addressed: fostering newcomers.
Open source cannot sustain without new people joining open source communities, contributing to open source, and becoming stewards of open source. I’m very optimistic about the future because I got to meet a lot of smart 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds who are either contributing to open source or want to contribute to open source. I tried to help every student who came up to me, and I have a whole lot of talks and blog posts if you need help.
Next year, I will try to host a mentorship session where first-time contributors can learn how to get involved in open source. Maybe there would also be a talk. I know if I commit to something, it will likely be derailed, so I’ll hold off on anything concrete for now.
I also have a long list of action items to help FOSSUnited and the broader Indian FOSS community, and especially FOSS in Kerala. But that’s a TODO list for another day.
Spaces like IndiaFOSS that truly become an umbrella for everything open are key in creating a culture where tinkerers, hackers, and everyone curious are celebrated. Our forklore is already part of the global FOSS movement, and it’s only growing louder.
I’ll see you at IndiaFOSS 2026!