FOSS: Keynote

I was able find a power socket at the end of the room where I was able to get my notebook charged again and guess what Dr. Ruwan from the Colombo University too was running around trying to get his notebook charged too.

The Prime Minister who was supposed to be the Chief Guest was a no show due to his presidential campaign (and don't let me get started on yesterdays fiasco where all the roads were blocked, it took me fours hours to get home!) instead Prof. Tissa Witharana the Minister of Science and Technology turned up and read out from a scripted note. The other speakers included Prof. Samaranayake and Manju Hathotuwa of the ICT Agency who spoke about what ICTA is doing to take ICT to the masses. I must say that I'm pretty impressed with how far reaching these were.

After a tea break the CXO conference kicked off with Dr. Sanjiva's Welcome Note where he gave an introduction to FOSS and what it was all about. Dr. Sanjiva though iterated the fact that Free software does not mean free as in 'Free of Cost'.

I'm right now listening to the Manager of the Open Source Lab from IBM, India who's going into detail on all the open source projects that IBM has been contributing to.