Happy 60th Independence Day, India!

In this global economy, innovations are critical to a country’s growth. India made a mark in the global arena as an emerging economy, now time to showcase its potential to innovate. For innovations to be competent and cost effective, countries like India should look towards tools and solutions that are standards based, open, not-so-restrictive and globally available. Innovations in any field of study now require an Information Technology eco system to back it up, right from pure documentation needs to high end grid computing needs. How can we expose our young minds to the technologies that play a major role in defining the open source based information technology landscape?

Sun launched Code For Freedom contest today for students in India’s academic institutions. Students from recognized Indian academic institutions can contribute to a select list of Open Source products and get themselves exposed to the inner workings of these leading edge technologies. While doing so, even at a student level, they get exposed to the architecture and design of these technologies and work on the actual code, thanks to open source! In addition, they get to win prizes too.

If you are a student in India, this is a great opportunity. Please register for the program, contribute to an open source technology (your choice from the technologies listed here) and submit that info to Sun. It is trivial that you should follow the code contribution rules of respective communities of the technology of your choice. That gives you a feel of what is to be part of an innovating community, a feel of being in the participation age. Wish you all the best!

Happy Independence Day again, independence from proprietary products and independence to know the inner workings of great technologies!