COEP FOSSMeet'18

As an engineer, it bothers me that engineering students aren’t using all the tools available to them. The number one tool for anybody insterested in software is open source. The sources for the entire software stack: bootloader -> kernel -> system libraries -> windowing system -> applications are available to run, study, debug and fix today. Not just for the PC/laptop but also for mobiles, servers, embedded devices.

This talk is about stating this obvious fact and learning why students won’t bother with this most basic of skills.

Outline

• Description of open source projects
• Examples of projects that you can run and contribute to
• How open source contributions can translate to jobs
• Why I don’t hire anybody that has no public contributions anymore

Speaker bio

Amit is a long-time Linux developer, an avid traveler and doesn’t want to settle. After majoring in computer networking, he worked for a startup in San Diego designing wireless routers.

He then moved to Finland to work for Nokia where he lead the Power Management team, that among other things, worked on the N900 Linux phone. Later, being the “ARM kernel guy” at Canonical gave him an opportunity to get involved in Linaro to make ARM the best-supported architecture in Linux.

After leading the Power Management Working Group at Linaro for 5 years, it was time to find new challenges. He then helped get the 96boards.org initiative off the ground. The idea was to fix a pet peeve of his: making available low cost, high-performance boards available to the community for their projects.

ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT…
kernel, power management, 96boards