FOSSMeet 2020

How & Why I made the Manglish app, a free software app to convert Malayalam text to Manglish. It’s the story of this app, how it’s helping 2000+ users and the benefits obtained by making it free software and publishing on F-Droid.

• Why I made it free software.
• Donations; Sustaining development
• Contributions from people across the world !
• F-Droid

Target audience: People who want to get into FOSS development, FOSS enthusiasts, Malayalees who can’t read Malayalam.

Outline

• Manglish & a brief on evolution of Malayalam language
• Why FOSS matters in apps like these
  1. Fork of a fork of a fork
  2. Not reinventing the wheel
  3. Licensing
• Publishing to F-Droid
  1. F-Droid
  2. How packaging works in F-Droid
  3. How to contribute to F-Droid
  4. Automating Android App publishing & version updates
• Marketing FOSS Apps

Requirements

A curious mind. A laptop/phone would be handy to check the links and references out.

Speaker bio

I’ve been a contributor to FOSS since I was 13. I’ve played with many things, from web to sysadmin to PyQt to Android. I’ve only recently started contributing to SMC. I’m a student and I can relate to the majority of students in the audience. I’m currentlty the Malayalam localization maintainer of KDE. I’ve contributed to many software including Mediawiki, Ubuntu, Drupal and WordPress.

I’m the only person to make a Manglish to Malayalam Android app. Many has did Manglish->Malayalam, but nobody much has catered to the minority Manglish audience. So, this is something new :)

Links

• Manglish app - https://subinsb.com/manglish
• Reddit post - https://www.reddit.com/r/Kerala/comments/bvygio/ive_made_this_android_app_to_convert_malayalam_to/
• F-Droid - https://f-droid.org/packages/subins2000.manglish/

Slides

https://speakerdeck.com/subins2000/manglish-draft