FOSS India Pune Meetup, 2025

I came back from Pune FOSS Meetup (monthly ones usually) today (my first ever). The monthly meetup was nice, interactive, and the room was filled (approx 40-45 of us were there) with youngsters beaming for new things, knowledge, and pretty shy as well. 🪭😳

Onkar, Sriya, Agastya, Prathamesh, Khushi (FOSSUnited) and Joshua (host/Technogise) were very supportive, open and made every one feel very welcomed. It was real nice to be there, got to know a lot.

• Shreya took us through a very interesting topic: Secure & Encrypt your stuff. More: TLS inside a cluster | TLS in Kubernetes: a guide
• Yash took us through Kubernetes & backstage to build a dev portal of our own. More: Backstage-CNCF | Backstage-Source | Red hat article about its inception

What I really liked was that youngsters were filled with thoughts about what FOSS is all about? They were intently listening, even interacting, asking questions, and I saw few take notes. I am bad at remembering names (not faces though), so I am not sure I recall the names (anger management). Anyways, I heard one enthusiast take the name of Joplin, which peaked my height, as being India, and knowing how things go (to a certain extent of course), I liked it and started to pitch for the usage of F-Droid as well, which I was sad to see, hardly anyone knew.

Some knew of AuroraStore as well, and were using it daily. I was pitching more on take control and switch from closed source to open source. I spoke about some nightmares of my rooting experience of more than a decade & half back, which was like a WOAH for me too.

All working individuals were pitching Linux/Unix, which was so nice. I kept cringing about being a non-dev 😜, and liked how we had a good interactive session throughout.

What I found odd, and I have been vocal anyways: usage of google and proprietary stuff a lot by everyone. We need to move out of the GAFAM nonsense and take back our privacy, which I tried to pitch as much as possible. Drumming the R.E.M. Privacy is Scrooge McDuck saving his Lucky Coin from Cruella, Money from Maa Beagle & Beagle Boys.

Another thing I found odd, XMPP is missing from India & FOSS. Start using it too people. 🙂

FYI: I host a lot of stuffs, and own my domain and what not. Start using them, and happy to have that traffic.. --> LibreQR | 4G Search | LibreY Search | PasteBin | Hosts

To wrap this post up...

There were refreshments for everyone and the best part for me; they kept it vegetarian. 👌👌 Overall, I enjoyed being there, and I hope they liked my butting too. 😎🫡

Keeping this small so as not to bore anyone wishing to read this. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend the Bangalore one. Guess, I can do it next year.