ICFOSS-ASF Joint Mentoring Programme Launched

TechnoparkToday.com>> May 31, 2013: International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) has launched a joint mentoring programme with The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), one of the largest and most reputed producers of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in the world. The programme seeks to identify talented software developers from Kerala who would be mentored to participate in live projects of ASF.

The programme targeted at young developers with demonstrable programming skills—including students and fresh graduates—will start off with a 3-day bootcamp from June 17-19, 2013. The programme will be led by Mr. Luciano Resende, Vice President, Community Development, at The Apache Software Foundation. The workshop will introduce the basic and intermediate concepts in Open Source software development. At the end of the workshop, the participants will identify an ASF Project of their interest, and then produce a software project proposal which will be short-listed for the mentoring programme by ASF.

During the 3-month project implementation phase, the participants will interact with ASF volunteers who will help them and bring them up to speed in areas where they require support.

“The ASF has been participating in several mentoring initiatives around the world, and for the first time in India, its now partnering in a pilot project with ICFOSS. This programme aims at providing mentoring for undergraduate students and graduates who have interest in learning how to participate in Open Source communities.” Said Luciano Resende. “The mentoring programme is intended to train developers with existing skills to make valuable contributions to Open Source projects at Apache. Mentors will not act as programming trainers, but will provide enough information and real-life support for participants to progress within the project.”
ICFOSS Director Satish Babu, said, “The larger objective of the programme is to create a group of FOSS developers in Kerala who will be able to fit well into global teams. We expect this group to further interact with students and other developers locally, thus bootstrapping the developer community of Kerala into a higher level of competency in course of time”.

“In the long run, this will take us closer towards our vision of making Kerala a prominent global destination for FOSS-based development work”, he added.

ICFOSS is an autonomous organization of the Government of Kerala, mandated with promotion of Free and Open Source Software, and takes up activities such as R & D, training, pre-incubation support, advocacy and networking. The ICFOSS-ASF mentoring programme is part of the capacity building of the FOSS developer community in Kerala as part of its Pre-Incubation services.

More details available at http://icfoss.org/mentor.html