“There is no dearth of IT talent in India, but for a country
that churns out thousands of IT students every year, the number of
Indian contributors in the open source software (OSS) world is
disproportionately low, due in part to a lack of proper mentoring.
To encourage more students to go into OSS development, the Kanwal
Rekhi School of Information Technology (KReSIT) at the Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay partners with Red Hat for an open
source scholarship challenge each year. Participants, mentored by
OSS leaders, get the opportunity to work and collaborate to solve a
real-world problem, and the winners get a share of the Rs. 10 lakh
(about $22,000) prize. In an email interview, Venkatesh Hariharan,
head of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat India and coordinator of the
challenge, provides details about the event…”