@rushabh do you really not see what value FOSS United adds other than the events? Reports summarize the work, but our work has been more public over the past year than ever before
- newsletters have been going out consistently, and we’ve been updating the blog newsletter
- we have posted grants updates via blogposts at Grants and shared them via socials, the newsletters, and via the IM groups
- we have consistently tried to communicate the process of setting up and electing a governing board via posts at Organization and multiple forum discussions, open community calls, etc
- we wrote about experimental programs at FOSS United via blogposts like We Started Talking About FOSS in Tamil and Things Got Interesting or forum posts like FOSS and Software Engg education
- there were a total of 21 blogposts before April 2024 and we added 32 more blogposts since then
- our social media account following on LinkedIn, Instagram, X/Twitter, Mastodon have grown because we have been consistently active on them. X/Twitter following grew by 20% (5473 to 6607), LinkedIn following grew by > 60% (7797 to 12851), Mastodon following grew by > 25% (288 to 365), Instagram following grew by > 35% (2631 to 3645) - and this happened because we have been consistently talking about our work and promoting FOSS
- our YouTube channel subscriber count grew by more than 150% (from 2850 to 7830). See https://fossunited.org/files/IndiaFOSS%202024%20Sponsorship%20Deck.pdf for the previous years numbers
- number of FOSS User Profiles grew from 769 on or before 1 May 2025 to 16,978
- number of signups to this forum grew by 94% (778 to 1.5K), and number of new contributors grew by 37% (160 to 219)
- we have organized more collaborative meetups over the past year with FOSS/software/tech communities across the country like MumPy, OSDG @ IIIT H, Software Freedom Day 2024 and 2025 (11 other communities in Tamil Nadu), Chennai React, SFLC.in, FSF, JSLovers than we did before 2024
- we have promoted more FOSS and digital commons events by other communities like RootConf, Devconf.in, conf.kde.in, Barcamp Bengaluru, ADCx India, OASIS, OSM Delhi than we did before 2024
- overall, we organized, promoted, and collaborated on 130+ events since April 2024 and 87 events before April 2024. all of which is visible on https://fossunited.org/events/timeline
- IndiaFOSS 2024 received 238 proposals, and IndiaFOSS 2025 received 338 proposals
- 6 reviewers from the FOSS United community reviewed proposals for IndiaFOSS 2024, and we have more than 15 reviewers helping review proposals for IndiaFOSS 2025
- More than 1200 proposals have been submitted to FOSS United events, and more than 10,000 people registered to participate in a FOSS United event since April 2024
- we provided scholarships to 18 students and professionals to pursue the Takshashila GCPP Tech & Policy scholarship since April 2024, documented on Technology+Policy course scholarship for FOSS devs, one of whom is the IndiaFOSS co-chair, at least 3 of whom are regular participants at FOSS United events, and one of whom is organizing a devroom at IndiaFOSS 2025
- the number of 30-day unique visitors to the new forklore.in initiative is 1.87K when fossunited.org unique visitors are 4.94K over the same period (> 35% of fossunited.org visitor numbers). 38 Indian FOSS maintainers and creators chose to participate in forklore.in
Why has the participation in the FOSS United community increased over the past year if we weren’t providing value back to the Indian FOSS community? And why are people participating in FOSS United events throughout the year instead of only IndiaFOSS, unless they found value in it?
When all of this information is available publicly and our public activity has increased over the past year, why do you say this? Why “Other than the events (and that too IndiaFOSS)”, as if the other events aren’t valuable to the community? And why “maybe” when there is abundant public activity?