Have an idea for a panel discussion for IndiaFOSS 2025?
If you have a compelling topic in mind and are interested in hosting a panel, we invite you to propose your idea. The call for Panel Discussions will close on June July 7th, 2025. List of approved panels will be posted here, we may reach out to you for a call to understand your proposal in more detail.
To propose a panel discussion, reply to this thread with the following details:
Title of the panel
Objective
Brief Description and Key Discussion Points
Format (Q&A, a debate, or a roundtable discussion)
List of potential panelists
Letâs make IndiaFOSS a hub of meaningful conversations and collaborations. We canât wait to hear your ideas!
Topic: Students to Maintainers: Fixing the FOSS Contributor Pipeline in India
Objective: India is home to one of the largest student developer communities in the world. Many students make their first open source contributions through events like Hacktoberfest or GSoC, but very few continue on the path to becoming maintainers.
Why does this drop-off happen? Whatâs missing between the first PR and long-term impact?
This panel brings together student leaders, mentors, and community builders to share stories, struggles, and strategies to turn short-term contributors into active, empowered maintainers. The focus will be on culture, consistency, and supportânot just code.
Key Discussion Points:
Why students disappear after their first PR
Building meaningful FOSS ecosystems in colleges
Learning vs gamification: whereâs the sweet spot?
How mentorship, internships, and community make a difference
Real-world student-led FOSS: from health to fintech to civic tech
What future maintainers need: visibility, guidance, and a little faith
Format : Roundtable + Q&A
Objective - To understand the state of open source sustainability, ways of funding FOSS, models that work (and donât), identifying whatâs critical (and underfunded) from platform and grassroot funding initiatives.
The focus of the panel is around sustainability, health and maintenance, so I am not focusing heavily on a VC angle here.
Discussion points
What does sustainability mean for FOSS today? Where are we at in 2025
What models are working - and for whom? Discussion around discoverability and funding mechanisms (thanks.dev, fundingjson.org, github sponsors etc.)
How to support maintainers beyond money? (eg. Github SOSS fund)
What role should/can platforms like Github play?
Format - Moderated roundtable + QnA
Potential Panelists
Kailash Nadh - CTO, Zerodha (or someone else from the FLOSS/fund team)
For one or both of those panels, I wonder if Prof KC Sivaramakrishnan, who also teaches at IITM, would participate (or refer someone better) if invited. Theyâll make a good addition, especially coming on back of selling a company (?) that made substantial contribution (âmulticore OCamlâ) to a FOSS language often used by language designers (and the French)!
Objective - Why Free and Open Source Software is essential in Educational Technology, especially in the Indian context. Perils of proprietary software in education (cost, ecosystem-locking, privacy) and how FOSS acts as a solution to some of these problems; successful case studies from the ecosystem.
Objective â To dive into the past, and learn from what went wrong, what could have been done differently, and what we could learn from our lessons, in terms of promoting FOSS in India.
Discussion points
Evangelising FOSS
Building a National Movement
Cathedral or Bazaar Approaches, What Works
Giving Up On Spreading The Word (Too Early)?
Networking With The Mainstream: Friend or Foe
Overcoming the âIdeologicalâ Differences of the Past?
Format: Moderated roundtable + QnA
Potential Panelists
Anyone who has seen the movementâs ups and downs since the late 1990s.
Topic: A Low-Latency FOSS Healthcare System for Rural India
To explore how we can build resilient, community-owned and open-source digital healthcare systems for rural India. Designed for low connectivity, local languages and long-term public goodârather than relying on fragile, fragmented solutions.
Digital health solutions are rapidly expanding across Indiaâelectronic health records, appointment systems, mobile health tracking apps. But many of these systems assume stable internet, fluent English users, and expensive hardware. In thousands of rural and tribal villages, these assumptions donât hold. The result? Health workers are left to juggle manual paper trails and memory, and patients remain invisible to the digital health infrastructure being built around them.
SwasthyaLite is a FOSS-based healthcare system that works offline-first, runs on low-end hardware, and keeps data ownership local. Built for Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs), ASHA workers, and small clinics, the system enables them to record vital health info, manage schedules, and generate reportsâall without cloud dependencies. This session is an open discussion for developers, public health thinkers, and FOSS contributors to think together about designing for rural realities using open technologies.
Weâll also explore how Indiaâs digital health policies (like Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) intersect with open source effortsâand where policy gaps or integration opportunities exist.
Discussion Prompts
What do context-aware, offline-first FOSS health tools for rural India look like in practice?
How can we license and protect such tools to stay open, community-owned, and not exploited by private players?
What are the risks of proprietary health platforms dominating public systems in rural settings?
Is Indiaâs digital health infrastructure including voices from FOSS, grassroots workers, and rural health advocates?
How do we build a design and data ethic rooted in care, locality, and sustainabilityânot just efficiency?
1. Title of the Panel:
Leveraging FOSS to Navigate Surveillance and Censorship: Civil Society Perspectives from India and the Global South.
2. Objective:
To explore how civil society organisations across India and the Global South use Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to navigate and resist digital censorship, surveillance, and data exploitation, while advancing democratic values, privacy, and digital inclusion.
3. Brief Description and Key Discussion Points:
In an era marked by increasing digital repression, civil society organisations are turning to FOSS as a resilient and transparent alternative to proprietary tools. This panel will bring together experts from policy, civic tech, and digital rights advocacy to share their experiences in deploying and advocating for FOSS tools under challenging political and legal conditions.
Key discussion points will include:
Experiences of using FOSS for secure communications, collaborative work, and public interest technology in restrictive environments
Case studies from India, such as SFLC.inâs legal efforts against internet shutdowns in Manipur and content takedowns during the 2024 Farmersâ Protests
Civic Data Labâs work with open data and citizen engagement using FOSS
The policy environment surrounding FOSS adoption in light of Indiaâs Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023
The importance of design philosophies such as âprivacy by designâ and âdemocratisation by designâ in building trustworthy FOSS tools
Cross-disciplinary strategies for developers, policy experts, and civil society actors to collaborate on strengthening digital rights and sovereignty through open technologies
The session will aim to provide actionable insights and policy frameworks for overcoming structural and institutional barriers to FOSS adoption.
4. Format:
Q&A
5. List of potential panelists
Syed Mohammad Haroon, Volunteer Legal Counsel, SFLC.in (Moderator)
Title: Pursuing a Policy Career in FOSS
FOSS has emerged from being a counterculture trend in the early 2000s to becoming a mainstream value in technical development. On one hand there is increasing institutionalization of FOSS in OSPOs and government strategies. On the other, emerging regulation can also undermine the values and infrastructure on which FOSS lies. There is thus an increasing need for professionals who can engage in policy and regulatory process while representing the needs and concerns of FOSS communities.
This panel will bring together people who have created and navigated policy careers in FOSS. Weâll discuss the evolution of policy as a profession, the challenges in pursuing a policy career in FOSS in India, and strategies for people considering a career at the intersection of FOSS and public policy. The goal is to lend support to the public policy vertical at FOSS United.
We expect attendees to leave with an understanding of:
The need for FOSS communities to engage in public policy.
An understanding of the day to day work in a policy role.
What success looks like for a policy professional.
Skills needed to succeed as a policy professional in India.
Confirmed Panelists:
Venkatesh Hariharan,
Tarunima Prabhakar
Anwesha Sen
Potential additional panelists:
Poruri Sai Rahul
Saranya Gopinath
Have an idea for a panel discussion for IndiaFOSS 2025?