We are looking for names of techies who have a pragmatic understanding of how government and public policy works. This is for a committee that we have suggested that MEITY set up to revise the open source policy which is due for a refresh. Looking forward to suggestions from this group
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I have two suggestions. Not sure, if they have the bandwidth for this:
Please let us know, if you can make some time for the above request by Venky.
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I’m deeply interested in this. FOSS+policy and the need for the FOSS (and tech) community to actively engage in policy affairs. Telco bill, privacy bill, CERT-IN regulations, SEBI cyber security regulations … stuff happening relentlessly with what seems to be very little engagement from the massive tech community.
I’m willing to volunteer for this and self-nominate (while feeling weird about it)!
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We can also bring in some of the younger generation of open source entrepreneurs (founders of Chatwoot, Hasura, Tooljet etc)
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Thanks @wisharya . I’m definitely interested in being part of such a committee. Personally, my OSS contributions mainly revolve around the Scientific Python ecosystem so I hope I can bring a different perspective to such a committee.
My claim to fame is that some of the FOSS packages that I help maintain at work were used in the 2020 NASA Mars Helicopter Mission (see badge in rahulporuri (Poruri Sai Rahul) · GitHub). Ref Open Source on Mars: Community powers NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter · GitHub. I’m bringing this up because credentials matter when it comes to government matters 
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I know a couple of people at Hasura so I can try reaching out to them if you think we should pursue this @rushabh .
I would recommend involving Prabhu Ramachandran. He is a faculty at IIT Bombay, a nominated member of the Python Software Foundation, wrote a popular FOSS Python package and is one of the Principal Investigators of the FOSSEE project.
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Vishal, Sai & team. These committees are usually selected on the basis of experience and seniority. Prabhu Ramachandran of IITB would be a good fit. Sai, I agree with you that credentials matter and the NASA Mars Helicopter is a very cool credential! Not sure if that is sufficient for the government, but will ask.
Rajoshi from Hasura might be a good fit. I interacted with her once and found her to be a very sharp thinker. However, I think she now spends most of her time in San Francisco.
Have uploaded a note on the committee and its Terms of Reference here.
https://forum.fossunited.org/t/rfc-meity-committee-on-foss/1522