# Introduction Your guide learning about the club FOSS\@Amrita (also known as amFOSS) is a student community based in Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri focused on contributing to Free and Open Source Software and mentoring students to achieve excellence in various fields of Computer Science. We envision students to excel and become the leaders of tomorrow by imbibing valuable skills relevant in the 21st century which include technical but also creative and intrapersonal skills enabling students to collaborate, exchange ideas, work together and solve real-life problems. Founded in 2006 by Vipin Pavithran, the mentor, the club over the years, has been one of the leading student clubs in India, with over 70 active members. Students from amFOSS participate in many international student open-source programs like the Google Summer of Code, Outreachy, Season of KDE, Rails Girls Summer of Code and so on, each year. The club is run by the students themselves, under the guidance of Vipin Pavithran with the help of the club alumni and supporting faculty. # What We Do The club operates on the primary principle of mentorship, where the senior members of the club individually mentor juniors, and the club as such acts as a family where each one helps the other out. Members contribute to various Open Source projects and work on developing their own projects including club projects aimed at solving real world problems, participate in GSoC, developer meets, hackathons and conferences. The members also conduct workshops and technical fests to encourage others to work on open source technologies. The club also aims to equip members with everything that they need to solve real world problems. To do this, members are required to choose a real life problem, form a team with like minded people and are instructed to just learn what is enough to solve that problem (whichsoever domain it be) and implement a solution. The club believes in the holistic development of its members, and the members besides seeking excellence in technical skills, also engage in talks, debates, sports, cultural activities, yoga sessions etc. # Goals The primary goal the community envisions for its students is to excel in every field. ## To become a great engineer * Train students to gain valuable and relevant skills in the 21st century * Software development skills (Code comprehension, debugging code, writing standard code) * To collaborate and solve real life problems whilst developing skills like critical thinking, creativity and communication * Imbibe the skill of learning to learn and help students become independent learners * Exchange ideas with peers, develop projects and use technology to solve the problems of the common man * Break the herd mentality and help students dream their own dreams ## To become a great human being * To develop empathy, compassion and awareness and become a great human * To develop awareness to protect nature and natural resources * To develop the attitude of servitude and find the joy in giving * Imbibe a sense of responsibility to each human, in each member * Help students deal with failure and success and make an emotionally strong mentality * Promote importance and practice of good health among members covering mental, physical and emotional aspects # History ## The Spark ![Vipin Pavithran, Founder, Chief Mentor, amFOSS](https://618606333-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-legacy-files/o/assets%2F-Lh8PQzfJ6mhSNRgV3OJ%2F-LhxWgL3pJeeWBytYT_0%2F-LhxWhpVZ3oBdSCMdQh0%2Fimage.png?alt=media\&token=8f3871bc-15af-4737-93d4-185d824ec191) The club’s story starts when its founder, Mr. Vipin Pavithran, joined Amrita University in 2006 after ten years of experience with the software industry in the US. The readiness to guide and mentor was the spark. His willingness to help and bring out the best in each student who he mentored, provided the fundamentals of what the club is established on. He believes that each student has great potential which is to be brought out, which is now delivered through the club activities. *“I know the value of right guidance at the right time and how it can make a huge impact. This made me want to help any one who needed guidance."* ## A Humble Beginning In the summer of 2006, he was approached by Abhilash T G, seeking a mentor to participate in the IBM Great Mind Challenge 2006. Soon a team of enthusiasts was formed and rigorous preparation had been initiated. Initially the students were not confident of getting selected, let alone winning; however they were highly motivated and enthusiastic about it. At the same time, Vipin sir was confident in his students as he was certain that his students would come on top. Months passed, with the team working day and night under intense preparation focusing only on their goal. They missed out on their usual college life, and were often mocked by their classmates. Infact, there were instances when nothing went their way and they thought of giving up, but they were motivated and pushed forward by Vipin sir. In the end, they ended up among the Top 5 teams from India, and were invited to Mumbai for the prize distribution ceremony. This was the first national level prize to be won by Amritapuri students. ## Winning the Sun Code for Freedom Motivated by the success, Vipin sir started searching for more contests at the national and international level. He then came across the Sun Code For Freedom 2008, conducted by Sun Microsystems, which was about contributing to their open source projects. It had already been 2 months since the contest started and Avinash Joshi, a third-year student was put on to work on contributing to Open Solaris, the open sourced version of Solaris operating system from Sun Microsystems. Avinash who had just completed his course on Operating System was now expected to contribute to one with over 9 million lines of code. After two months of intense effort Avinash finally figured out how to contribute and started contributing to it. He documented the entire process so that his peers could also get started with it and soon enough many students started contributing to it. Every day, students would stayback in the lab till late and work on contributing to various open source software from Sun Microsystems. When the contest was judged, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham emerged as the champion university, with a total of 105 contributions. The team that came second had only 10 contributions in total. Our students were invited to Hyderabad for the Sun Tech Days 2008 where the prizes were awarded. After this students started regularly contributing to Sun Open Source products with the active support of Sun Microsystems. ## Gaining Recognition through GSoC In 2010, Vipin sir chanced upon Google Summer of Code, and 3 members of the club got selected for the first time. Over the years, through the experiences shared by the seniors, more and more students started participating in GSoC. Having started with a strength of 10 members, the club now has about 50 active members, and several alumni actively mentoring the club. # Benefits ## **Gain Technical Skills** The members are free to choose and focus on any field of respective interest in the computer science domain, provided that one focuses, learns and completes tasks/projects on it for its applicability and learn to solve a problem. The members are provided with proper mentorship and a great community support backed by alumni. ## **Become a problem solver** The members are required to choose a real life problem they face, form a team of like minded people and solve it by learning only the minimum technology and knowledge required to solve that problem to finally implement a solution. This way members earn the skill to learn to learn and hustle up a solution to the problem swiftly. ## **Non-Technical Advancement** Apart from the technical aspects, members also progress in other skills like presentation and communication skills. Developing confidence and communication skills is always encouraged in the club. A platform is provided for this, every week, through FOSSTalks during which the students present their ideas before the other members, thereby improving skills with the help of reviews and feedback from seniors as well as help remove the hindrance of stage fear during public speaking. ## **Proper Mentorship and Guidance** The members are assigned mentors and hence, receive support and proper direction ahead from the seniors as well as from the alumni of the club. With the help of the experienced seniors, they receive help in solving technical or non-technical issues and set proper goals. The community provides a great ecosystem with a great network of club alumni as well. ## **World of Opportunities** Internships, hackathons, scholarships, and funded summer programs - the members have the opportunity and guidance from mentors to make the best use of each opportunity. The members also have the chance to attend conferences of Open Source Organizations and travel globally for presentations and training. ## **Contribute to Open Source** Contributing to Open source software that is used by millions in the real world is one of the primary goals of the club. Learning about Open Source Software and its applications contributes in both technical and non technical aspects of members. The members participate in Open Source programs like the Google Summer of Code, Season of KDE, RGSoC, Outreachy, KWoC, etc and take part in various conferences, summer schools and training programs across the world conducted by Open source organizations like VideoLAN, KDE, MediaWiki - with GSoC being the largest international Open Source Program. Participating in such programs helps in developing good communication skills, help learn to write perfect project proposals and developing a project within a deadline, apart from the various technical skills like reading a large codebase, debugging code and writing unit tests. ## **Develop as an individual** The club is a place where exchange of ideas and developing valuable skills takes place. Here, the focus is not on learning a programming language or completing projects but to learn how to solve a problem. One gets to experience many impactful things like completing within a deadline, working with a team (about team spirit), interacting with a community and being active on social forums like Twitter, Quora, Stackoverflow. Most importantly, the club provides a place to learn to work with discipline. ## **Become an independent and a good human being** Apart from technical aspects, the members acquire other skills to grow as an independent and socially aware individual. The club also centralizes on other, non-technical activities and encouraging values within students like empathy, compassion and awareness by promoting activities like planting trees, practice/start composting in the surroundings, read books and practice meditation and yoga within the club. The club also encourages its students to travel to new places and acknowledge, explore and understand the diversity and culture of different places. # Frequently Asked Questions ## How can I become a member of the club? [amfoss/Praveshan](https://join.amfoss.in/) ## Do I need to be in CSE branch to be a member? No. Anyone from any branch can be a part of the club. ## Who should join the club? Only the students whose interests align with the goals of the club, and goals of an amFOSS member should be joining the club. They should also be willing to manage and balance their academics along with club activities, and take care of their health to be a member of the club. ## How can I be successful within the club? Brief answer - listen to your mentor and communicate regularly. Having a "club first" attitude is also very important. Keep analysing your progress in the club and where you are headed. Being regular to the club and for club activities, even on weekends, shows that you are passionate about building your skills. If a member is facing any issue in the club they should immediately report it to the staff members. ## What are the goals of the club? [Goals](https://know.amfoss.in/club/goals) ## How are students supposed to achieve the goals of the club? The main goal of a first year student should be to "learn how to learn". This includes learning how to search the internet efficiently, how to ask questions online. A student may be working on something they have no prior knowledge about and these skills are essential to get up to speed within a short period of time. Just like any skill this requires practice, but at the end will be helpful in achieving anyone's goals. ## Can I also join other clubs and activity groups? We discourage our members from joining other clubs and groups on campus, because the club expects 100% effort and commitment from its members. The club is not against students who want to take part in multiple things, but believes that the goals of joining the club can be met only through focus and dedication. If you have multiple interests and want to do multiple things, we strongly recommend that you join other clubs and NOT amFOSS. ## I want to focus only on developing my technical skills, and not take part in other club activities. Can I do that? The focus of amFOSS is not just the technical development of the members, but also on their overall development as an individual. A variety of activities will be conducted to help one better grow regarding the non-technical aspects of their life like their health, communication skills and awareness of their culture and environment. ## How do I balance academics & club activities? Academics must be given foremost importance, regardless of whatever work you do. Attending classes regularly is a must. Try to listen to the lessons taught and learn the topics in the classroom itself. Spend any spare time on completing assignments and any other homework. ## Why do I need to come to lab everyday and even on weekends? ‌A certain amount of dedication is expected of each member of the club. College is the place where students will be able to lay a strong foundation for their career. The skills acquired from the club will prove to be important while working since only having a strong knowledge of technical matters could actually be disadvantageous for the future. Putting in this extra effort at this point in life will help a lot in the future to avoid working long hours and getting into other issues. Such rules imposed on the club members have been set to ensure that the members gain something substantial from the time and effort they put into their work. ## I currently don't have time to mentor juniors/take up responsibility for a club activity. I want to focus on learning and working on my skills. Can I do that? ‌Club members are expected to have a “club first” attitude. We believe that mentoring juniors and taking part in other such activities will help inculcate some essential skills for the future. Leadership qualities, well developed communication skills and being a good mentor are some traits that will come in extremely handy when working. ## Is the membership permanent? No. Every semester, the members of the club need to renew their membership by submitting their semester status update detailing their progress in technical skills, club responsibilities undertaken, activities they did, achievements etc. If the club does not find the student to be dedicated or progressing, he/she shall be expelled from the club. ## Why are people expelled from the club? ‌If it is found that a member is not making considerable progress in the club, they will be expelled from the club. If their technical and non-technical growth is the same at the end of the semester as it was in the beginning, it means that they have not been putting in enough effort in their projects. The mentors take a lot of time from their schedules to guide and help their mentees, and wasting their time is not acceptable. Members may also be expelled for not following the rules. Irregularity in coming to the lab, misconduct and not sending status updates are some reasons why members may be expelled. ## Why do people quit the club? The aspirations and goals of some may not be aligned with those of the club, and they might find themselves working in an uncomfortable environment. Some students may have certain concrete goals which require them to spend all of their energy on it, and not devote any time to other non-technical activities. The club is meant to be a place where one can receive guidance and improve themselves in all aspects. Others might find it difficult to balance their academic lives with the club activities. Such students are discouraged from joining the club as well, since academic progress must be given the highest priority, regardless of whether you are a member or not.