FOSS.in is over

I'm not going to write any more about FOSS.in, since everyone else has already written about anything that there is to say. If you want to read all of it, go to planet.foss.in.

One fact that hasn't very much publicized [yet?] though, is the financial trouble that the event formerly known as Linux Bangalore is going through this year. This apparently is almost exclusively to blame at the sponsors (or lack thereof).

Apparently in India it's quite normal that even if you start talking with Sponsors more than half a year in advance, they will not commit until a few days before the event starts. This is also the reason why the conference programme is announced before the sponsors show up on the website (if you checked it before the event, all the sponsor banners were empty).

Due to this strange culture, it could happen that a large Indian IT company dropped their sponsoring commitment almost immediately before the event - that is _after_ the organizers having committed to all the expenses. I don't think that given those conditions, any organizer could have managed without a big large gaping hole in the budget :(

In addition to that, it is is a pity that none of the internationally recognized (and also locally quite present) "open source" companies Novell/SuSE and RedHat didn't show up on the sponsors list at all.