The Battle for Bangalore

Just when I was wondering how ironic it was to have FOSS.in 2005 and Microsoft's developer bash happen within a week of each other in Bangalore and at the same venue (Bangalore Palace), comes this article. Bill Gates also launched a rather "The Apprentice"-like code4bill contest while he was here, apart from promising to invest 1.7 billion dollars into India. The Times of India and NDTV did not shy from calling him a corny "Geek No. 1" (in reference to a series of hit Hindi movies named "Hero No. 1", "Coolie No. 1", etc.).

So which way would the Bangalore hackers sway?


Despite having a very large number of Software Engineers, I come across only a very few here in Bangalore who are even interested in coding and Computer Science and precious few who are willing to hack on FOSS and give back their changes to the community. For all the brouhaha in the general media about India being an IT superpower, it is a depressing scene for someone who actually likes CS.

(Originally posted on Advogato.)

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