Malappuram/MESCE/Mukti

'Mukti 2007' was conducted by MES College of Engineering, Kuttippuram under the banner of Free Software Foundation Chapter, ISTE Chapter and CSI Chapter of MESCE. The FOSS community in MESCE conducted a one day workshop on "Students initiatives in Free Software!!". The featured talk was given by Mr. Praveen A., Hewlett Packard, Bangalore. He is an active participant and contributer to the Debian Malayalam community. He is currently working a localization project, Swathnathra Malayalam Computing (SMC). The talk discussed current trends and industry standards like Digital Rights (Restrictions) Management (DRM) and Trusted Computing.

The talk discussed projects and how academic projects based on Free Software Projects are a viable option for pre-final and final year students. There was a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of doing a Free Software Project as academic project. There was a project demonstration by the students of final year Computer Sciene and Engineering. Mohd. Suhail Rehman and Antony Francis Maliakal. Their projects are done using FOSS tools and released as FOSS under GPL.

The function was inaugurated by Principal of the college, Dr. K.P. Mohammed. Prof. C.K. Raju, Head of Dept., Information Technology, MESCE preceeded over the function. He is the mentor of all the FOSS an FSF activities in the college. Mr. C.P. Mohammed, Head of Dept., Mechanical Engineering addressed the gathering and explained about importance of Free Software in academics and in the industry.

More details of Akshara Malayalam OCR developed by Antony F.M. and his team can be found on sourceforge project page of Akshara. The source code is available in svn.