Kenneth Gonsalves

From Indian Linux User Group Coimbatore

1 Kenneth Gonsalves
2 Bio
3 Contribution to FOSS
- 3.1 FOSS Projects and Writing by Kenneth

Kenneth Gonsalves

Kenneth Gonsalves [KG / lawgon](1953-2012) was a FOSS activist, hacker, evangelist, writer, geek, teacher,golfer and lawyer from Ooty, Tamilnadu,India. He was the founder President of Indian Python Software Society India and consultant to a number of companies across the globe. He worked as a consultant to National Resource Center for free and Open Source Software title, AU-KBC Research Center, Chennai,Tamilnadu,India. He was the founder of Indian Linux Users Group, Coimbatore and Chennai Python Users Group and many open source groups. He was a mentor to many successful FOSS activists and professionals in India. It was his great ambition to have a FOSS user-group in Coimbatore. He provided all the inspiration and physical support to start this group.

He was running a Python-Django training center at Ooty called 'greenchilly'. He was member of referees panel, Indian Golf Union from 2003 onward.He acted as consultant to precision group too.

Bio

This short bio was prepared by Kenneth Gonsalves himself.

Although he has no formal training in the IT field, Kenneth Gonsalves has been programming since 1986, starting with Turbo Pascal, then moving to Perl and finally to Python in 2003. Since then he has focused on Python in general and the Django web frame work in particular. He is an open source enthusiast and has spoken and written on open source right from 1995 when he was first introduced to it. He has conducted over 50 seminars and workshops in python and Django. He was the founder president of the Indian Python Software Society and a member of the team that has organized the highly successful Indian python conferences from 2009 to 2011. He is now based in Ooty where he writes and consults on open source. He also conducts a job oriented course in python and django. His other main interest is golf and he holds an international certification as a golf referee and has refereed several national level golf tournaments. He writes a regular column called 'Foss is fun' for the LFY monthly. Most of his code contributions are here: http://bitbucket.org/lawgon/

Education

Kenneth Gonsalves has completed his Bachelors Degree in Chemistry from Loyola College Chennai (1968 – 1971)[Source Linkedin Profile http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kenneth-gonsalves/4/565/10b].

Contribution to FOSS

According to Kenneth Gonsalves, using Free and Open Source Software itself can be considered as contribution to FOSS. He and his family was using Linux Operating System for their day to day computing purpose [Ref:Personal Communications]. But he was an active contributor to many FOSS projects.

His contributions for the Openstreetmap is worth mentioning. He always carried a GPS device with him to map the places which he visits. The best example for his cartographic skills and dedication towards Openstreet map can be seen in the mapping of MIT (Madrass Institute of Technology) campus, Chrompet Chennai http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=12.948557&lon=80.141091&zoom=18&layers=M. He worked there for more than three years and he mapped the entire campus. That remains as a perfect example for how to do mapping.

He was instrumental in setting up the Indian Python Software Society, India. He took the pain to draft the bylaw and register the society and maintain the necessary legal and bureaucratic procedure required for running the society. He developed a web-app for the society to keep track on members and membership tracking etc.. He developed Conference application for the first Indian Python Conference in 2009; which was based on his FossCon Application developed for Foss Conference Chennai.

During his tenure as a consultant in National Resource Center for Free and Open Source Software (NRCFOSS), AU-KBC Chennai, he played key role in including FOSS in the engineering curriculum, conducted many workshops and conferences like FossCon Chennai. He also took the pain to start NRCFOSS at Mumbai too.