Hackathon Page Redesign (#1430, #1429, #1417)

• Complete redesign of default hackathon page (frappe template) matching the event page design with v3.0 styling. Added project contribution carousel and dedicated projects listing page. Check out FOSS Hack 2026 Default for the new look!

• Participant Registration now properly validates closure dates, shows city names for convenience to pick localhost.

• Display accurate participant counts across localhost venues based on Accepted Attendees and Interested (counted as no. of likes + applications.

Dashboard Dark Mode (#1428)

• Added dark mode support to the entire dashboard using frappe-ui colors! The dashboard now respects your system theme preferences and provides a consistent dark mode experience across all pages.

Security Improvements (#1398, #1397, #1401)

• Major work in this month as focused on Security issues and setting permission checks on doctype controller via `has_permission()`` method

• Implemented rate limiting to prevent abuse, fixed ticket transfer validation vulnerabilities, and hardened hackathon participant APIs. Added team member validation in project creation and XSS prevention across user profiles, project descriptions, and CFP submissions.

• Credits to @ni5arga (Nisarga Adhikary) and @kewonit (Kartik Kulloli) for security research and contributions!

RSVP Experience (#1419, #1405)

• Guest users now get clear success feedback after RSVP submission with disabled submit button to prevent duplicates. Added table view toggle in RSVP insights, and manual check-in button now only enables during event days. RSVP pages now follow v3 design for consistency.

Event Timeline Updates (#1436, #1435)

• Accepted event grants now appear in events timeline and RSS feed as upcoming events! Made agenda more compact with icons (especially useful for hackathon schedules). Online meeting links are now supported via the talk_video field.

Hackathon Management (#1424, #1412, #1407)

• Participants are now automatically synced to localhost email groups based on acceptance status. Added permission controllers to prevent participants from joining multiple teams. Localhost hackathons can now manage event sponsors directly.

• Read more in docs for participants & localhost organizers

Jobs & CI (#1396, #1423)

• Added publish date tracking for job board. Integrated Frappe semgrep rules and conventional commit linter in CI for better code quality.

• Documentation site has been migrated from material mkDocs to Zensical.

For more updates, please check out CHANGELOG in the repo or in documentation page. You can catch up on Forklore updates here.

As always feel free to drop your suggestions and open issues over at Git or codeberg

March Is Coming. So Are the Hackers.

NMG was started as a yearly ₹1,00,000 no-strings-attached, micro-grant to support meaningful work happening in India by Thejesh GN. Thejesh is a FOSS and Open Data veteran, and was also one of the organisers of the Open Data devroom at IndiaFOSS 2025. He is the co-founder and chairman of DataMeet, the biggest community of data science and open data enthusiasts in India.

“The reason for the grant could be anything as long its meaningful to you and people around. Though I prefer free and open source or creative commons projects, It’s not a must. It’s a no strings attached grant.”

Over the years, NMG has supported FOSS/digital commons work across Design, Geospatial technology, FOSS mirrors and infra, and more. If you have been active in the FOSS United community, you will find a lot of familiar names in the list of past NMG grantees. It’s always interesting for us to discover channels that have organically developed a pool of people doing interesting digital commons work, and we want to support such initiatives. This is part of a new experiment on our part to identify “Lighthouses in the Digital Commons”, i.e., people who have been bringing people together in the digital commons for many years. Supporting “Lighthouses” enables us to expand our reach, while also platforming the work of the “Lighthouse”.

In 2026, FOSS United Foundation will be contributing INR 2L to NMG, which brings the total grants pool to INR 5L as of February 2026. Our support is not restricted to code or technical contributions, but any work in the public commons, including data, design, services, art, documentation, research, or tangible creations under FOSS/Creative Commons licenses.

You can apply for a grant here

The February 2026 Governing Board (GB) call took place on Wednesday, 25 Feb 2026. In attendance were members of the board: Bowrna Prabhakaran, Nemo, Swastik Banarwal, and Shree Kumar. They were joined by Poruri Sai Rahul and Ansh Arora from the FOSS United staff. The call primarily focused on Grants.

(Poruri Sai Rahul took notes and also drafted the post)

Grants and recap

1. Ansh walked through the 2025 grants recap, and he then shared grants projections for the FY 2026-27. At the moment, we project an overall grants budget of 50 Lakhs INR, with close to 25 Lakhs INR being allocated for previous and current grantees and 25 Lakhs INR for new grantees.
2. Shree asked us about a recent announcement about our support for the Nagarathna Memorial Grant by Thejesh G N, particularly the details about potential grantees. Ansh clarified that our support via NMG is for any work in the digital commons and not just for code.

We weren’t able to bring this up during the GB call, but Thejesh is part of a new experiment on our part to identify “Lighthouses in the Digital Commons”, i.e., people who have been bringing people together in the digital commons for many years. Supporting “Lighthouses” enables us to expand our reach, while also platforming the work of the “Lighthouse”. We intend to find more “trustworthy Lighthouses” and reach out to people in the broader digital commons ecosystem.

Travel grants, FOSDEM and more.

1. One of the largest grant categories in the current FY is the FOSDEM travel grants for FOSS project creators and maintainers, with more than 3 Lakh INR. Swastik asked us to clarify how we decided on the travel scholarships. Ansh and Nemo elaborated on the FOSDEM situation.
2. FOSS United and FLOSS/Fund, funding.json were allocated a shared booth at FOSDEM, but the Foundation team strongly believed in platforming FOSS developers from our community at the event instead of travelling ourselves. Because the booth needed to have a FOSS United or FLOSS/Fund angle, we decided to go ahead with Prasun @ Zasper, Murtaza and Hussain @ Rethink DNS, and Anand and Laurens @ Ente, because Zasper and Rethink DNS are FOSS United grantees and Ente is a FLOSS/Fund grantee. We got to know that Mecha was also attending the event, and we decided to stretch the booth to include a “projects from India” angle to enable Mecha to showcase their work from our booth. We worked with Nemo to represent the Foundation at the Booth and to ensure that no favouritism was being displayed at the booth amongst the showcased projects. We also supported Nemo with travel support to and from FOSDEM. 
3. Swastik called out that a 1 Lakh INR travel grant was a significant amount, and that he was expecting a smaller travel grant, maybe 50K INR. Rahul clarified that we settled on 1 Lakh INR after looking at travel, accommodation, and visa expenses, and in fact, all of the travel support grantees submitted bills larger than 1 Lakh INR, but their reimbursement is capped at 1 Lakh INR. Ansh also noted that we intend to expand this to support domestic conference travel up to 15,000 INR. Ansh noted that Nemo and the grantees shared that the support was an overall success, but that the process for choosing projects needs to be formalised next year.
4. Rahul proposed working with the Project Showcase booths at IndiaFOSS as part of the overall criteria for next year’s FOSDEM. Ansh mentioned that he will be reaching out to FOSDEM organisers to seek their feedback about our booth and the possibility of continuing this next year.

Fiscal Hosting

1. Multiple grant conversations have highlighted the need for a fiscal host, both for project grants and event grants. Events organised by communities are looking for a fiscal host, both to take care of ticketing and to handle vendor payments and the like. Project grants, on the other hand, were interested in finding a fiscal host who could accept donations on their behalf and handle project-related expenses.
2. Becoming a fiscal host isn’t without its challenges - especially because we do not have an FCRA, and therefore, we are unable to accept international payments from potential sponsors or donors.

Maintainer Programs

1. Rahul highlighted that the FY 2026-27 budget will carve out a new Maintainers Program, within which the grants budget would be covered, including the administrative costs to manage the program. Rahul briefly noted that non-profit organisations generally seek project/program-specific funding, and the Maintainers Program is the distillation of our learnings over the past few years about a clear need in the Indian FOSS ecosystem.
2. Rahul believes that carving out this program and seeking sponsors for it separately might enable FOSS United to raise funds from new donors over the coming FY.
3. Nemo pointed out that seeking new donors for grants subcategories, e.g., diversity scholarships, travel scholarships, might also be worth pursuing.
4. Nemo also called out the need to better acknowledge FOSS United funders, and Rahul noted that the Foundation is working to increase awareness of grantee projects, and that such opportunities will also be used to highlight funders.

Infrastructure Grants

1. Bowrna asked about projects reaching out about infrastructure grants, e.g., to pay AWS usage bills. Ansh clarified that Circuitverse is, in fact, an infrastructure grant where we pay for their AWS usage bills.
2. Nemo asked about the possibility of reaching out to a cloud-service provider, noting that Hetzner has a significant presence in the EU FOSS scene.
3. Ansh pointed out the multiple conversations we have had with AWS around IndiaFOSS, but unfortunately, the conversations ended with us being redirected to the US-based AWS open source team.
4. Infrastructure grant requests are likely to exceed 5 Lakh INR in the FY 2026-27, so we will be reaching out to additional cloud-service providers, e.g., E2E Networks, Yotta, regarding potential support. Nemo also asked about the possibility of FOSS United receiving credits from cloud-service providers, given our prominent stature, and using the credits to support FOSS project infrastructure costs. Ansh pointed out that we hadn’t explored this option and that we could follow up on this.

Miscellaneous

1. While waiting for everyone to join, we briefly chatted about the winners of the NASSCOM Maker Honor awards, 3 of whom are familiar faces in the FOSS United community, and one more case study from the compendium is also a familiar face from Forklore. It’s good to see FOSS work getting recognised by the broader Indian software ecosystem.
2. Towards the end, Rahul shared brief updates about the 80G reapplication process, which has been stuck for multiple years, but has recently started showing progress after a visit to the relevant Income Tax (Exemptions) office in Mumbai. Rahul also shared a brief update about the Mozilla FOSS AI event that happened in Bengaluru on Saturday, the 21st of February.
3. As for the next meeting in March, Shree asked to see the overall budget for the upcoming FY 2026-27.

Greetings!

Welcome to FOSS United's February Newsletter. While we are still trying to come to terms with the fact that 2026 is here, January has already slipped away in a flash, that is, unless you are BADBADNOTGOOD. But more importantly, headlines first, we have dates for IndiaFOSS 2026, yes, you heard it right. Week of Sept 26-27th. SAVE THE DATE!

Highlights

It is FOSS Hack time of the year

FOSS Hack is back for its 6th edition! Have you registered?

Register Now!

Same same but different different.

Instead of a hectic weekend sprint, this time, the hackathon will run through the month of March, an attempt at sustaining momentum, patience and making meaningful contributions.

It takes a village… to sustain the FOSS ecosystem, and a whole lot of them never open a code editor. This time FOSS Hack is accepting non-code contributions too :)

FOSS United at FOSDEM 2026

FOSDEM 2026 concluded last week in Brussels. This time, we supported a handful of Indian FOSS projects to show up and represent the FU community and FLOSS/fund at our booth @FOSDEM.

Among the projects that we supported were: Ente, Zasper and Rethink DNS. They were joined by Nemo and folks from Mecha Systems at the booth.

Follow this thread for FOSDEM updates :)

2025: A year in grants @FU

I've always felt January is just admin. The real New Year kicks in around February. On that note, check out FOSS United's recap of Grants through 2025 and a small window into how 2026 might turn out to be.

Read: 2025 Grants Recap

Tech-Policy Fellowships through FOSS United [New]

We've always believed that code doesn't exist in a vacuum, nor should people who write it! Over the last few years, we've run a scholarship for FOSS technologists to pursue the GCPP Tech-Policy course at the Takshashila.

In addition to this, starting 2026, we'll also be offering scholarships for community members who want to pursue the Policy in Action program offered by Young Leaders for Active Citizenship. Check it out, APPLY!

Upcoming Events

• [FOSS meetup Prayagraj](https://fossunited.org/c/prayagraj/feb-2026) | Virtual | Feb 03
• [BangPypers x SciPy India – Feb Python Meetup](https://fossunited.org/c/scipy-india/bangpypers-x-scipy-india-february-python-meetup) | Bangalore | Feb 21
• [FOSS Activity Mangalore](https://fossunited.org/c/mangalore/manglore-feb-2026) | Feb 28
• [FOSS meetup Bangalore](https://fossunited.org/c/bengaluru/mar-2026-1) | March 01
• [AI Impact Summit](https://impact.indiaai.gov.in/) | New Delhi | Feb 16 onwards
• [The Encryption Equation](https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QPLAYi77RpKfiXmNXrCelA#/registration) | Virtual | Feb 04
• [Governing Digital Thirst](https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/event/governing-digital-thirst-communicating-inequality-in-ai-infrastructures-water-footprint/) | Virtual | Feb 23
• [Tech Impact and Policy Center's Winter Seminars](https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/content/2026-winter-seminar-series) | Virtual
• [Future of the Commons Talks](https://foc.oki-india.org/) |

To view other upcoming and past FOSS events, please visit the FOSS Events Timeline.

Community Corner

Jobs and Grants

• FOSS United Grants | Rolling Basis
• FLOSS/fund | Rolling Basis
• Nagarathna Memorial Grant | Deadline: March 15
• NGI Fediversity | Deadline: April 01
• NGI Zero Commons Fund | Deadline: April 1

News

• 25 years of Wikipedia
• Reframing Impact: AI Summit 2026 | AI Now Institute
• Code is cheap. Show me the talk. - nadh.in
• Science Is Drowning in AI Slop - The Atlantic | Ross Andersen
• Owners, not renters: Mozilla's open source AI strategy
• Top 50 Open Source Conferences in 2026 | OSI
• Open Modular Linux Handheld Computer by Mecha Systems Inc | Kickstarter
• In a world run by AI, the early-career professionals stand to lose the most | The Indian Express | Sai Rahul Poruri
• Succession: Linux kernel community gets continuity plan for post-Linus era
• Brussels plots open source push to pry Europe off Big Tech | The Register
• Synthetic Media in Elections and Politics in India | Prateek Waghre
• The Grok Disaster Isn't An Anomaly. It Follows Warnings That Were Ignored.
• When I signed up to make deliveries on Zomato, Blinkit and Swiggy for a day | Long Reads News - The Indian Express
• Why experts say AI tool to detect Bangladeshis will be open to misuse | Tabassum Barnagarwala
• Cloud outages 2025: how global businesses survived blackouts - Rest of World | Damilare Dosunmu
• Data & Society | Turning the Tide: Climate Action In and Against Tech

Project Showcase

• An open source ledger for news stories that shouldn't expire
• Reas - a simple, lightweight, free reference list manager
• Halfsies - An expense splitter in your browser
• A minimal, interactive license generator that fetches licenses from GitHub's official API

Want to showcase your project? Post it on the forum, and we'll include it in our next edition!

FU Housekeeping

Forklore

Here's who joined the lore last month, projects worth bookmarking, and the maintainers behind them worth knowing:

• AltSendme and Tony Antony
• Shubham Kumar and Twig
• Ankur Ankan with pgmpy

Know someone who should be here? Let us know!

Monthly Tech Report

Check out FOSS United Platform's Monthly Tech report for January 2026!

Have thoughts on the newsletter? Reach out to us at team@fossunited.org

"May the FOSS be with you" 🚀

FOSS United. Strengthening the Indian FOSS ecosystem.

Our community thrives on respect, inclusivity, and collaboration. Read our Code of Conduct.

We started the year strong with major redesigns, FOSS Hack 2026 preparations, and several quality-of-life improvements for event organisers. We've shipped a complete Events Timeline redesign, overhauled the entire Grants pages and introduced hackathon localhost management via dashboard.

Events Timeline Redesign (#1375, #1383)

• The events timeline page now sports v3.0 design with better visual hierarchy and rounded corners (embrace modernity!). Events are split into clear "Upcoming" and "Completed" sections. Added RSS feed support (#1380) and lazy loading for better performance.

  -> Events Timeline

  -> Catch up on upcoming events via RSS: https://fossunited.org/events/timeline/rss

Grants Page Redesign (#1347, #1348, #1349)

• Complete redesign of all grants-related pages including landing page, individual grant types, and directory. Added new Grantees page (#1356) showing all recipients.

  -> Grants

Hackathon Management (#1360, #1361, #1369)

• Localhost hackathon management significantly improved with dedicated edit pages, team-based attendee grouping, and integrated mailing functionality. Accepted participants are automatically added to localhost email groups.

  Read more info in docs for participant & localhost

Common Save Action Bar (#1370)

• Dashboard forms now use unified sticky save/cancel action bar at the bottom for consistent UX across event editing, chapter details, RSVP forms, and hackathon configuration.

Event Publishing Toggle (#1382)

• Organisers can now quickly publish/unpublish events directly from the event details page with a toggle button.

Sponsor Sorting (#1354)

• Event sponsors now display with Patrons and Industry Partners first, followed by others sorted by confirmation date within each tier or alphabetically.

DocsInfo support (#1359)

• Added docs info bar to link to documentation for that page.

  Please let us know what documentation you'd like to get.

For more updates, please check out CHANGELOG in the repo or in documentation page. You can catch up on Forklore updates here. For more information and follow-up, please check our Project Dashboard As always feel free to drop your suggestions and open issues over at Git

Happy budgeting ahead :-)

2025 was an interesting year for the FOSS United Foundation in many ways. We started new programs ( forklore.in, Season of Commits), organised and participated in more events, and received increased media coverage. We also organised the biggest ever and a self-sustaining IndiaFOSS. We believe that the success of these initiatives is an indicator of the overall health of the growing FOSS ecosystem in India. For example, 11 out of 18 IndiaFOSS sponsors this year were Open Source companies.

A significant increase in grant activity and the number of projects showcased at events (and on the forum) this year indicates that Indian developers are becoming increasingly interested in building FOSS. We find this a new development, and the trends here are worth sharing with the community.

Through 2025, along with the community, we’ve also been able to draft and refine the FOSS United Grants Thesis. Check out the final version here.

The grants program

The FOSS United grants program aims to provide financial support to FOSS projects and events all over India. To date, we have disbursed over INR 2.5 crores ($110K approximately) towards Indian FOSS projects and maintainers. We have a 25L yearly grants budget that is split across project and event grants. Note that the budget is set across financial years (April 2025 - April 2026), and for the purpose of this post, we will mention the grants that were disbursed in 2025 (Jan-Dec). The total figure may include some ongoing grants from the previous year, as well as some that have yet to be disbursed.

In this calendar year, we received almost 200 grant requests. Around 20% of those requests were for direct FOSS work - project grants, infrastructure grants, fellowships, research funding; and the remaining 150+ were events.

Out of these, we approved 28 grants throughout the year. Here is a list of our grantees and fellows from 2025, along with grant amounts -

Project Grants (Jan- Dec 2025)

Fellowships (Jan- Dec 2025)

All the event grants are listed on fossunited.org/grants

Miscellaneous grants (Jan- Dec 2025)

Travel grants to events, diversity support and exhibit sponsorships are new experiments that we started this year. Our rationale behind these miscellaneous grants is outlined in the grants thesis.

Grants Allotment (FY 25-26)

* Amounts are rounded off for simplicity

* Only amounts that were disbursed in this financial year (April 2025-Present) are mentioned here.

We have exhausted the 25L grants budget we had set for the grants program last April. We are expecting to receive many more grant requests in the next few months, and estimate an overall deficit of INR 3-5L in the grants program.

Note that the mentioned figures include only the payments that happened post-April (some of these grants may have been approved earlier and received payments before April 2025).This also includes some disbursements from older grants that continued this FY. These funds are split across the following categories-

This supports our hypothesis that more than 80% of our grants budget is allocated towards direct FOSS funding through projects and fellowships ( which is 20% of the requests).

What’s next

We have received 10+ grant applications just in the last 2 months, some of which may get approved in early 2026. Our grants budget for the year is nearing a close, and we may hold on to some applications that come in the next few months until the next FY. We will take that time to catch up with grantees, discuss shortcomings and future plans, and continue working on other interesting programs we want to start this year.

I would also like to inform the community that starting Jan 2026, I will be working on “Maintainer Programs” at FOSS United Foundation.

Maintainer Programs

In May 2025, we launched Meet the Maintainers as part of Maintainers May. The idea was to highlight 31 FOSS maintainers from India for the entire month. While it sounds simple now, we weren’t very sure that we could find so many Indian maintainers when we started the campaign.

Sure enough, things got out of hand, and we found many more maintainers than there were days in the month. That led to forklore, a directory of Indian FOSS maintainers. And Meet the Maintainers never ended, we continue to bring you one story every week on #ForkloreFridays and have featured over 60 FOSS maintainers from India so far on forklore.

Many more Indians are now building FOSS, and this growth in maintainer activity is why we felt the need to expand our approach beyond financial support. The Maintainer Programs initiative by FOSS United Foundation will subsume grants, forklore.in, and other maintainer-adjacent programs and projects we’ve been running over the past. This is an effort to support Indian FOSS maintainers across the following areas:

1. Discoverability - Giving a platform to Indian FOSS projects and helping them find potential users, contributors, customers, hires, and even investors! We want to help these projects get more eyeballs through our events, social media channels, media coverage, etc. We will also help projects showcase at external events through sponsorships and travel grants.
2. Sustainability - This extends beyond the financial sustainability that the grants program offers. We will offer trainings for maintainers on security, accessibility, compliance, etc., and enable projects to conduct thorough audits regularly. We’ll also form partnerships with companies that can help us organise some of these trainings, provide infrastructure support (cloud credits) and hardware, join us as co-sponsors for grants, and more. All of this is crucial for long term sustainability of the projects.
3. Community - We will help these projects build their own communities, run FOSS contribution programs, and promote more interaction and knowledge sharing amongst the Indian maintainer community.

More updates on this will follow soon. These efforts will also be supplemented by the upcoming Grants Working Group. If you are a maintainer who has any ideas or thoughts, or a company that would like to partner with us, or just want to chat, please drop us an email at maintainers@fossunited.org.

Welcome to 2026. Turns out chabbis mein duniya isn't, after all, khatam.

Januarys are always a fun conflict, the energies of a new year and a fresh slate to do things, coupled with a touch of post-holiday blues. We at FOSS United are nevertheless back with new ideas, renewed momentum, and some room for the January blues.

Here's what's opening up, what to watch out for, and where you can get involved right now.

💜 Highlights from FOSS United

• FOSSHack 2026 Registration open!

  FOSSHack is back, and this year, we're doubling down on what actually works. Instead of a rushed weekend sprint, FOSSHack 2026 runs through March as a month-long, hybrid hackathon. Registrations are open!

  FOSSHack 2026

  …this is your moment to get in early.

• Forklore Chronicles: Stories from the Source

  Here's what we covered last month, stories from the trenches, maintainers to know, projects to save

  • Rethink DNS and Mohammed Hussain
  • Rethink DNS and Murtaza Aliakbar
  • Poorna and Mujeeb Rahman K
  • Twig and Shubham Kumar

  Get the project breakdown, contribution guides, and their FOSS villain origin story, because every maintainer has that moment when everything changed. Read the drama at forklore.in! Got a maintainer ready to spill? Add to the lore!

• New year, new grants page, same question: what FOSS are you building?

  The Grants homepage got a proper overhaul; it's clean and easier to navigate. With over ₹3 crores disbursed to date, everything from new programming languages to FOSS mirrors to developer tools. If your New Year's resolution involved building something or if you've been sitting on an idea waiting for the "right time", bad news, there's no right time. Good news, there's funding. Apply here.

• Blender but in Kannada??

  Two 14-year-olds, Advay and Aarav, are building a complete Blender tutorial series in Kannada because, apparently, they got tired of waiting for adults to do it. Six episodes covering modelling basics. Episode 1 and Episode 2 are already up, and they're better than half the English tutorials out there. Gen Alpha is building while we're still arguing about frameworks. If you know someone learning Blender, send this their way. Full details here. Oh, and among others, the project is supporting by FU Grants :)

Upcoming Events:

• You Bought It. Can You Break It? (Virtual) - 09 January 2026
• FOSS Meetup Chennai - 10 January 2026
• MangaloreFOSS 2026 - 17 January 2026
• FOSS Meetup Bihar - 17 January 2026
• FOSS Meetup Pune - 24 January 2026

To view other upcoming and past FOSS events, please visit the FOSS Events Timeline. Our community thrives on respect, inclusivity, and collaboration. Read our Code of Conduct.

From the Community Corner:

Projects

• Drawy: Your handy, infinite, brainstorming tool! The project has now moved to KDE Invent.
• Cosmic-epoch: Next generation Cosmic desktop environment
• Eclipse-theia: Eclipse Theia is a cloud & desktop IDE framework implemented in TypeScript.
• Gullak: A no-frills expense tracker app enabling quick logging of expenses in natural language, using LLMs for parsing and categorisation

News and more

• The Year in Books 2025 / TechPolicy Press
• Schleswig-Holstein Migrates 40,000 Mailboxes to Open-Source for Sovereignty
• Paris-Based 'Open Source Experience' Conference Hands Out 'Acteurs du Libre' Awards
• Zerodha 2025 Open-Source Report
• Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Review: Is This the Linux Distro of the Year 2025?
• MeitY Backs Mandatory AI Copyright Licensing Even As Tech Industry Bats For Lawful Access
• The Commit Company acquired by Frappe Technologies
• New Study Examines Features and Policies for 29 AI 'Undressing' Apps / Tim Bernard
• Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the GoI has released a White Paper on Democratising Access to AI Infrastructure
• Mumbai's Data Center Dreams Run on Coal and Inequality / TechPolicy Press
• India's New Data Protection Regime Could Fuel Metadata Surveillance / Rudraksh Lakra
• In The Age Of AI, The Promise Of A Feminist Internet / Saumya Kalia
• Nvidia is Building a Shield of Concentrated Power / Megan Kirkwood
• Beware of OpenAI's 'Grantwashing' on AI Harms / J. Nathan Matias, Avriel Epps

January is a moment to start: The FOSS ecosystem needs builders, not just watchers. Projects need maintainers. Communities need contributors. The question is: what are you going to ship this year?

Thanks for being with us through the holidays. See you next month.

Have thoughts on the newsletter? Reach out to us at team@fossunited.org

FOSS United. Strengthening the Indian FOSS ecosystem.

"May the FOSS be with you" 🚀

The December 2025 Governing Board (GB) call took place on Wednesday, 10 December 2025. In attendance were members of the board: Bowrna Prabhakaran, Nemo, Swastik Banarwal, Shree Kumar and Bodhish Thomas. They were joined by Poruri Sai Rahul from the FOSS United staff.

Instead of diving into the agenda, each of us took a few minutes to bring up points or topics that we would like to discuss, whether or not we were able to add them to the agenda ahead of time

1. Rahul brought up the 2026 strategy and the 2026 election cycle
2. Shree pondered over the fact that the GB has been slower than he originally anticipated
3. Nemo brought up the Grants Working Group Charter updates
4. Bowrna prompted us to try and answer the question, “we made this change that caused impact”
5. Bodhi sought reading material and guides on setting up a not-for-profit organisation in India, if possible, in the context of FOSS projects, and an impact framework that such organisations could adopt.

Working of the GB

Everyone agreed with Shree that the GB was slower than they had originally anticipated. Shree prompted again that establishing Working Groups could speed things up, but also noted that the timescales on which the GB was operating was months and quarters, and not weeks. Shree also prompted that the GB step up and run the monthly calls themselves. Shree will be taking the responsibility for coordinating, setting up, and leading the monthly call in January 2026. For context, a Foundation staff member has been involved in coordinating, organising, and note-taking for the GB calls since inception. Nemo also noted that there were topics that could be discussed without the need for the entire GB to be present, instances where no quorum was necessary, as decisions weren’t being taken. Echoing a similar idea from a few months back, more than one call per month with available members of the GB might be the path forward.

Regarding Bowrnas prompt, Shree pointed out that the GB arrived at the IndiaFOSS invited speaker policy after much deliberation and that the IndiaFOSS volunteer reimbursement policy was settled at a previous GB meeting. Rahul chose instead to reframe the question - as Individual Contributors (IC), we are accustomed to seeing the direct impact of our actions. But GB duties/impact are hard to judge from an IC perspective, as the GB duties are closer to people management. The GB is responsible for establishing and driving the culture of the FOSS United Community, so how do you measure a culture change? Culture change is experienced on the ground as ease of volunteering, ease of event organising, ease of grants decision-making, and so on, most of which aren’t directly experienced by the GB members themselves. This is “action at a distance”, and we’re dealing with timescales of months, if not years.

2026 GB Elections

Moving to the 2026 election cycle, Shree made an interesting proposal to shift the election cycle. In 2025, the election cycle started in January, the elections were held in March, and the results were announced on April 1. Shree proposed structuring the election cycle around the IndiaFOSS conference. For instance, in 2026, the election cycle would start 3 months before IndiaFOSS, say June/July, voting happens throughout September, and results are announced on Day 2 of IndiaFOSS 2026. The primary motivation behind this change was to increase voter turnout. In 2025, we had 400+ people vote in the elections, but in context, IndiaFOSS 2025 saw 2000+ people attend the event. We discussed how the increased spotlight on FOSS United/IndiaFOSS could help bring more eyeballs to the election, how we could engage with IndiaFOSS attendees about the election process and candidates running for GB on Day 1 of IndiaFOSS, how the outgoing GB could close Day 1 and the incoming GB could close Day 2, and so on. Nemo highlighted the risk of centring elections around the IndiaFOSS conference, for instance, what if IndiaFOSS doesn’t happen in a certain year, but he agreed that the benefits outweigh the risks. Bodhi recommended poking IndiaFOSS attendees about voting, and recommended that voting end on Day 1. The change passed with unanimous agreement.

2026 at FOSS United

Coming to the 2026 strategy, Rahul highlighted that there will be a renewed push for new Industry Partners in 2026. Swastik pointed out that the existing IP deck was outdated, and Rahul responded that updating the deck was on our to-do list. In fact, in addition to updating the deck, Rahul also pointed out the need to update the IP tiers and corresponding financial contributions, given the lack of new IPs over the past two years. Rahul also pointed out that at least one grant-giving organisation, similar to Samagata Foundation, had expressed interest in supporting FOSS United Foundation financially in the past, in addition to corporate Industry Partners. Nemo pointed out the need for a campaign to nudge companies to use an “entry-level employee” salary as a benchmark. Swastik pointed out that we could help potential/existing IPs establish OSPOs and/or help them contribute to the FOSS ecosystem. He also pointed out that a FOSS Award by FOSS United Foundation might be beneficial in our efforts overall. He will be looking into such an effort in the next quarter.

FOSSHack 2026

Rahul shared updates about the new FOSS Hack format for 2026 - a month-long hackathon instead of a 2-day hackathon. Bodhi highlighted that FOSS Hack winners could be better integrated into the FOSS United Community by giving them a 3-minute speaking slot at IndiaFOSS.

December was a quieter but productive month as we wrapped up the year amidst holidays and year-end slowdowns. The focus this month was largely on refinement, performance improvements, and laying early groundwork for FOSS Hack 2026, ensuring the platform enters the New Year in a more stable and maintainable state.

• FOSS Hack 2026 Page (#1337): Launched the initial landing page for FOSS Hack 2026 directly in the codebase. Keeping this page in-repo makes it fully open for community contributions and easier iteration over time.

  Visit: https://fossunited.org/fosshack/2026

• Ticketing Workflow Improvements (#1300, #1301):

  Event URLs are now more intuitive, with /tickets redirecting users to the correct Buy Ticket or RSVP page based on event type.

  Ticket purchases also gained flexibility, allowing custom fields to be collected per attendee or shared across all tickets useful for surveys and preference collection.

• Ticket Insights Enhancements (#1310, #1319):

  Ticket insights in the dashboard now include custom field data, grouped views, searchable lists, and CSV export.

  These improvements make it significantly easier for organizers to analyze attendee data, especially for larger events.

• RSVP Insights & Check-ins (#1327, #1328, #1343):

  RSVP insights were simplified internally for better reliability and performance.

  Organizers can now search RSVP responses, export filtered data as CSV, and manually check in attendees directly from the dashboard complementing the existing self check-in system.

• Event Page Refinements (#1304, #1321):

  Event descriptions now hide markdown comments from rendered views, keeping pages clean while still allowing inline editor notes.

  Event location previews were also improved using OpenStreetMap with better handling of missing or invalid map links.

• CFP & Review Workflow Improvements (#1309, #1312, #1339):

  Chapter members are now notified when approved proposals are withdrawn, helping organizers stay informed without manual tracking.

  Proposers also receive email notifications for new reviews or updated remarks. Additionally, reference link limits were increased to 250 characters, making it easier to include long documents and slide decks.

• Grants Directory Improvements (#1344, #1340):

  Grants directory updates are now more efficient, with manifests refreshing only when changes are detected reducing unnecessary server load.

  Alongside this, the grants pages received a visual redesign for better structure and consistency.

• Accessibility & Performance Enhancements (#1308, #1306):

  Continued improvements to keyboard navigation and ARIA labelling across dashboard and proposal pages, along with missing alt text added to images across the site.

  Searchable list views were also optimized using debounced search and caching to improve performance on large datasets.

  Credits: @grittyuffy and @ig-imanish

For more updates, please check out the CHANGELOG in the repo or on the documentation page.

You can catch up on Forklore updates here.

For more information and follow-up, please check our Project Dashboard.

As always, feel free to drop your suggestions and open issues over at GitHub.

Stay afresh everyone, and happy New Year! See you soon next year

This month, we're not sugarcoating things. New research confirms what we've all suspected: open source maintainer burnout isn't a personal failing, it's structural. Low pay, repetitive work, toxic behaviour, and endless responsibility are burning people out. But here's what's different: FOSS United is building the working groups, governance, and community infrastructure to actually fix this.

Here's what happened in 2025, what's threatening the ecosystem, and what we're doing about it.

💜 Highlights from FOSS United

• Governing Board: three working groups on the way

  • The November Governing Board meeting focused heavily on how we support the people who make and run things at FOSS United. The Board discussed:
  • A new Tech Working Group that will steer the direction of the FOSS United platform and infrastructure (self-hosted Jitsi, services, access policies, etc.).
  • A Grants Working Group to bring more structure, clarity, and expert input to funding decisions.

  • A DEI Working Group to look at who we endorse and who shows up at FOSS United events – with a focus on geography, accessibility, and representation.

    Read in detail here: Notes from November Governing Board

• GCPP Tech+Policy Batch 11 – last call for Early Bird (7 December) If you've been putting off your application to the GCPP Tech+Policy Course (Batch 11), this is your gentle nudge, scholarship available. A good pick if you want to strengthen your voice in tech-policy discussions.

  GCPP Scholarship!

• Maintainer burnout: research, reflection, and a structural problem

  This month, burnout in open source stopped being "that thing we all vaguely know about" and became something much more concrete: Psychologist Miranda Heath has published a 47-page report on burnout in open source communities, backed by interviews, literature review, and analysis of maintainers' writing. Miranda Heath research – and a companion blog from Open Source Pledge – argues that burnout is structural, not an individual failing: low or no pay, unglamorous maintenance work, toxic community behaviour, and hyper-responsibility all add up. Open Source Pledge+1

  You can read an opinionated summary a community member has posted on the forum, connecting the findings back to Indian maintainers and our own ecosystem.

• Debian is taking over Navi Mumbai this December!

  MiniDebConf is landing in the city with two days of workshops, packaging marathons, and plenty of hallway wisdom from seasoned Debian folks.

  When: 13–14 DEC
  Where: Remiges Technologies & SIGCE
  Sign up: MiniDeb Conf X FOSS United Mumbai

  If you've been meaning to dip your toes into Debian, this is the friendliest pool you'll find.

• Forklore Continues: Confessions from the Creators 📖

  Here's who joined the lore last month, projects worth bookmarking, and the maintainers behind them worth knowing:

  • Safedep and Abhisek Datta
  • HOT Tasking Manager and Ramya Ragupathy
  • Raven and Nikhil Kothari
  • Zaturn and Karthik Devan

  Find out what keeps them going, what lessons they have for their younger selves and what files in their repos they'd set on fire. Head to forklore.in now! Know someone who should be on this list? Add to the lore!

Upcoming Events:

• SciPi India Community Call #4 - 6 December 2025
• Climate Conscious Tech Workers: Turning the Tide from Within (Virtual) - 11 December 2025
• MiniDeb Conf X FOSS United Mumbai - 13 December 2025
• FOSS Meetup Mangalore - 14 December 2025
• FOSS Meetup Chennai - 20 December 2025
• DPDPA Learning - FOSSxPolicy (Virtual) - 20 December 2025

To view other upcoming and past FOSS events, please visit the FOSS Events Timeline. Our community thrives on respect, inclusivity, and collaboration. Read our Code of Conduct.

From the Community Corner:

Projects

• Open Desk: Organise, present, collaborate. All in one
• 15h.org: a resource for documentation and open source support for AMD's Family 15h (fam15h) and other related processors and platforms
• Mitosis: Write components once, run everywhere. Compiles to React, Vue, Qwik, Solid, Angular, Svelte, and more
• Shadcn/ui: A set of beautifully designed components that you can customise, extend, and build on
• Docling: Get your documents ready for gen AI

News and more

• Open source does not mean open to vulnerabilities / The Hindu
• 'Women Are Literally And Figuratively On The Outskirts Of The Startup Economy' / BehanBox
• Leadership update: Ankush as CTO of Frappe
• Inside India's Open-Source Revolution: FOSS, AI & The Digital Commons / AIM
• Global internet freedom declined for the 15th consecutive year / Freedom House
• ‍MIB proposes bringing Influencers under press council Act
• This Thanksgiving, thank the maintainers…in style
• Introducing Copyparty, the FOSS file server
• Living In A Ghost World, These Data Workers Make the Internet Possible / BehanBox
• Dream Sports to open-source Dream11's tech stack to startups and MSMEs
• Mumbai's Data Center Dreams Run on Coal and Inequality / TechPolicy Press
• SIM binding mandatory for online messaging platforms: Dept of Telecom / Indian Express
• India's New AI Governance Plan is Much Ado About Nothing / TechPolicy Press
• OpenAI and Anthropic get sued for piracy: What are the real costs of AI? / Indian Express
• India's New IT Rules on Deepfakes Threaten to Entrench Online Censorship / TechPolicy Press
• Cartography of generative AI
• SFLC.in Hackathon 2025 wraps up with broad participation
• AI Safety for Fleshy Humans
• How American Big Tech guards the profits it extracts around the world / The Markup

Grants & opportunities

• ‍floss.fund, dedicated to supporting critical, impactful, and valuable FLOSS projects globally.
• ‍FOSS United Grants

December is a moment to reflect: The FOSS ecosystem that powers the internet is under stress. Maintainers are burning out. Platforms are being acquired. But there's also momentum for change. FOSS United is building the community. The question is: what role do YOU want to play in the rebuild?

Thanks for being with us through 2025. See you in the new year, rested, curious, and ready to build.

Have thoughts on the newsletter? Reach out to us at team@fossunited.org

FOSS United. Strengthening the Indian FOSS ecosystem.

"May the FOSS be with you" 🚀

November has been a month of significant feature additions! We've launched a Grants Funding Directory inspired by floss.fund, implemented RSVP self check-ins for better event management, and rolled out a complete Events Page redesign with v3.0 dark theme support. Event organizers now have powerful tools with Free Ticket management and Host Approval workflows.

• Events Page Redesign (#1265): The events page now sports the v3.0 design with dark mode support, improved event cards, better sponsor/speaker displays, and enhanced social links.

  Eg page: Mumbai minidebconf, Combatore foss

• Grants Funding Directory (#1283): Inspired by floss.fund, projects can now list their funding needs using a standardized funding.json manifest. The directory includes filtering, validation against the funding schema, and dedicated project pages. Visit fossunited.org/grants/directory to explore.

• RSVP Self Check-in System (#1286, #1287, #1288): Attendees can now check themselves in during events via their RSVP edit page. Organizers get a dedicated dashboard showing check-in data grouped by date with download capabilities. This replaces manual check-in workflows and provides better attendance tracking. For more info please check our docs [page](https://docs.fossunited.org/event-rsvp/#event-check-ins_.

  Note: This only applies for signed-in users who can edit their RSVP.

• Host Approval for RSVPs (#1282): Event organizers can now enable "host requires approval" for RSVP forms. This allows reviewing and accepting/rejecting RSVPs directly from the insights page with automated email notifications. Perfect for capacity-limited events.

Image showing RSVP check-in data and host approval workflow in RSVP insights dashboard

• Free Ticket Management (#1259, #1260): Complete free ticket workflow is now available in the dashboard. Organizers can create coupon codes, set redemption limits, track usage, and manage codes with proper permission controls. Recipients can claim tickets using the coupon without needing a platform account.

• Talk Licensing & Videos (#1268, #1266): CFP submissions now include talk licensing options with acknowledgment checkboxes. Schedule pages can link to recorded talk videos, making it easier for attendees to catch up on sessions they missed.

• First Commit Initiative (#1271): Launched dedicated page for the First Commit initiative at fossunited.org/first-commit.

For more updates, please check out CHANGELOG in the repo or in documentation page.

You can catch up on Forklore updates here.

For more information and follow-up, please check our Project Dashboard

As always feel free to drop your suggestions and open issues over at Git

Stay nerdy, Happy weekend :-)

The Governing Board (GB) call for November took place on Tuesday, 11 November. In attendance were members of the board: Bowrna Prabhakaran, Nemo, Swastik Banarwal, Shree Kumar and Bodhish Thomas. They were joined by Poruri Sai Rahul, Ansh Arora and Ashlesh Biradar from the FOSS United staff. At the meeting, six items were on the tentative agenda; four of the items were follow-up actions from the previous Governing Board meeting.

Tentative agenda

1. Volunteer reimbursement policy (High priority)
2. Technology working group charter
3. Charter modifications (suggested by Rushabh, Shree)
4. How to carve out staff time to run initiatives (e.g. Rupee Fund)
5. Grants WG Charter Open Questions
6. DEI Charter discussions

Volunteer reimbursement policy

Shree kicked things off with a discussion on the volunteer reimbursement policy at FOSS United. As a Co-chair of the IndiaFOSS conference, he observed first-hand volunteering at IndiaFOSS 2025, and he became familiar with volunteer reimbursements. He asked if it makes sense to have subjectivity when reimbursing the volunteers, i.e., partial or full reimbursement is a subjective decision. Partial reimbursement was suggested in the first place for IndiaFOSS 2025 because we were trying to be frugal. When Bowrna prompted for additional information, Shree mentioned that a few volunteers were only provided partial reimbursement this year, and most volunteers who asked for travel support were provided full reimbursement. But the decision to provide partial or full reimbursement was made subjectively, instead of being based on objective criteria. Ansh added additional context - that IndiaFOSS provides up to 10,000 INR in travel reimbursement, and that volunteers were additionally requested to travel by train if the travel time was less than 10 hours and by flight if the travel time was longer. In addition, only economy class flight travel would be reimbursed, and no additional fees, such as priority boarding, will be reimbursed. In the end, because IndiaFOSS 2025 had a budget surplus, we decided to go ahead with full reimbursement for all volunteers who requested travel assistance.

Shree asked what the criteria for picking volunteers was, and that if we wanted people from various chapters to volunteer for IndiaFOSS, we should settle on a reimbursement policy. Unrelated to the travel reimbursement, Shree highlighted that he observed a difference between expected effort and actual effort from some of the volunteers at IndiaFOSS 2025, which was communicated to them by the IndiaFOSS Co-chairs and Foundation staff.

Everyone unanimously agreed that we should not have subjectivity. Bodhi mentioned that an objective criterion could be whether or not the volunteer checked in to the expected duties on the days of the conference. Nemo highlighted that FOSDEM had a “number of volunteering hours” requirement to qualify for financial assistance during the event, and Ansh noted that FOSDEM does not provide travel support for volunteers. Nemo highlighted that objective criteria will be good, especially if the travel expenses are large enough. Nemo also brought up pushing for more local volunteers to reduce this expense altogether, but Shree also highlighted that this support could be a way to reward active volunteers from communities across the country.

For context, please note that travel and stay support should likely be extended to around 25 volunteers next year, apart from the 25 volunteers who reside in Bengaluru. Each volunteer travelling to Bengaluru will require at least 10,000 INR in travel support and 5,000 INR in stay. This comes out to 3.75 Lakh INR in travel and stay support for the out-of-town volunteers alone.

Rahul noted that emphasis should be placed next year on setting a higher bar for volunteering and to ask volunteers who are unable to meet the expected effort to respectfully step down. In addition, we need to gather feedback from volunteers about one another. Bodhi highlighted the need to blacklist volunteers who drastically underperform expectations, and that communicating this ahead of time would send a strong signal. Bowrna highlighted that city chapters with a large number of IndiaFOSS volunteers could plan ahead and coordinate internally, and Nemo highlighted the fact that volunteer trainings could address the trust barrier.

In the end, we decided that the Volunteer reimbursement policy for FOSS United events should not be subjective, that full reimbursement should be provided to volunteers who require travel assistance, and that the volunteer onboarding process needs to dramatically improve to ensure that such issues don’t happen in the future.

Tech Working Group Charter

Shree walked us through a draft of the Tech Working Group charter that he had prepared. He talked about the responsibilities of the WG, how the membership of the WG will be decided, how people could volunteer for the WG, and so on. When Rahul prompted for an example of what the WG could be responsible for, Shree responded that the WG could set the direction for the FOSS United Platform, e.g., what features should be added and what the priorities should be.

Nemo highlighted the need to consider access, security, and privacy when giving non-staff members access to data collected within the FOSS United Community. For instance, he highlighted the need to maintain an inventory of the individuals with access to servers, to databases, and other infrastructure, and the need to maintain policies on how access will be removed when a volunteer/member steps down. Rahul added additional comments about other infrastructure that the Staff currently maintain, where we would love to get help from the WG. Rahul also noted that a hierarchy of access could be set up where volunteers have access to the server with the least-sensitive information, e.g., the server that hosts Jitsi, to the servers with the most-sensitive information, e.g., FOSS United platform access. Bodhish noted the need to adhere to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, and that non-Staff members who gain access should sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with the Foundation.

Shree pointed out that members of the WG are different from volunteers, i.e., WG members determine the direction of Tech @ FOSS United, whereas volunteers execute. Bodhish pointed out that this felt like a CTO-like role, instead of a WG, but Rahul noted that this is similar to the Python Steering Committee. Rahul also pointed out existing precedent, i.e., Kaustubh (nikochiko) and Arya K are already members of the Community who previously or actively help maintain the Tech at FOSS United.

Rahul also elaborated on the kind of decision-making that the Tech WG could be responsible for, using our self-hosted Jitsi as an example. The Foundation experimented with meet.jit.si and Element Call for almost a year, before finally moving to a self-hosted Jitsi. The decision was taken after experiencing the issues that people faced with meet.jit.si, and looking into other communities that hosted Jitsi, e.g., FSCI.

Nemo highlighted the need to focus on changeability and maintainability of the solutions, e.g., being able to manage the servers without needing SSH access via Infrastructure as Code tools. Bodhi mentioned that FOSS United should consider contributing to the projects that we self-host. Bowrna highlighted that the city chapters and student clubs could use information about self-hosted services and the platform to train new volunteers, e.g., via workshops. It’s worth pointing out the /stack page and the server-setup GitHub repository here.

How to carve out staff time to run initiatives (e.g. Rupee Fund)

Shree posed this question, and Rahul responded that the best thing to do would be to set up time with Foundation staff. After an initial discussion with the Staff, specific people, expected time, and milestones could be identified to make progress. Nemo recommended restarting the Foundation office hours and merging them with Community calls, and such conversations could happen in these virtual calls. We settled on having at least two Foundation staff in every community call, and at least one GB member. Bodhish mentioned that they (Open Healthcare Network) have been running such community calls every week for many years with great success – a fixed timeslot and a date improves awareness and the likelihood of people joining the calls.

Grants WG charter open questions

Nemo asked how we wanted to compose the WG - members of the Governing Board, appointees of the Governing Board, Staff, members of the Community? Nemo posed that he expected one or two representatives from the GB, one or two members of the Staff, and at least a few members of the Community. He expected to receive nominations from the Community to join the pool of experts, and Rahul noted that we could observe participation of individuals from the expert pool over a few months and nominate them to become members of the WG. Please note that the experts will be consulted when making grant decisions, but the members will take the final decision.

DEI charter discussions

Bowrna highlighted that she was looking at Diversity in a number of different angles – diversity in geographic regions, representation from tier-2 and lower cities, participation from student clubs. She highlighted that she was incorporating the IndiaFOSS diversity scholarship process, e.g., what are the qualification criteria, into the WG charter. She noted that accessibility of events to physically impaired individuals, e.g., visual impairment, should also be a part of the WG charter. Finally, she added that event Code of Conduct-related work could also be incorporated into the DEI WG.

Shree and Nemo responded that the DEI WG couldn’t be held responsible for Code of Conduct work. This ideally belongs in a Moderation WG, but unfortunately, Swastik was unable to make progress on the Moderation Working Group charter due to personal and professional responsibilities. Shree and Nemo also highlighted the “horizontal scope” of DEI work, for instance, how the Grants WG and Tech WG will need to work with the DEI WG when evaluating grants, memberships, etc.

Nemo highlighted the need for the DEI WG, and the GB, to understand whether or not the community is moving in the right direction, with the help of quantifiable metrics.  Bowrna and Shree warned against the gamification of the metrics, but Rahul pointed out that the messaging will consistently highlight that the metrics are a crude approximation of the underlying culture. Bowrna highlighted the value that localisation efforts could have on improving the diversity of the community, and Shree, Nemo mentioned that the FOSS United platform could be localised.

Rahul highlighted that there are two key things for the DEI WG to focus on – who does FOSS United “endorse”, e.g., speakers at FOSS United events, and who participates in FOSS United events. Participant diversity at FOSS United events varies from region to region, and beyond a certain point, it is out of our hands. Who we choose to “endorse” on the other hand is fully under our control. The DEI WG should therefore look at FOSS United events, at all levels, and other FOSS United initiatives, such as Forklore, First Commit, to ensure diverse people are represented, in gender, age, region, etc. In addition, given the number of event grants that FOSS United disburses, the DEI WG could be involved in ensuring that grantee events live up to a minimum standard and are available to improve the diversity of grantee events, if possible. Ashlesh highlighted the need to consistently engage with the diversity scholarship recipients after IndiaFOSS.

Misc

Swastik asked for a report on the Season of Commits. Nemo asked for the observer report for IndiaFOSS. Staff will follow up and share these reports with the GB.

Next month

It looks like we’re on track to have functional Tech, Grants, and DEI WGs by the end of the year.

Highlights from FOSS United

Wondering what's happening in FOSS United? Here are a few updates from our side:

- Rethinking Grants and some more 💰

To date, we’ve disbursed over INR 2.5 Crore towards strengthening the Indian FOSS ecosystem. With lessons from the last five years and multiple conversations with grantees, the community, and GB members, coupled with insights from the Maintainers Summit, we’re cooking up some changes to the FU Grants program.

Check out the first draft of the FU Grants Thesis and tell us what you think!
In line with this vision, we’ve also put together an exclusive community for Indian FOSS maintainers — check it out here.

FOSS United Grant Thesis →

• GCPP Tech+Policy Batch 11 scholarships are here!

  Reason #1839 why you, as a technologist, should care about tech policy and build capacity to engage in these conversations — the Zoho–Digital Sovereignty discourse.

  In a report by The Hindu, it was revealed that 12 lakh Union government employee accounts migrated to Zoho to “avoid open-source apps that could compromise security.”
  Not only is this misinformation, it contradicts the Union’s own Policy on Adoption of OSS for Govt. of India.

  Who decides what software powers a nation? Who defines “secure”?
  These are political, ethical, and economic questions — and on that note, applications for the GCPP Tech+Policy Course (Batch 11) are open! Scholarships are available.
  Early Bird Deadline: 7 December 2025.

  Further readings:

  • The answer to Big Tech is not Indian Big Tech – Indian Express
  • India’s Search for Digital Sovereignty – TechPolicy Press
  • KITE’s CEO on Digital Sovereignty
    

• This month in Forklore ✨

  We’ve been busy talking to maintainers — the people pouring their nights and weekends into projects you probably use.

  • Shivani Bhardwaj and Suricata
  • Saket Choudhary and pysradb
  • Hariharan Umapathi and open-tamil-php
  • Rishikesh Ajit and Standard Agent

  Want to know which files they’d delete if no one was watching? Or what advice they’d whisper to their 20-year-old selves?
  Head to forklore.in and browse the confessions.
  Know someone who should be featured? Add to the lore.

• First Commit with Sreelakshmi Jayarajan!

  On the third episode of First Commit by FOSS Club, we feature Sreelakshmi Jayarajan.
  These sessions help students make their first open-source contributions with mentorship from seasoned contributors. After two successful sessions this year, the third one is happening this Saturday! Learn more →

• SFLC.in wins EFF Award 2025!

  Speaking of defending digital freedoms, SFLC.in has won the EFF Award 2025 for Defending Digital Freedoms!
  The recognition celebrates SFLC.in’s advocacy for online civil liberties, privacy, and open access to knowledge.

Upcoming Events

• FOSS Meetup Kolkata — 8 November 2025
• FOSS Meetup Lucknow — 15 November 2025
• FOSS Meetup Chennai — 15 November 2025
• FOSS Meetup Coimbatore — 29 October 2025

To view more past and upcoming events, visit the FOSS Events Timeline.
Our community thrives on respect, inclusivity, and collaboration — the Code of Conduct is here to guide us.

From the Community Corner

Projects

• Open Printer: An open hardware printer you can actually understand, repair, and upgrade.
• Open Sustainable Technology: A directory of open-source projects tackling climate change, energy, and biodiversity.
• BeagleBoard.org: Supports building electronics with open hardware and Linux.
• Refine: A React framework for internal tools, dashboards, and B2B apps.
• TripleA: A turn-based strategy and board game engine like Axis & Allies or Risk.

News and more

• Linux Foundation announces intent to launch the React Foundation
• Open Source Blueprints for Civilization – Open Source Ecology
• Arattai vs WhatsApp: The answer to Western Big Tech is not Indian Big Tech
• A frugal DIY air quality monitor
• The second tranche and anniversary reflection – FLOSS.fund
• The Untold Story of Log4j and Log4Shell
• Marimo is joining CoreWeave
• The Open Internet is Dead. What Comes Next? – TechPolicy Press
• Living in a Ghost World: The Data Workers Who Make the Internet Possible – BehanBox
• The Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab – Data & Society
• The State of Independent Technology Research 2025: Power in Numbers

Grants & Opportunities

• floss.fund: Supporting critical, impactful, and valuable FLOSS projects globally.
• FOSS United Grants

We hope you found this month's updates insightful and exciting. Your active participation and feedback are what make our community thrive.
If you have any questions, or suggestions, or need further information, feel free to reach out to us at foundation@fossunited.org

We invite you to join our Telegram group. It's a fantastic way to stay connected with the FOSS United community and be the first to know about our latest initiatives.

Thank you for being an integral part of our journey. Let's keep fostering innovation and collaboration in the FOSS world.

“May the FOSS be with you.”

Your RSS should not be quiet, here's the FOSS United platform October 2025 tech report.

Remember the joy and moments of IndiaFOSS 2025? Here's the photo album for the events ~ 950 snaps! Yet if you feel that you missed/forgot some talk, here's the full live stream playlist.

|---------------+-------|
| Metric        | Count |
|---------------+-------|
| Issues Closed |    28 |
| PRs merged    |    31 |
|---------------+-------|

We’ve launched a new Volunteers Page with Dark theme support (3.0), plus some UI polish and documentation upgrades. The focus next month is IndiaFOSS, with major events like MangaloreFOSS, MumbaiFOSS, and ChennaiFOSS on the horizon. Check out the full event timeline here.

• Volunteers Page: A shiny new page to celebrate our active volunteers, complete with a "Wall of Fame" and filtering by chapter or city. Credits: Jeswin Jose (Designer)

  -> Volunteers

• Dark Theme Support: Dark mode is here! For now, it’s just the Volunteers page, but expect more dark-themed goodness soon.

• Chapter Mailing: We've had Events Mailing page to send campaign message to Participants and CFP proposers in https://fossunited.org/dashboard/event/event_ID/mailing pages. Now we have Chapter level (https://fossunited.org/dashboard/chapter/NAME/mailing) to mail and maintain email group for past participants who wish to get updates from organizers.

  Users can wish to opt-in or out via checkbox button given in RSVP form.

• CFP & Review System: CFP review process easier with filters, better formatting, and color-coded reviewer statuses.

• Event & RSVP Updates: We’ve made RSVP toggling more intuitive and grouped RSVP data into "Attending" and "Not attending" categories for better insights. Attendee can "Edit RSVP" and let organizers know whether they attend or not via button.

• Docs Overhaul: The docs have been revamped for easier navigation, better search, and a streamlined experience.

For more updates, please check out CHANGELOG in the repo or in documentation page.

You can catch up on Forklore updates here.

For more information and follow-up, please check our Project Dashboard

As always feel free to drop your suggestions and open issues over at Git

Stay nerdy, Happy weekend :-)

The Governing Board (GB) call for the month of October happened on Thursday, 09 October. In attendance were members of the board: Bowrna Prabhakaran, Nemo, Swastik Banarwal, Shree Kumar and Bodhish Thomas. They were joined by Poruri Sai Rahul and Ashlesh Biradar from the FOSS United staff. Here’s a quick summary of the meeting notes.

(This summary is authored by Poruri Sai Rahul, the first person references, “I” hereby refer to Rahul)

IndiaFOSS 2025

Swastik

1. It was not communicated explicitly that active city volunteers would not be provided tickets and travel support for IndiaFOSS 2025, unlike last year. Swastik says that a number of active volunteers were disappointed about this
2. Shree, one of the Co-chairs of IndiaFOSS 2025, responded that the conference grew significantly this year, and that there was definitely scope for improvement, regarding communication and everything else
3. I (Rahul) didn't grasp Swastik's words. Eventually, I responded that we were only able to support travel and stay for event volunteers, and that we had shared the volunteering form with all active city chapters. It is worth noting that most of the volunteers for IndiaFOSS 2025 were members of active city communities, but like Swastik said, this was definitely a departure from last year
4. I urged the need for more volunteers for IndiaFOSS 2026. Volunteers and Co-chairs alike felt a significant lack of trustworthy volunteers for IndiaFOSS this year, given the scale of the event, and we need to plan on cultivating a strong volunteer group for next year

Shree

1. Shree pointed out that Community Partnerships felt awkward this year. Community Partnerships usually helped us sell tickets, but given the popularity of the event, Community Partners didn't really help with ticket sales
2. Not many of the community partners engaged with the community actively at IndiaFOSS 2025
3. Community Partnerships need to be rethought and revamped if we want to continue this next year
4. He also wants to move workshops back to the conference, both the venue and the date of the workshops. He wants to go further and see if the number of talks could be reduced to accommodate an increase in the number of workshops
5. I (Rahul) strongly second this - we got a lot more workshop proposals than last year, and we saw a lot more participation in workshops than we did last year, so there is definitely demand for more hands-on workshops!
6. Shree also mentioned that we might want to select the students who receive a student ticket, given the significant discount they receive on the tickets. I (Rahul) responded that we could open student passes for the active FOSS clubs a few weeks before they are generally available

Bodhish

1. IndiaFOSS this year felt less technical than before. A lot of the talks were focused on introducing FOSS projects but he perceived a lack of technical depth when compared to talks that he remembers from 2023
2. He highlighted the need for technical talks at IndiaFOSS that aren't usually accessible to an Indian audience
3. Nemo called out more devrooms as the solution to this problem
4. For the record, the dearth of technical talks was also called out by an audience member at the Open House session at the end of Day 2, but they mentioned that a few of the devrooms made up for the lack of technical depth in the Main Track talks

Nemo

1. He hoped for more lasting connections between communities at the event. Specifically, he had connected with a number of students who expressed interest in participating in the FOSS ecosystem, but disappointingly, none of them got back to him
2. Rahul - I hope that we can set up activity stations where students can attempt to contribute to FOSS projects. Imagine mini devsprints happening alongside the conference
3. Nemo hopes to see food trucks at IndiaFOSS 2026!
4. Nemo, along with a number of other respondents, highlighted that comms needs to improve next year. As a speaker in one of the devrooms, as a devroom manager, and a participant, he saw first-hand several missed opportunities and gaps in communication. As a devroom organiser, he also saw potential improvements with the way communication was handled between devroom managers and potential speakers
5. Shree echoed this sentiment
6. Nemo hopes for a bigger maintainer summit next year, and a lot more pre- and post-events next year

Bowrna

1. She focused on the invited talks policy - highlighting that it'd be good to enable the FOSS United Community to recommend people they know as an invited speaker, whereas right now the Program Committee/Co-chairs of the conference decide on who gets to become an invited speaker
2. I (Rahul) seconded the idea, especially because it is possible for a member of the community to recommend someone who isn't even on our radar but would be a great fit for the conference programme
3. Shree noted that there might be a significant number of self-nominations or nominations that don't clear the bar, increasing the burden on the programme committee/Co-chairs to sift through the submissions
4. Bowrna was unable to attend the conference because she fell sick, but she highlighted that she consistently runs into students who are keen to contribute to FOSS, but they don't know where to start. Bodhish echoed similar concerns with professionals, whose friends recommended them to attend the event, who were also interested but weren't able to understand where to start
5. I (Rahul) mentioned that we could have a "How to start your FOSS journey" booth at the event
6. Bodhish mentioned the need for project showcase booths to have quick start guides, and I (Rahul) mentioned that starting next year, we can require project showcase booths to have a contributing guide, a code of conduct, and other best practices for FOSS projects that make onboarding easy. We could also organise a pre-event session with Project/Community Booth managers to help them understand the conference audience and be prepared for potential contributors
7. On the topic of Booths, Bodhish highlighted that Community showcase booths should showcase FOSS projects they created or contributed to over the past year, instead of showcasing themselves
8. Bodhish also highlighted that we should require all booths to be manned by at least 1 person at all times. Shree reminded us that most booths are manned by volunteers, making this a difficult ask

Free event

With the increasing support from sponsors, Nemo wanted to discuss the possibility of making IndiaFOSS a free event. Everyone weighed in - Shree is split regarding this, initially liking the idea of making the tickets free but acknowledging that crowd control and setting expectations will be impossible in such a situation at the current venue. Nemo highlighted that a free event might make the event more accessible (financially) to people, making it possible for them to drop in and leave without worrying about the sunk cost fallacy. He acknowledged that workshops require clarity regarding attendance! Swastik noted that attendee food is a significant fraction of the event expenses, and Bodhi noted that the event should continue to be a paid event. He highlighted that more and more companies are willing to pay for employee conference tickets, which becomes a meaningful source of revenue for the event. In order to make the event more financially accessible, Bodhish noted that we could find additional sponsors, who could help increase the number of discounted tickets that we are able to provide.

Governing Board Charter

The MVP of the charter is ready. The key change pertains to elections - every seat on the Governing Board will be up for election for a few years, until we figure out the functioning of the GB and the Community gets used to the process

Shree highlighted that going from being Foundation-led to being Community-led requires significant effort on our part, specifically to document and communicate policies, guidelines, and procedures. He remembers how he was passively observing for close to a year, trying to figure out how the FOSS United Community operated, before volunteering actively. And he noted that a lot of the community members are likely in a similar situation. Better documentation and communication will enable these people to get off the bench and participate in leading the Community.

We acknowledged that the time is nigh for Working Groups and Nemo highlighted that it would be good to have a boilerplate for a Working Group charter document - with placeholders where interested Community members can share why the WG was necessary, why it belonged in the FOSS United Community, how they were the right people for the WG, and why this was the right time for the WG. We discussed the need to reduce the friction of creating a WG and, at the same time reducing the friction of disbanding a WG. Like software, empowering people to quickly experiment is the best way ahead with WGs.

Nemo will be working on a draft Grants charter. Swastik will work on a draft Moderation charter, and Shree will be working on a draft Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) charter.

INR 10 Fund

Shree brought up the Ten Rupee Fund (TRF) idea that he has had for some time now, which he also echoed at the Open House at IndiaFOSS 2025. The premise is simple - donate 10 INR to the FOSS United Foundation - but given the strength of the FOSS United Community, small 10 INR donations quickly add up.

Nemo sought clarification about whether it was possible to have multiple bank accounts for a not-for-profit foundation, and I replied that we already had multiple bank accounts. Nemo mentioned that the simplest option might just be to open a bank account and receive such donations exclusively in that account, e.g., via a UPI ID. The small amounts will hopefully prevent the need for strict compliance, e.g., the need to provide 80G certificates to the donors. Nemo highlighted that every community meetup could show the donation QR code to hopefully receive donations regularly from community members.

Nemo asked Shree what the purpose of the exercise is, given that we will likely not be able to raise more than a few lakh INR per annum via this exercise, and Shree highlighted that it was about building awareness.

When asked where the money could be spent, Shree responded that the community could vote on where to spend this. FOSS United Foundation could be one of the options for the community to vote, but the community can collectively vote on one or more projects to which the funds would be disbursed.

FOSS Hack 2026

Swastik asked if FOSS Hack was being planned for 2026, and I replied that yes, FOSS Hack 2026 was indeed being planned, but that it was going to be a significant departure from FOSS Hack 2025. Based on our previous experience, we intend to make changes to the duration of the hackathon, criteria regarding which localhosts could host the hackathon in-person, and shifting the focus towards more contributions to partner projects.

Bodhish highlighted the experience of the Open Healthcare Network/Care project last year, where a lot of time and energy were spent talking about the project to the hackathon participants, only to not receive any contributions back to the project. I (Rahul) noted that we intend to have a higher bar for participants to hack on partner projects this year, to ensure that we're not causing undue burden to the already overburdened maintainers.

Annual Report

We ended the meeting discussing the Annual Report for FY 2024-25. Shree designed an annual report that is appropriate for newcomers to the FOSS United Community, and we discussed the next steps. We will be launching a design competition to create a template for the annual report - one that uses FOSS tool chains, isn't hard-coded, and is modular.

If you have any questions or comments for the Governing Board, please send an email to governing-board@fossunited.org

Highlights from FOSS United

Wondering what's happening in FOSS United? Here are a few updates from our side:

• IndiaFOSS 2025 is over, but the conversations aren’t :)

  3 full days of madness — starting with half a dozen pre-events, 2500 registrations, 100+ talks, 60+ project booths, and thousands of conversations.
  The madness has ended, but like we said, the conversations haven’t.

• While we put together the polished recordings, catch the livestream playlists and here’s the IF2025 photodump.

• ICYMI — here’s the Times of India talking about the event, the people and the projects.
  If you’d rather watch a video report, here’s our friends at MetaMonkeys sharing their IndiaFOSS experience.
  Watch the Absurd gang’s montage.
  There’s a lot more, but you can always follow the #IndiaFOSS hashtag and get the full lore.

• There’s a new reading group in town | FOSS × Policy

  Prompted by multiple threads from IndiaFOSS, a few of us have come together to start a virtual reading group at the intersection of FOSS and public policy.
  We kick-started the pilot session with a discussion on the 2014 Policy on Adoption of OSS for the Government of India.
  Catch the notes here and stay tuned for a lot more.

• Pre-Summit Events for AI Impact Summit 2026

  India is hosting the AI Impact Summit next year, and preparations are in full swing.
  The Summit has put out an open call for pre-events to complement the main summit.
  Here are the full details to tickle your brain this weekend.

• What Are Digital Rights? And How Do They Impact You?

  The folks at TeamCommunity have put together a Digital Rights 101 guide — dive in to learn what digital rights are, why they matter, and how they impact you.

• T4GC × FOSS United × OASIS: Hack for Change

  We’ve teamed up with T4GC and OASIS to bring you a student-only Hackathon with a purpose!
  Code something that matters, solve real problems, and show off your ideas at the T4GC Summit.

Key Dates:
- Registration closes: 20 Oct
- Hack sprint: 29 Oct – 4 Nov
- Winners Announcement: 7 Nov
- Showcase Your Project: 15 Nov

✨ Code with purpose. Build for impact. Be part of the change. Register now before it’s too late!

Upcoming Events

• FOSS Meetup Mangalore — 12 October 2025
• FOSS Meetup Bangalore — 18 October 2025
• FOSS Meetup Mysore — 18 October 2025
• FOSS Meetup Coimbatore — 25 October 2025
• FOSS Meetup Hyderabad — 25 October 2025

To view other upcoming and past FOSS events, visit the FOSS Events Timeline.
Our community thrives on respect, inclusivity, and collaboration — the Code of Conduct is here to guide us.

From the Community Corner

Projects

• Dillinger: The Last Markdown Editor, Ever
• ToolJet: The open-source foundation of ToolJet AI — build internal tools, dashboards, workflows, and AI agents
• Signoz: An open-source Datadog or New Relic alternative — APM, logs, metrics, alerts, and more
• Jenkins: Open source automation server
• Elasticsearch: The open-source platform powering search, observability, and security
• Outline: A fast, collaborative knowledge base built using React and Node.js

News and more

• Open Infrastructure is Not Free: A Joint Statement on Sustainable Stewardship
• CodeRabbit commits $1 million to open source
• Open by Default – Frappe
• Burnout in Open Source
• How Bangalore uses the metro
• Greg Kroah-Hartman explains the Cyber Resilience Act for open source developers
• Building a self-sustaining open source business
• Information Controls in India and Pakistan During the May 2025 Conflict
• India’s Courts and Legislature Fail to Rein in Speech Crackdown
• Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers
• Why has Microsoft cut Israel off from some of its services?
• Understanding interrelationships between AI and digital public infrastructure (DPI) in India and Brazil
• ‘Gig Work Legislations Significant In Opening The Space For Labour Protection’
  
  

Grants & Opportunities

• floss.fund — dedicated to supporting critical, impactful, and valuable FLOSS projects globally
• FOSS United Grants

We hope you found this month's updates insightful and exciting. Your active participation and feedback are what make our community thrive.
If you have any questions, or suggestions, or need further information, feel free to reach out to us at foundation@fossunited.org

We invite you to join our Telegram group. It's a fantastic way to stay connected with the FOSS United community and be the first to know about our latest initiatives.

Thank you for being an integral part of our journey. Let's keep fostering innovation and collaboration in the FOSS world.

“May the FOSS be with you.”

• Implemented a QR code scanner for Ticket Check-ins 🎟️
  This allowed us for quick check-ins by scanning attendee Ticket QR codes for IndiaFOSS 2025.

  Implemented via: #1147

• Major updates to the Schedule Page:

  • Search support across talks by title, speaker name, designation, and category
  • Indicators now show Hall and Date
  • Schedule download now supports: CSV, ICS, Orgmode, Markdown

  Related updates:

  • Search feature: #1158
  • Download formats: #1151
  • ICS fix for event datetime: #1132

• We had two new contributor this month: @agriyakhetarpal and @arunppsg

For more updates, please check out CHANGELOG in the repo

For more information and follow-up, please check our Project Dashboard

As always feel free to drop your suggestions and open issues over at Git

Highlights from FOSS United:

ONE WEEK to IndiaFOSS 2025! Let’s get you up to speed — here’s what’s cooking:

• Full schedule is out!
  We’ll keep it short. Here’s the schedule.
  We've got conversations covering the full spread: the make-or-break questions, the hype everyone’s chasing, the grunt work nobody celebrates, and the dull-but-vital bits that keep the lights on.
  Plan your conf days — there’s a lot going on, and we are not sorry.

• Pre-events and side-quests
  IndiaFOSS 2025 comes with an extra day?? Yes, you’ve heard it right. If 100+ sessions and 60+ booths weren’t enough, we’ve got a Day 0 and side-events. We want you to make the most of your time this FOSS weekend.

  • Curated, super-cool, get-your-hands-dirty workshops @Day 0. Check them out here.
  • A gathering of the finest maintainers at Maintainer Summit — come talk burnout, sustainability, funding, and more.
  • And we’ve got a potluck! While we cook more (a lot more) pre-events, stay tuned here.

• FOSS Clubs are back and how

  • With over 50 colleges participating in the FOSS Clubs program, we set out to form a FOSS Clubs Committee to make sure things run smoothly.Say hello to the FOSS Club Committee 2025–26.
  • All things in order, we also hosted the first “First Commit” session for this year, with Gagandeep Singh.

• CRI Guidelines and RTI shenanigans

  The new Guidelines for examination of Computer Related Inventions (CRIs) are out.

  • On 29 July, the Office of the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks (CGPDTM) released the updated Guidelines — check them out.
  • The CGPDTM also disposed of our RTI applications seeking all the public comments it received during consultation rounds, among other things. Read in full.

Upcoming Events

• FOSS Meetup Pune - 13 September 2025
• Maintainer Summit - 19 September 2025
• IndiaFOSS 2025 - 19–21 September 2025
• Understanding AI / Data & Society / Virtual

To view other upcoming and past FOSS events, visit the FOSS Events Timeline.
Our community thrives on respect, inclusivity, and collaboration — the Code of Conduct is here to guide us.

From the Community Corner

Projects

• Mint — Bank reconciliation made simple for ERPNext
• Events — Event Management App built on Frappe

News and more

• Building for Developers—Not Imitators
• Free code can build India’s AI fortune
• Securing the supply chain at scale: Starting with 71 important open source projects
• Contribute to OSL Summer of Code Fellowship

Grants & opportunities

• floss.fund: Dedicated to supporting critical, impactful, and valuable FLOSS projects globally.

• FOSS United grants

We hope you found this month's updates insightful and exciting. Your active participation and feedback are what make our community thrive.
If you have any questions, or suggestions, or need further information, feel free to reach out to us at foundation@fossunited.org

We invite you to join our Telegram group. It's a fantastic way to stay connected with the FOSS United community and be the first to know about our latest initiatives.

Thank you for being an integral part of our journey. Let's keep fostering innovation and collaboration in the FOSS world.

“May the FOSS be with you.”

At FOSS United, we're fixing this. We build communities that genuinely serve people, not brands. Someone had to take responsibility for real community building, so we did. College, city communities, we go where the need is. Five years of work so far, with no plans to stop.

Bihar may be India’s poorest state on paper, but its people rank among the nation’s brightest. Every district now has an engineering college, yet students lack industry connections and mentorship. That’s why we must create a community space in Bihar to bridge that gap and unlock real opportunities. As a native, this project is as personal as it is strategic.

summary:

|---------------+-------|
| Metric        | Count |
|---------------+-------|
| Issues Closed |    13 |
| PRs merged    |    19 |
|---------------+-------|

• RSS feeds for Fossunited has been fixed and it now also includes Newsletters, and everything in full content. I'm sure you'll enjoy reading them in your favorite RSS readers. If you don't know what to use, give a try to Newsboat, Liferea, rssguard, newsflash or in Emacs!

  Thanks to @captn3m0 for reporting the issue: #1001.

  feed link: https://fossunited.org/rss.xml

• Teams page has been updated to include our new Governing Board members as well.

  Please find more info in this blog post: Meet our Governing Board

For more updates, please check out CHANGELOG in the repo

For more information and follow-up, please check our Project Dashboard

As always feel free to drop your suggestions and open issues over at Git