Sreekanth V K
@walkingzen

I started hearing regarding Free Software and Open Source, while I was in school. Due to lack of knowledge and economic status, during my bachelors, I could not explore the same. Later, I got to know more about these ideas during my Infosys days and M.Tech days. I loved these ideas and learned and experimented more with Free and Open Source Software during my Ph.D. days. As I am about to complete my Ph.D., I wish to build my career for the full-time promotion of Free(dom) Software and Free(dom) Education. During Ph.D., I have noticed the following: 1. Many people are still not aware of the concept of Free(dom). The Free(dom) software and hardware is essential for the democratic and ethical education system. Many of the current research is flawed due to the limitation of the proprietary, closed software. 2. The education is not open to all as of now. The efforts like scihub and other methods are not as sustainable as Wikipedia. A democratic and ethically correct platform is required to share, learn and earn knowledge. Keeping these things in mind, I would like to dedicate post Ph.D. life for the promotion of Free(dom) Software and Free(dom) Education.My recent interaction with freedom Software Foundation India is disheartening as it is going through a bad phase due to lack of volunteers and in a bad shape that not able to accept membership. India, being a land for a lot of good software engineers, it required some decent effort to spread the magnificent idea of Free(dom) As part of this following things, I would like to do these one by one: 1. Travel across India, starting from my state Kerala, and go to schools and colleges and take sessions on Free(dom). Conducting workshops for making people understand its beauty and power. Expand this idea among the rural people of India, who may be victims of intruding proprietary (evil, unethical) software in coming future. Later, I would like to take this idea with like-minded people across the world. 2. Design and develop affordable and stable GNU/Linux system - from laptop to mobile, especially for economically emerging countries. I hope, I would get help from Purism and Fairphone in this end in long run. 3. Creating a strong collaboration platform for all Free(dom) lovers - I would like to see all the developers in FOSS paradigm to meet every year and discuss the concepts and evolve the same with mutual respect. 4. One of my dream project: Introducing Wikipedia concept + stack overflow concept for academic research literature which would democratize and ensure the scientific methods. Having the knowledge organized would help the people to grow faster and amicably. The introduction of stackoverflow would help to provide credits to the content creators. It needs lots of research so that the right people will get right credits and make platform easy to use. It is also important to ensure the correctness of information in the world where fake information spread very fast. Currently, I do not have enough technical expertise and technical experience. I am still in learning phase. I had done the experimentation with different Linux OSes during my PhD time only, which I was supposed to do at my bachelors time. (Thus you can understand my level of expertise). I know many concepts regarding the Free and Open Source Software. I do have some level of technical expertise as I was working with Perl, and Java during my industry working time, and currently using Python and R for research purpose. I do have some system level programming knowledge which I have garnered during my industry days.
I have enough confidence that I can learn the things fast and meet the expected results fast. My learning at entrepreneurship school during my PhD helps me to reach out people and spread the word. I need the money for the following: 1. Traveling across India and spread the word. 2. Design and develop a project to create low cost GNU/Linux system - mobile to laptop. 3. To run my family without make them suffer. 4. Last, but not the least, to run a website which showcase daily updates on the progress of my work to the promoters. I would really appreciate each and every penny that you share with me for promoting the Free(dom). I assure you that I will not misuse any penny and assure you that I work hard to meet your expectations, ethically.