My First Post and CFF

Well, this is first post on my blog...
The feeling that I need to create a blog was in my mind for quite a sometime now. But there's a very good reason why did'nt I do it. I've been busy with Code For Freedom - a contest conducted by Sun Microsystems as part of it's University Program. It really has been a period of learning and recreation for me the past 3 months or so. My college Faculty, Vipin Sir was the one who introduced me into this contest. He said that there were 5 technologies that you could work on and it will be a good learning experience. There were already some people like Avinash and Rishi working on OpenSolaris - Operating System from Sun. He also told me that Apache Derby will be a good option and that it is written completely in java. He's got me there...!!
Java always had been my favourite programming language. And the prospect that apache derby is a Relational Database drove me for that. I had learnt Oracle and used MySQL and have wondered how does the query optimizer,etc. actually worked. I wanted to see the source code but never really tried for it....
Now, HERE IS THE CHANCE!!!
There was one more reason why i took up Derby : I'll be doing something different from everyone else ....

I got the derby source and build it..it all worked FINE...BOY! Where was my confience level?
Then, I got a mentor from Sun, a guy called Mayuresh Nirhali (his blog here). It started off with a simple mail from him saying that he will be my mentor for Derby for Code For Freedom(CFF).
Then, I tell him the problems I faced in Derby and then, sooner or later, I get the answer. The good thing about him is that he wanted me to do the core work and he'll just tell me the general things of derby, debugging, testing.etc. My friends and me have learnt a lot because of this. I assigned myself a simple bug(it looked simple!) at the jira website. I started working on it and it was this time that I learnt how OPEN the OpenSource community is. Suddenly, I liked everything about Opensource. There is this lot of people who don't even know you helping you out when you are stuck somewhere in the fixing procedure. I post a query to derby-dev@db.apache.org and within 24 hours, a bunch of replies are there in my inbox. "THIS is AWESOME"...

After a week or so, a couple of college mates - Sandeep and Abishek also joined the race. I took up another bug to work on and on 30th of Jan, 2008 I made my first contribution to the Opensource world. I attached the diff file for DERBY-2239. It got committed the same day. "That was FAST!!".
Mayuresh's entry on his blog about this really boosted me...
Thanks a lot, Mayuresh....

A lot of students also came into the scene...Solaris bug fix-ers also started fixing up bugs in derby and everyone was suddenly busy.
I also laid my hands on some OpenSolaris bugs too with the help of my good friend and Star Bug Fix-er of Amrita, Rishi.

The whole contest was fun. It was fun listening to Rishi's and Avinash's strategies. It was fun, when a build or test comes right after about 2 days of trying. It was fun instructing the others. It was fun finding bugs and reporting them. It was fun watching guys working "even on Valentines Day". SUN made it all FUN.

On Feb 14 at 12:00 am, the contest was closed.

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham(Amrita University) has contributed a total of 87 bug fixes on OpenSolaris, 16 bug fixes on Apache Derby and also some on OpenPortal.

Team Amrita:

Avinash T Joshi

Rishi M Nair

Archana R

Meera R

Chitra B

Abhilash T G

Deepthi Devaki

R Vidyalakshmi

Sandeep

Abishek

Jazarine Jamal

Arjun Vasudev

Indu Vijayan

Sajith K

Venugopal M

Krishnakumar

Rejeeshnath

Vishak M R

Lekshmy G. Pillai

Balagopal R

Sindhu Vidyasagar

Parvathy S

Jayahari K R

Rohan S

Vishnudatha Kanjur

Man, am I proud to be part of the winning team!