To commemorate India’s 60 years of Independence, Sun Microsystems announced a unique contest today, aptly named “Code for Freedom”.

Open to undergraduate and graduate students in any college/university accredited by the Government of India, the contest invites contributions to 5 Open Source projects namely OpenSolaris, Netbeans, Project Glassfish, Apache Derby and OpenPortal and will run until January 2008.  The winners of the contest are set to win Laptops, iPods and every contributor gets a T-shirt and certificate from Sun.  To participate, students should go to http://in.sun.com/codeforfreedom to get contest details and more information.

Speaking on the significance of the contest against the backdrop of the Independence day celebrations, Dr. Anil Gupta, VP, Sun India Engineering Centre, said, ”Sun is adding another dimension to the word Freedom by giving India's students the freedom to learn on real life computer programs, freedom to change real life source code, and freedom to make a difference to real life problems.  Next month, Sun intends to launch workshops reaching out to over 100 colleges and universities.  Students can also get support from the community in each of the five areas.  These actions will help the students contribute and win.  This is no ordinary contest. Our approach prepares students to become professional developers in a way no other approach does.  No other company in India offers this freedom to students across a wide range of technologies.”

“Sun is one of the strongest proponents and one of the largest global contributors to Open Source. No new proprietary software product has made a real difference over the last five years.  All the action is in the open source arena.”, added Dr. Gupta.

“Sixty years after independence, India is now a major economic power.  Our IT prowess is proven and renowned. We have the largest developer base in the world. This initiative is in sync with Sun’s belief in the participation age, giving India's future developers equal footing with developers anywhere in the world.  It is imperative that our students not be bound by proprietary stuff.”, he further added. 

Sourced From: Vaishnavi Corporate Communications Pvt Ltd