Swecha hosted a National Convention for Academics and Research which was attended byresearchers and academicians from different parts of the country. Former President of India Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam while inaugurating the conference and declaring it open has asked everyone to Embrace Free Software and the Philosophy associated with it.[7]
Technology should also be within the reach of everybody. At a time when technology has become all pervasive and people are increasingly dependent on it, transparency in software code is the need of the hour. "One needs to know what is going on in your mobile phone or computer," said D. Bhuvan Krishna, co-convener of Swecha project which code is available for anyone and everyone to modify fills this gap, felt speakers at an event organised to spread the word ofFree and open-source software(FOSS) and celebrate the launch of latest web browser from the Mozilla Foundation's stable,Mozilla Firefox 3.5.[8]
Swecha, has organised a 15-day workshop inChaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology(CBIT) for budding software engineers from across the country. The idea is to provide students with an opportunity on the importance of students contributing towards the development of free software as it would not only allow students to exercise their creative faculties but also will help society to free itself from the clutches of proprietary software.[4]
In order to build a mass movement forfree software, Swecha organizes Freedom Fest to promoting use of free software,[10] About 1,500 students from 80 colleges fromAndhra Pradesh,Tamil Nadu,Chhattisgarh converged on the campus to voice their concerns against proprietary software and share their passion for free software.
Swecha hosted A 2 Days International Technical Symposium on Free Internet (DFI) & Free Software inHyderabad,Gachibowli in the month of 24 January 2014. More than 4700 participants attended including the 20+ delegates fromThoughtWorks & Social Activist across the world.[11][12][13][14]
Swecha organises summer camps every year[15][16][17][18][19] in which large number of students participate. The camps focus on training students on Free Software Technology and the culture of sharing and collaborative development of free software. In the 2014 itself 15 days camps were conducted for 2000+ students. It is here participants collaboratively engage in the conduct of the Summer Camps.
Swecha is afree software project[20] aimed at coming out with alocalised version ofLinux operating system inTelugu and providing global software solutions to the local people with the Free Software development model by working together with thecommunity of developers and users all over. The prime objective of Swecha OS is to provide a complete computing solution to a population that speaks and understands only Telugu. The target users of theDistro being the entire community that is a prey of thedigital divide. This project helps in coming out with a solution for the digital divide and allows the possibility of digital unite becoming a reality. The project aims at bridging the gap between the computer technology that exists predominantly in English and the Telugu-speaking community of India. The project also aims at providing a framework for development and maintenance of Free Software projects taken up by the community.
Bala Swecha is a free software project,[21] initiated by the Swecha for tiny tots, It is a school distro with many of the useful interactive applications for the school goers. Its stack is filled with educational suites for all the standards right from elementary to tenth standards. They cover a wide range of applications which make the student learnMaths,Physics,Geography,Chemistry etc., very easily. Swecha has taken up many activities in training the school teachers, computer instructors of several government schools.[22][23] The aim of theDistro is to deliver a Free Software-based operating system for the project of "Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan" initiated by the government. There isn't such operating system till now which gives full freedom with an educational stack. Swecha has the plans of localizing BalaSwecha for the benefit of Telugu medium students.
E-Swecha is a free software project initiated by the Swecha and is aimed at developing a free operating system, which is not built by a software firm.. neither is it built by a few programmers.. it is a collaborative work of hundreds of Swecha Volunteers/engineering students in and around Hyderabad to, for and by the engineering students.
Swecha organised a free software workshop and delivered a talk on "The Age of Inequality", Mr.Palagummi Sainath told the gathered engineering students and researchers that half of the country's children suffered frommalnourishment and at the same time, the situation was getting worse for farmers and suicides among them were high, Despite a high growth rate, malnourishment of children in the country remained at 46 per cent which was behind countries of Sub-Saharan Africa where these figures stood between 32 per cent to 35 percent[24]
Swecha widespread protests taking place across the country after the arrest of two girls over a Facebook comment, have now reached Hyderabad. On Sunday, a group, consisting mostly of IT professionals, students and academicians, protested at Indira Park against the controversial Section 66 (A) ofInformation Technology Act[25]
The seminar was organised by Swecha, on the free software development model, MrNeville Roy Singham explained that spying or surveillance can be easily done through hardware as well as software, and that no electronic device can be safe from it. TheNSA is doing it because it is simply very cheap for them, and that they are taking in literally every piece of information they can get. More than 3,000 students, mainly from the engineering stream attended the seminar, which continued till late evening, as many other speakers like Renata Avila, a human rights lawyer and internet freedom activist from Guatemala, Dmytri Kleiner, Telemiscommunications specialist, andZack Exley, ex-Chief Revenue Officer, Wikimedia foundation also conducted seminars and interacted with students.[29]
Internet surveillance and digital snooping on the people is the biggest threat to democracy said by theRichard Stallman Internet surveillance and spying is dangerous and threatens the functioning of democracy, Dr. Stallman told students at a seminar on "Free Software and Internet Freedom", organised by Swecha on theAcharya Nagarjuna University campus.[30]
Swecha has demanded that the Central and State governments bring in policy changes oninformation technology to give fillip to hardware manufacturing, setting up of data centres and software design centres. Mr. Y. Kiranchandra Chairman of Swecha quoted data from the mobile telephony market to augment his demand. "The annual market for mobile telephones in the country is about Rs. 16,000 crore, yet India is yet to have its own mobile manufacturing unit. The mobile handsets designed in China, South Korea and Finland are simply being relabelled and sold in the country".[31]
