Open Source Summit India was a two-day conference organized by the Linux Foundation at Jio World Convention Centre, BKC. It's the kind of event that's genuinely hard to describe to someone who hasn't been. A mix of kernel maintainers, cloud native folks, students, enterprise folks, and everything in between, all in the same building.
The keynotes on Day 1 were the clear highlight. Seeing Linus Torvalds on stage in person felt surreal in a way that's hard to articulate. This is someone whose decisions have quietly shaped the working environment of almost every developer alive, and hearing him talk about where the kernel is headed was a genuinely memorable experience. He covered Rust being introduced, AI-generated patches and the review burden they create, trust in open source post-xz, and how the contributor pipeline works. His take on LLMs was unsurprising but worth hearing directly: the problem isn't AI usage, it's that AI-generated patches look plausible and quietly offload verification cost onto maintainers who are already stretched. Coming from someone who's been the final review layer on the most critical codebase in the world for 30 years, it lands differently.
The Ethereum Foundation had a booth at the summit, and since Devfolio is working closely with them for the upcoming Devcon Mumbai, there was a natural overlap. I ended up spending a good chunk of Day 1 at the EF booth, explaining Ethereum and Devcon to visitors passing through. It wasn't planned, it just kind of happened, which was fun.
I also attended the "Guide to Become a Linux Kernel Maintainer" talk, which was interesting but assumed attendees were already active contributors. The Ask the Expert session with Greg Kroah-Hartman was too crowded to hear anything properly, so I ended up just walking the floor and talking to people instead. Had a good conversation with Toddy, a PM at Microsoft, about test harnesses and orchestration. Attended Soundarya Rangarajan's containers talk, which was well-delivered.
On Day 2 I came in late intentionally, skipped the morning rush, caught the afternoon sessions. Met folks I'd crossed paths with at previous hackathons: some who'd been mentors, others from FOSSUnited and MLH. Those reconnections were probably the most genuinely enjoyable part of the second day. The talks were hit or miss so I worked from my laptop for a chunk of it and hung out at the Ethereum Foundation booth. The evening mixer (separate from the OSS event, organized by a different group) was too noisy to have a real conversation, so I left after 30 minutes.
One thing I didn't expect: a mid-conference inferiority complex. I've generally been comfortable in technical spaces, but being surrounded by students with GSoC contributions, CNCF involvement, RedHat internships, and jobs at European startups was a genuinely humbling experience. I'm used to being one of the more "credentialed" people in the room at college events. This wasn't that. It was uncomfortable in a good way. A useful recalibration.
The food was great throughout, the venue was predictably excellent, and the schwag was plentiful. Would definitely attend again.