Venkatesh Hariharan

In this role, he works with industry, academia, government and the open source community to accelerate the growth of the global open source movement. In 2006, he was awarded the "Indian Open Source Personality of the Year" by the organizers of Linux Asia 2006. He is also one of the 50 charter members of the Open Source Initiative tasked with taking OSI to the next level.

Hariharan is a former Executive Editor of Express Computer and the first Indian to be selected for the prestigious Knight Science Journalism Fellowship (1998-99) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a Knight Fellow, Hariharan spent a year looking at cutting edge technologies that can be deployed for bridging the digital divide.

During his stint at Express Computer, he imparted a dynamic news orientation to the magazine. He has interviewed some of the leading figures in the world of technology including Microsoft's Bill Gates, John Gage of Sun Microsystems, Stan Shih of the Acer Group and many others. He has written for leading Indian and international publications including MIT Technology Review, Upside, Slashdot, Economic Times, Times of India and many others.

After his stint at MIT, Hariharan co-founded of IndLinux.org, one of the leading localization groups in the India subcontinent. IndLinux.org has localized the GNOME and KDE interface of Linux to Hindi. The organization has helped localization groups in India, Bhutan, Nepal and other countries localize Linux and other open source software to their native languages. He has delivered talks on open source at leading academic institutions across the country, including IIT Bombay, IIT Guwahati, IIIT-Bangalore and many others.

Hariharan believes that open source and free software are powerful tools to empower emerging economies with the benefits of information technology. He has advocated the adoption of open source and open standards in emerging economies for political, cultural and economic reasons through his writing and his speeches. He is currently setting up the Open Source Foundation of India.

His long term interest is in the area of technology and public policy. He maintains a blog on open source and open standards at www.osindia.blogspot.com.

Hariharan is a member of the Bureau of Indian Standards committee for data management, which recently reviewed and voted against OOXML.