VPS project tops Red Hat contest

MUMBAI: Red Hat India has announced the winners of the 2004-2005 Red Hat Scholarships program -- The Lord of The Code contest -- an education initiative designed to encourage budding open source software developers.

According to the press release, the first prize was awarded to a team of students from Army Institute of Technology, Pune for their project, Virtual Private Server (VPS) 2.6.5-1.358.

The second prize went to the team from National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli for their project Octave Gtk, while the third prize went to the team from Scient Institute Of Engineering & Technology for their project College Information System.

The program, jointly conducted with Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology at IIT Bombay, was opened to students across India last year.

After the award ceremony, Red Hat also announced the launch of a new Red Hat Scholarships program for 2005-2006. The objective of initiating the Red Hat Scholarships is to reach out to Linux enthusiasts in colleges across India and encourage the adoption of the open source philosophy.

Red Hat India director Javed Tapia said, “Red Hat Scholarships is a program aimed at encouraging talented young programmers in India. The largest number of engineers graduate out of India and, given the right guidance, the next Linus Torvalds can emerge out of our country.”