The Student Digest: Issue #4
Hello John,
What do an old tablet, a truck at an international border, a soldering iron, and the (insecure) number ‘4’ have in common? They are all in this edition. Read on to find out.
Announcements
FOSS Clubs Handbook: We have a detailed handbook that lists everything a student needs to run an open source club in their college. If you already use it, note that links to specific pages may have changed. Visit the main page and navigate from there.
FOSS United mapped out the software dependencies of public universities across the country. So far, we have mapped NITs, IIMs, IIITs, and AIIMS, totaling 71 institutions.
Now, we need your help to map more universities. Help us understand how your university uses software and where they could switch to a FOSS alternative. Join the audit here!.
Projects
Open Source is moving trucks across continents: KK Surendran, co-lead of amFOSS, contributed to the eTIR National Application as a United Nations Volunteer with UNECE in Geneva. Hear him talk about working on open source customs infrastructure that is in active use at international borders.
Open Source Tools for Creatives: Edit images, make vector illustrations, build motion graphics and more with native open source apps from the ArtCraft team. Built in Rust and free to use.
pkg.bot: Check out this super fast Linux package search engine for Linux distributions.
Opportunities
Build for Bharat Fellowship: A six-month paid fellowship inside a government department. Fellows work with government partners on design and engineering problems. Applications are open to students graduating in 2027 and early-career professionals who graduated between 2024 and 2026.
Microgrants for OpenStreetMap communities: Microgrants are available for community activities such as a mapathon, a one-day field mapping project, a validation sprint, a workshop with a local school or university group, or documentation translation. Apply before October 25th.
Speak at SciPy India 2026: The fourteenth edition of the international convening of scientific computing and research software enthusiasts in India, SciPy India 2026, is being held on 19th-20th December 2026. Last few days to apply to speak.
Reads
Reviving an ancient Intel tablet: Read how Karthik from LUGVITC turned a very old Android tablet into an Alpine Linux machine.
Emergency patches for PHP Vulnerabilities: Researchers from Wiz, Calif, and OpenAI used AI models to turn long-standing code bugs into working exploits, uncovering two critical remote code execution flaws (PHP2Shell) in the PHP runtime.
A Catastrophic Cryptography Failure: What happens when a major Certificate Authority apparantely uses the number ‘4’ as a cryptographic key? Indian firm eMudhra is abruptly shutting down its global SSL/TLS business following a massive security lapse where weak private keys were reverse-engineered.
Events
October is for Open Hardware: Inspired by OSHWA’s Open Hardware Month, the FOSS United community is highlighting open hardware events across India this month. Find one near you, or write to [email protected] to get yours listed.
FOSS United’s city communities are getting ready to host their annual conferences. We’d love for you to attend and showcase your work.
- MumbaiFOSS 2026: 31st October at IIT Bombay.
- MangaloreFOSS 2027: 16th and 17th January at NITK Surathkal.
Contributors
Thanks to AxissPrime and KK Surendran for contributing to this edition of the newsletter.
If you’d like to feature your community’s work or your own in the next edition, please share it in the Newsletter topic on the FOSS Clubs Telegram group before the 15th of next month.
