Blue Light Open Source Service and Research Centre

What's it all about?

Because in Auroville's charter it is stated, “Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole” we seek how to manifest this ideal in our daily lives. In the field of computing and software we find that Open Source provides opportunities to explore this ideal. For those of us who make Auroville our home, it is natural that some of us recognize a kindred vibration between the “ideals” of Auroville and those of Open Source. What we care about is community, collaboration, research and development, and an inspired drive to take risks and truly experiment.

There's a real need in Auroville for computer software and reliable support and Blue Light aims to provide this. We believe one of the best solutions is Open Source because of it's integrity, it's less vulnerable to viruses and other forms of attack and it's free or much cheaper than proprietary software.

For Auroville there's another, even more powerful, reason to migrate.
Open Source is community-driven software develped by diverse individuals pooling their knowledge to create something better to be shared by all. This software helps people develop their skills and community without being hampered by legal or financial restrictions.

To successfully implement Open Source software solutions in Auroville Blue Light takes a four-pronged approach. Firstly, we created a research centre in which network-based solutions are tested and fine-tuned before they go into use in the community.

Our research areas include thin client set-ups, and small office, home office (SoHo) set-ups. We're interested to assist in the development of an Ubuntu SoHo server, as this would meet our needs and provide quick and easy server set-ups in our community in the form of shared files, group-email setups, common calendars and task-lists etc.These groupware solutions help working groups and teams to efficiently use their computing environment.

Future School, Deepanam School, AVNet, the new Prosperity Pour Tous, Prosperity Caring Service and Cynergy all use Linux (an Open Source Operating System), while the Financial Service and the Pour Tous Purchasing Service have partly migrated. The number of individuals interested in Linux is also growing steadily.

Blue Light is a learning and training environment. We welcome everyone who wants to explore Open Source, especially Ubuntu, whether they be Aurovilians, long-term volunteers or I.T. students from India or abroad. We offer comprehensive classes in the use of Open Source software to improve computer literacy in Auroville.

In the beginning, Blue Light's focus is to provide support to the Auroville services and working groups because they are the core of our community. We provide conscientious, reliable, consistent and personal support.

Blue Light's fourth objective is to foster the growth of a computer-knowledgeable group of Aurovilians. This will provide support on a larger scale within Auroville.

We feel that this research will be considerably enhanced when professionals, students and others interested in Open Source come to Auroville. If you want to volunteer in a service-oriented work environment with Open Source and be part of the unique experiement of Auroville then why don't you come and see us?

You can contact us via email at bluelightataurovilledotorgdotin.

You can visit our website