Atul ('toolz' on IRC) has been an influence over the tech crowd in India for years - a lot of people (techies / hackers) were introduced to Linux, and Open Sour

Atul ('toolz' on IRC) has been an influence over the tech crowd in India for years - a lot of people (techies / hackers) were introduced to Linux, and Open Source in general by his enthusiastic stage-speaks or writings on web / magazines. The events Linux/Bangalore and later FOSS.IN used to be the hacker gatherings, and the conversations were fantastic in these events. Atul celebrated hackers, and I recall him calling out Gopal V ('t3rminat0r' - twitter/IRC) on stage who had ported dotGNU Portable .NET to Encore Simputer during LB/2004. Atul also propelled the concept of small-distributed Linux enthusiast meetings (BoFs) across Bangalore city (this was in 2004/2005), which essentially meant that techies found niche groups to meet up and interact (mostly over tea/coffee, less on beers), instead of waiting for big conferences to happen. He ran a BBS earlier in the 90s, and knew how to get people to interact IRL when BBSes went dead in 2000s. Atul has been a person who celebrated Technology, and influenced a lot of other people to see the view. Rest in Peace, toolz.