§ 00 · about, how it started
Here's how a few friends at USAR started a club, got FOSS United behind it, and ended up with a community that builds things, argues a lot and throws a decent party. Follow the thread to read it.
In 2025, Siddharth and a few friends got talking about how there wasn't really a place on campus where open source was the main thing. Plenty of people at USAR could code, but most of it stayed on their own laptops.
So they decided to just start a club for it. Nothing fancy. Give people a place to try this stuff together and see who sticks around.
Pretty early on we got FOSS United involved. They're a non-profit that supports open source communities across India, and they back the club today.
That changed things for us. We were no longer just a few friends with a group chat, we were part of something bigger. Our chapter page there is also where we put up Git Gud.
Next we started pulling in people from different sections and with different interests. Not everyone was a hardcore programmer, and honestly that was the best part.
We also had one first-year in the group right from the start. Having someone that new around early on kept us from turning into a clique, and it meant we had to explain things properly.
We want more people to know what open source is, both inside our college and outside it. On campus that means workshops, talks and sprints where you make your first pull request with people sitting next to you.
Beyond campus, we try to be part of the wider community, invite speakers anyone can listen to, and be useful to whoever asks where to begin.
Open source can look pretty intimidating from the outside. We'd like to change that. Designers, writers, hardware people, organisers and complete beginners all do real work in open source, and we want them all in the room.
If something helps the project or the people around it, it counts as a contribution. That's the rule.
No company owns this club. No sponsor, no one deciding what we're allowed to work on. We do what we want.
Mostly that means building projects (this website is one), arguing about licences and tabs versus spaces, going on trips and throwing parties. It turns out people stay for the friends as much as for the code.
and then came year one.
§ 01 · our philosophy
We don't have a long manifesto. There are four things we care about, and everything else we do comes from them.
Developers, designers, hardware tinkerers, writers, organisers, total beginners. Open source gets better with every kind of person in it, so we go out of our way to make room. If you want to be here, you're in.
No company, sponsor or single person owns what we do. We choose our own projects, make our own rules and share what we make, because that's the whole idea of open source.
Somebody has to run the group chat and book the rooms, but titles don't decide whose idea wins. A first-year's pull request gets the same review as anyone else's.
Most students have never heard of open source, or assume it isn't for them. We want to change that on campus and beyond, through workshops, talks, events and a lot of conversations. The more people who know, the better it gets for all of us.
§ 02 · year one
We had a really good time, honestly. A club should be fun first. The learning kind of happens while you're busy enjoying it.
We kicked things off with an orientation, then ran Git Gud so a room full of people could make their first git commit. After that came a session on AI coding with a mini hackathon, and two online talks, one on threat modelling and one on getting into GSoC. Anyone could join.
Then FOSS Forge happened: two days of Git Clash, a Pokémon YAML showdown and a repo sprint, as part of ELYSIAN. In between there were trips, parties, a group chat that never slept and plenty of late nights that turned classmates into friends. We started the year as a few people with an idea and finished it as a community.
§ 03 · what's next
Nobody guards the door and there's no entry exam. Come as you are. Whatever you build, design, write or organise, there's a place for it here.
