Ashish Gulhati
Encyclopedia
Open source
As one of IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
's original hackers, Ashish has worked to raise awareness about FOSS
Foss
Foss may refer toPeople*Foss , people with the last name Foss*Foss Shanahan , New Zealand diplomat*Foss Westcott , English bishop...
in India. In 1993 he co-founded The X Group, the first company to offer professional commercial support for open-source software
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
in India, with Raj Mathur.
He is an open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
developer and the author of several extensions to the Perl programming language
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
, including PerlVision, Crypt::GPG, Crypt::Schnorr::AuthSign, Persistence::Database::SQL and Persistence::Object::Postgres.
Articles
His articles and columns in PCQuestPCQuest
PCQuest is an Indian technology publication, and part of the Cyber Media group of publications that also publish Dataquest.Founded in 1982, the magazine was originally called PC World, and was one of the earliest technology magazines published in India...
and Dataquest magazines in 1993 and 1994 were among the first in the mainstream Indian computing press to inform thousands of readers about alternative operating systems, Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, open-source software
Open-source software
Open-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, years before Internet access was commercially available in India. These early articleshttp://www.netropolis.org/hash/blog.cgi/About/CV.html#publications formed an important part of the PCQuest Linux Initiative that resulted in close to a million Linux CD-ROMs being distributed.
BBS
In pre-Internet IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Ashish created and operated the Primal Scream Bulletin Board System
Bulletin board system
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running software that allows users to connect and log in to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging...
, and created the country's first inter-city Fidonet
FidoNet
FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...
echo. Soon after the launch of Internet services in India, Ashish co-founded Sense/NET, a very popular Internet privacy
Internet privacy
Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, providing to third-parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Privacy can entail both Personally Identifying Information or non-PII information such as a...
service, with Vipul Ved Prakash
Vipul Ved Prakash
Vipul Ved Prakash is a software engineer and entrepreneur, most widely known for creating Vipul's Razor, a collaborative anti-spam system. In 2001, Vipul co-founded Cloudmark, a company that...
.
Web development
In 1997 Ashish created the award-winning website for Connect Magazine, the first Indian magazine with an online edition.In 1998, he created the website and online publishing engine for The American Reporter, the world's first and oldest original daily Internet newspaper, and winner of the landmark First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
case, Shea v Reno.
Security and privacy
In 1999, he was involved with Laissez Faire City, where he developed Laissez Faire City's OpenPGP compatible messaging engine, and also deployed secure wireless links for Laissez Faire City's consultate in Costa Rica.Since 2000, he has been actively involved in various security and privacy related efforts
External links
- http://netropolis.org/hash/ - Blog
- http://thefree.in/ - Forum for Rights to Electronic Expression