CNBC Panel Discussion on Open Source, Free & Proprietary Software

Last week, Jon "maddog" Hall, Executive Director of Linux International; Atul Chitnis, Senior Vice President at Geodesic Information Systems and I were on a CNBC panel discussion on "Open Source, Free & Proprietary Softwares" at IIT Bombay's Techfest. I am used to 30-45 minute talks on open source where I happily ramble on with my pet theories on why open source is changing the world. I have also been on panel discussions where the panelists normally gets to make an opening statement before the moderators and the audience start shooting questions. However, TV is very, very different as I discovered last week.

To start with, the CNBC panel was shot in three segments of seven minutes each (a 30 minute show has around 9 minutes of ads telecast during breaks in the show) which meant that all three panelists could speak about 3-4 sentences in each of the seven minute segments. Oh well, hopefully, it will do some good to the world of open source. The audience seemed to be mostly teenagers, which I think is a good thing. If teenagers think something is sexy, it probably is :-)

I was trying to figure out what time the panel will be on TV and the politest thing I can say is that the CNBC TV Schedules suck. Later, I got to catch up with Jon Hall and treat him to coffee at the IIT restaurant. Despite the ferocious nickname, he is a gentle giant of a man and I felt honored to be on the same panel as Jon.

I am still clueless as to when the program will be telecast. If anybody knows, drop me a line :-)