Tutorial: Free open source software for research community

FOSS packages and tools represent a boon to researchers in most fields of science and engineering, and not just for the CS and IT people. In addition to allowing a researcher to acquire any level of understanding of how complex and robust systems are built, FOSS allows one to quickly put together a prototype system and try out one's original ideas on it, instead of wasting one's time and energies on building the platform itself. Equally importantly, by enabling one to release one's research output (code) into the open domain, FOSS provides one of the most effective and targeted form of publishing one's work into the appropriate community. However, in order to benefit from it the most, there are a number of issues that the Research Community need to be aware of regarding the limitations, scope, culture, norms, practices, restrictions etc that govern the world of FOSS. The tutorial will highlight all these aspects with illustrative examples and case studies.