Hello !

We’re kicking off the first ever student newsletter, curated by students from across the FOSS United community. Through this newsletter, we hope to share opportunities, highlight student work, and showcase the wider world of digital commons.

Reads

• AT Protocol Trademark: Ever wondered how open protocols protect themselves from lawyers? Bluesky just acquired the AT Protocol trademark, and used it to keep the protocol free for developers while legally shielding it from bad actors.

• Who Controls Your Internet?: SFLC.in’s statement breaks down a recent mobile internet shutdown in parts of Central Delhi, and the legal requirements the order allegedly skipped.

• Exposing Critical Vulnerabilities in CBSE’s On-Screen Marking Portal: A 19-year-old just finished his Class 12 exams, then found a hardcoded master password that could let anyone log in as any CBSE examiner.

• State of Open Source AI: Is open source AI actually winning, or just catching up? Mozilla’s report says open models now route the majority of production tokens, at a fraction of the cost of closed ones, backed by hard data across capability, adoption and geopolitics.

Opportunities

• Reap Benefit is looking for Graduate Fellows

  • Tech for Social Good
  • Data Innovation & Insights

• Apply to join as a Junior Designer at Ente

Student Projects

• ProtestChat: Encrypted messaging with no internet, no cell tower, and no server.

• Image to Latex Code Converter: A sleek, minimal React + TailwindCSS frontend for converting mathematical images into LaTeX code. Built by amFOSS, a FOSS Club at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.

• InstiApp: An app that provides students with a single point of access to all of their educational institute’s resources, including: placement data, mess menu and maps. Built by DevCom, a student community at IIT Bombay.

Community Events

• UbuCon India 2026 (Nov 14-15): The second edition of UbuCon India by the Ubuntu India LoCo dedicated to the Ubuntu ecosystem and the broader Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community in India.

• Digital Commons and Public AI (Jul 25): Understand the core philosophy behind community driven tech, how it shapes the modern internet ecosystem, and practical ways students can get involved in building and maintaining public digital goods.

• From Dev to Ops: FOSS United Chennai and From Dev to Ops are coming together to host a community-driven event in August.

Contributors

Shoutout to aditya_kb, prpetrator, kk_surendran, praneel_sindhole, NLBRT and ybo for their contributions to this newsletter!

If you’d like to feature your community’s work or your own in the next edition, please share it in the Newsletter topic on the FOSS Clubs Telegram.