He was one of the organizers of FOSS.IN[1] (formerly Linux Bangalore), which was one of Asia's free and open source software (FOSS) conferences.

In 1989, Chitnis set up a Bulletin Board System (BBS) called CiX[2] which provided an entry point for many users to online communities.

[citation needed] Chitnis gave talks on data communication in Indian industry, the Internet and intranets.

Chitnis was one of the organizers of the Linux Bangalore series of FOSS community driven conferences.

[6][7] Atul also served as one of the members of the faculty committee at the National Resource Centre For Free/Open Source Software.