Fsf-friends December 2004

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Careers in FLOSS... (Dec 2003 issue of LFY)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 06 Jun '24

06 Jun '24

=========================================== LINUXForYou * Dec 2003 (Vol 1 No 10) In India Rs 50 (with CD) http://www.linuxforu.com Pages 102 * US$7.95 0 74470584957 =========================================== THIS ISSUE has probably reached your city. Saw it in Bangalore, and also got a complimentary copy from the LFY team at LinuxBangalore2003. But when I reached back to Goa on Dec 4, it wasn't in as yet. So it might take time to reach 'small town' India... FN REVIEWED: Mandrake 9.2 * PhProjekt * StarOffice 7.0 COMPUTERS AT TIS HAZARI, the session courts for the city of New Delhi, are being shifted over to Linux, courtesy the National Informatics Centre. - Rahul Chopra in this month's editorial. LINUX LEARNING CENTRE at Bangalore is offering courses in administration, security, development (internals and programming essentials, programming with Qt, device driver programming, MySQL & PHP), RHCE and Red Hat rapid track certification. www.linuxlearningcentre.com DotGNU RELEASES CD: It can now be used to implement application programs and Web services in C# and C applications under multiple operating systems, including GNU/Linux, FreeBSC, MacOS, MS Windows. The 219 MB release 0.1 CD is available as a free download at http://download.freedom.biz/dotgnu/dotgnu-0.1-cdrom.iso.gz.torrent e-Bridge calls itself "the new state-of-art training facility from eSpark Infotech is now open in the heart of Bangalore". It's offering embedded Linux courses (Linux fundamentals, programming Linux, embedded C & Linux, realtime C & Linux, Linux internals, device drivers, networking) and DSP courses (DSP fundamentals, TI/analog dev programming, audio/video, image processing, bio-medical systems). www.ebridgesolutions.net Linux.net provides a free e-mail service to those who want an e-mail address that ends in '@linux.net' MAJOR UPDATES and releases: OpenNA Linux 1.0, Gibraltar Firewall 1.0, Xandros Desktop 2.0, Onebase Linux 2.0, CUPS 1.120rc6. CAN YOU MAKE money with open source? Registration entails a "nominal fee" of Rs 5000 for a three-day conference. http://www.linuxasia2004.com/attendees/ February 11-13, 2004, New Delhi. SEND IN YOUR favourite slogans for a tee-shirt, and win five free copies of the shirt... LFYedit at efyindia.com MONEY CAN't buy respect, says Robert Adkins. Some of us might have met this guy at LB2003 in Bangalore. He's the CTO of Technetra Corp, and an advocate and implementer of FLOSS solutions for government. He can be contacted at radkins at technetra.com CAREERS WITH FLOSS: The number of students opting for courses in Open Source is growing steadily, even as industry experts predict a growing need for trained professionals in this expanding field. EXIT RED HAT, ENTER FEDORA: It's official now; the free (of cost) version of Red Hat Linux will not be available anymore. This has created a lot of FUD in an already unstable environment, thanks to the SCO episode. But is Red Hat closed for good? WEB-BASED COLLABORATION SOFTWARE: PHProjekt is an easy-to-install collaboration suite, which runs on the open source platform and databases. As the design of the system is developer-friendly, adding new features and components is a piece of cake. STAROFFICE: The latest version of Sun's office suite, StarOffice 7, may just be the right solution for the cost-conscious user. It loads faster than the earlier version, and sports some noticeable improvements. IN THE LFY CD THIS MONTH: Slackware (the "oldest Linux distro") and a range of GNU software for Windows users. FALLING BACK on backup systems. MAKING ADOPTION OF Linux in the enterprise easy. www.linux4e.com Business partners required: http://wwww.linux4e.com/partners ooWRITER HELPS YOU create your own templates and styles so that you can work with documents easily. Open Source is key to IBM's vision of computing. User empowerment is key to Microsoft's, writes Alolita Sharma USING DATABASE functions in Calc, a tutorial. (Wish there were more how-tos for the user in this mag! --FN) HALDIA DOCKS: it has a uniquely designed Linux installation with an active-active cluster set up, which is considered the best of its kind. This has ensured efficiency and cost-effectiveness. BASIC UNIX commands and concepts: an extract from *Running Linux* (Shroff Publishers, Pp 674 only Rs 425 in India). VxWorks and LynxOS are definitely the biggest embedded operating systems in use today. But slowly they are acknowledging the power of GNU/Linux and how it can help them maximise deployments. HELP LINUX GO INDIAN: By using various translation tools, you can join Language translation groups working across India to help translate GNU/Linux into your language. EXPERT INTRODUCTION: Multi-threaded programming under Linux. KICKSTART YOUR Linux installation (Part I): Installing Red Hat Linux on multiple machines one after another can be quite tedious. To avoid answering the same question over and over again, try the KickStart method, as it does not need any user intervention. WRITE CHEQUES. NOT JUST BOOKS: Niyam Bhushan on how anybody can turn thoughts into words, and words into wealth. NFS CLIENTS for Windows. OpenSSL PACKAGE offers a vast crypto library of algorithms WAIT QUEUES in Linux device drivers UNDERSTANDING recursive sub-routines INDIA-RELATED NEWS: HP launches GNU/Linux laptop Mandrake's latest distribution Oracle announces 10g for GNU/Linux Delixus offers India Linux CxProtect anti-virus mailing solution for mail-servers Trade management system from Network Programs Netweb Technologies unveils Tyrone MRO-Tek rolls out Network Management Systems Review of FLOSS at BangaloreIT.com =========================================== DISCLOSURE: This journalist (FN) writes a monthly column for LFY and gets paid for it. Promoting awareness about the content of LFY however is not part of the job, and is carried on with the intention spreading awareness about FLOSS among different GNU/Linux user groups in India. -- Frederick Noronha : http://www.fredericknoronha.net : When we speak of free Freelance Journalist : http://www.bytesforall.org : software we refer to Ph 0091.832.2409490 : Cell 0 9822 122436 : freedom, not price.

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To open software within three years
by Manjush G.Menon 26 Sep '05

26 Sep '05

Original Message ----- From: "IT@School" <itschool(a)asianetindia.com> To: <manjushmenon(a)hotmail.com> Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 5:08 PM Subject: Reply > Mr.Manjush G. Menon > We are not giving to depend totally on Ms. Products. Rather MS > Office is taught along with open office and Windows along with Linux > from this year. Arranging the resource persons for training an open > software, making available the software, the maintenance of a help desk > etc. are logistical issues which could not be immediately undertaken. > We plan switch out to open software within three years. > Executive Director > ---- Original Message ----- From: Manjush G. Menon To: itschool(a)asianetindia.com Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 5:46 PM Subject: Respected sir, From Manjush G. Menon, Sr.Programmer, Sofker Solutions Pvt Ltd, Kochi-18. To The Executive Director, 'IT @ SCHOOL' Project, SCERT Buildings, Poojapura, Thiruvananthapuram-12. Respected sir, SUB: In protest against the inclusion of products from multinational companies in the syllabus of 'IT @ SCHOOL' It's a very dissappointing fact that when the whole world is moving towards Free software, we at kerala are going behind a major MNC - Microsoft. I hereby register my protest in such an act from 'IT @ SCHOOL' Project team. Breaking of prototypes will definetly help us in finding economical and high quality products for our future generation. For students and programmers, the GNU Linux contains 'GNU Compiler Collections' which includes C, C++, FORTRAN, PERL, TCL etc. Also, for DTP and other publishing purposes, it includes GNU Office utilities like Abi-Word, gedit, and other worksheet utilities, all these with a nominal cost of Rs 700-800/-. The software as it is, is free and the cost is accounted towards the media (CD + Documentation) included. By this letter, I urge you to take this matter seriously and suggest necessary modifications in the action plan of 'IT @ SCHOOL' project. Wishing you all the best and wishing all 'Students @ SCHOOL' a bright future, Thanking you, Yours faithfully Manjush G. Menon. ______________________________________________________ Check out all the latest outrageous email attachments on the Outrageous Email Chart! - http://viral.lycos.co.uk

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Happy New Year
by Praveen A 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2005 * May the year 2005 give you - * Independence of GNU * Power of Hurd * Popularity of Apache * Extensibility of Firefox * Luxury of .GNU * Efficiency of Python * Ease of Gambas * Robustness of SQL * Vision of OpenOffice * Simplicity of HTML * Style of Linspire * Dexterity of Gimp * Enormity of Blender * Vastness of Internet * Compactness of JPG * Richness of PNG * Coverage as Novell * Reach of Redhat * Choice of Gentoo -- A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org http://www.edathanattukara.com Visit me at http://www.pravi.tk Rediscover the web ! Get firefox at http://www.getfirefox.com Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Efforts on Standardizing Unicode Tamil Sort Order
by gok gok 31 Dec '04

31 Dec '04

Dear Friend, Please go thru the following web page that contains the issues and problems with the original unicode tamil sort order. Also this page deals with the standardization of a sort order for tamil with respect to unicode positions. Dont hurry in examining this. Take as much time to conclude your suggestions. Since the future of tamil depends upon such valuable decisions made now. http://www.angelfire.com/empire/thamizh/2/ please let me know your suggestions and corrections.. Regards R.Padmakumar __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Patents amendment bill
by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh 30 Dec '04

30 Dec '04

> Even if there is no patent for software in the ordinance way the govt is > handling the patent amendment is really bad. They seems to be more > accountable to WTO rather than people of India. > > We need to watch the situation closely. We will have to work closely > with other groups fighting patent amendments. It would be nice if people > in Delhi can work on getting more informations and networking with other > groups fighting the new patent amendment. How about creating a petition in http://www.PetitionOnline.com ? We can use http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/petition.html as a template. Vijay -- ______________________________________________ Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox. Powered by Outblaze

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FLOSS networks in Sri Lanka
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 29 Dec '04

29 Dec '04

Thanks to Anuradha Ratnaweera <gnu.slash.linux at gmail.com> for filling us in with details about FLOSS in Sri Lanka, as follows: Lanka Linux User Group (http://www.linux.lk , http://www.lug.lk ) have been advocating GNU/Linux and Free / Open Source Software since 1998. Recently, we have started working closely with the tux group of Narada Center (http://foss.metta.lk ). Check http://mail.linux.lk/lurker/ to see what we have been doing. Lanka Software Foundation (http://www.opensource.lk ) is another organization who is also promoting FOSS development in Sri Lanka. Anuradha -- http://www.linux.lk/~anuradha/ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html ENDQUOTE Thank you very much Anuradha! FN

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Free software in Goa... Dec 27, 2004
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 29 Dec '04

29 Dec '04

Present for the meeting: * Bijon "Multi Distro" Shaha * Mario "PHP" Alvares * Sylvester "Hardware" GeekBox * DP (Hiding Behind The Alphabets) * FN reporting on some points that came up * We handed over copies of GeekBox and Ubuntu to Mr Joshi of Goa Sc Centre * Bijon Shaha gave us an update of LB-2004, the Bangalore FOSS event * The talk veered around to pendrives, Ubuntu * Can we do something to re-start meetings in South Goa, at the useful D-Link venue? Another offer is to hold meetings at a cybercafe in Vasco... * Debian Weekly News is a great model for an e-letter sharing information about what's happening in the FLOSS world. * Mario mentioned his experiences on a Mac, with OSX * Woes of Fedora Core 3 users and the security hassles outlined. * Is Fedora Core 3 just "too secure"? * Sylvester offered information about SLAX, the Slackware distro. Slackware is more customisable. Syl@Comtech has a copy. * Mario is keen to create a live distro with Postgres on it. * This was followed with a demo of Ubuntu, the live version For free copies of this distro, just log on to http://shipit.ubuntulinux.org and ask for it. They even offer you free postage, and encourage you to ask for multiple copies (postage is costlier anyway than the medium!) * Later, a pen drive -- UMAX Apus 208 -- was easily got working on Mandrake 9.1. Did the same on EgovOS (based on Red Hat). Had some difficulty in getting with going with Debian Woody. Any clues? * Some useful tips for newbies or challenged-learners (like myself) Use this command to download an entire site wbet -m http://www.sitename.com To compress a folder tar cjf newfile /home/user/directory and to uncompress a folder tar xjf To unzip a filme unzip filename MC, or Midnight Commander is a good tool for this. * DP mentioned that Open Office 2.0 preview is out, which offers OOBase, a tool similar to DBase or Access in utility. * Later, the session continued with informal networking. We shifted to Cafe Prakash, the usual haunt, and shared some moments with friends there. Please point out any errors or mistakes above. Next meeting: January 22, 2005 (fourth Saturday). Miramar Science Centre. Our websites and URLs: http://ilug-goa.swiki.net (website on Swiki.net) http://www.ilug-margao.org (Margao site: Andrew, Arvind, Clinton...) http://ilug-goa.notlong.com (website on IOSN.net * free space for LUGs) http://iluggoa.iosn.net (Wiki on IOSN.net * free space for all LUGs) http://iluggoalist.notlong.com (short link to this list) http://ilug-goa-announce.notlong.com (low volume announce) http://tyl.notlong.com (for newbies) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linuxgoahelp (specifically help list) PS: OFFTOPIC -- Derek Cordeiro pointed out to me this useful tool for bookmarking and sharing sites. Please visit http://stumbleupon.com and also my tiny attempt below... works great! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks http://fn.swiki.net http://fredericknoronha.stumbleupon.com http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Avoid Word/PowerPoint: http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Can someone reach Ramanraj
by Anand Babu 28 Dec '04

28 Dec '04

I just realized Ramanraj's house is near the beach. I tried calling him a couple of times and got no response. Can someone reach him and confirm us if he safe and needed any help? -- Anand Babu Free as in Freedom <www.gnu.org>

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Re: [FSF India Board] New Patent changes
by Anand Babu 28 Dec '04

28 Dec '04

It is not yet clear if the new amendments to patent act includes computer software. Media news is not precise and most if it is speculation. Software patents are terrible. I think it will become too difficult and too late to fight software patents after the Govt approves such amendments. Let us take a take pro-active action early at this stage. Publishing articles on dangers of software patents can be a good start. Nagarjuna, Arun and Frederick Noronha has enough contacts in the press and can effectively propagate the message. Amendments related to drugs, food and chemicals poses even more direct threat to the community, than software. (Like increase in drug prices, inadequate or non-availability of patented drugs). Reverse engineering drugs to produce cheaper or better alternatives will become impossible. Patents give absolute monopoly to the owner. With this exclusive right, even if some one else comes up with the same idea independently, he still cannot use it. This means Indian drug research will have serious consequences and we are the ones to suffer at the end. It may make sense to club with the medical community and jointly oppose the new patent amendment. -------------------------------------------------------------------- The only reference to computer software in "The Patents (Amendment) Ordinance 2004 promulgated on 26/12/2004" (url http://lawmin.nic.in/Patents%20Amendment%20Ordinance%202004.pdf) is amendment to Section 3 referring as >>>Quoted----------------------------------------------------------- (b) for clause (k), the following clauses shall be substituted, namely: "(k) a computer programme per se other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware; (ka) a mathematical method or a business method or algorithms;". <<<Quoted----------------------------------------------------------- My understanding is, Section 3 is all about non-patentable inventions. I am referring to the Patent Act document (url http://ipindia.nic.in/ipr/patent/mop2.pdf). I could not find any clause (k) under Section 3 in this document. Can some one point me to the correct document to which these amendments can be applied cleanly? -- Anand Babu Free as in Freedom <www.gnu.org>

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Patents amendment bill
by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh 28 Dec '04

28 Dec '04

The following news articles suggest that the patents amendment bill, could possibly introduce software patents in India. If this is so, why aren't we(FSF-India) fighting it? Quoting from http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?hpFlag=Y&chklogin=N&a… The Cabinet is expected to clear the promulgation of an Ordinance for the introduction of a product patents regime, which will also cover embedded software and hardware, next Wednesday. Quoting from http://athens-olympics-2004.newkerala.com/?action=fullnews&id=44168 "Fair use provisions in the copyright law that permits reverse engineering is not permitted under the patent law," said G. Devarajan, general secretary of the All India Forward Bloc. ... "This highly retrograde step would kill the fledgling open source movement in our country, particularly in our universities and institutions like Indian Institutes of Technology," a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader said. Vijay -- ______________________________________________ Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox. Powered by Outblaze

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Fsf-friends December 2004