Fsf-friends May 2004

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

23 participants
42 discussions

Open access to scholarly information
by V. Sasi Kumar 27 May '04

27 May '04

Statement on open access to scholarly information The Group of Eight vice-chancellors, representing Australia's pre-eminent research universities, record their commitment to open access initiatives that will enhance global access to scholarly information for the public good. The vice-chancellors note that: * information, if it is to achieve maximum benefit for society, must be readily available to a global audience * the rapid development of digital communication technologies provides expanded opportunities for the widespread dissemination of scholarly information * new business models are required to ensure that scholarly publishing is cost effective * any development in digital publishing must incorporate the current framework of scholarly publishing standards relating to the quality of inquiry and reporting * digital publishing initiatives must appropriately recognise and protect the intellectual property of the authors and require accepted standards of attribution * the Group of Eight universities are providing leadership in the development of digital publishing initiatives in Australia. The vice-chancellors support: * ongoing development of open access initiatives in Group of Eight universities * digital publishing practices that underpin the timely, cost-effective dissemination of the highest quality scholarly information with a commitment to good practice * further examination of criteria for promotion in new publishing models. Professor Ian W. Chubb AO Chair, The Group of Eight Vice-Chancellor The Australian National University Professor James McWha Vice-Chancellor The University of Adelaide Professor Kwong Lee Dow AM Vice-Chancellor The University of Melbourne Professor Richard Larkins AO Vice-Chancellor Monash University Professor Mark Wainwright Vice-Chancellor The University of New South Wales Professor John A. Hay AC Vice-Chancellor The University of Queensland Professor Gavin Brown Vice-Chancellor The University of Sydney Professor Alan Robson AM Vice-Chancellor The University of Western Australia April 2004 -- V. Sasi Kumar <vsasi(a)hotpop.com>

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Science Olympiads... Prof Vijay A Singh
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 25 May '04

25 May '04

During our recent GNU/LUG meeting in Goa, I had the chance of meeting Prof Vijay A Singh, the National Coordinator of the Science Olympiads. It was nice to know that Dr Singh (IIT Kanpur, on deputation at the Science Olympaids, is also a part of the FSF-Friends list. Wonder if the ideals of Free Software and FLOSS could be somehow networked with the National Olympaid, so that we could benefit from each other's synergies. Incidentally, Prof Singh is at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, so it could be easy for Prof Nagarjuna to build the links too. BTW, we have just shifted the venue of the GNU/LUG meetings in Goa to the Goa Science Centre, located at a nice setting on the Miramar beach. Our argument was that while the GSCP (Goa Science Centre Panjim) is promoting science, we are promoting technology -- as such a made-for-each-other match. We hope that we can take the idealism of FLOSS to the younger generation, and thus help take ahead the agenda of the GSCP, while at the same time gaining from a suitable venue for holding our meets. Let's see how this works. In the past, our Goa group had also closely networked with the Computer Society of India (Goa chapter). The only handicap was the lack of hardware for demos at their office premises, which they were very generous to loan out to us without any charge for our meetings held over the past two to three years. FN -- --------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa, India f r e d @ b y t e s f o r a l l . o r g Ph 832.2409490 / 832.2409783 Cell 9822 122436 Phone calls: preferably from 1300 to 0500 (IST) Try landlines is mobile is temporarily unavailable JUST OUT: Goa photos http://www.goa-world.com/fotofolio ---------------------------------------------------------

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Free Software User's Group in Bangalore...
by Abhas Abhinav 24 May '04

24 May '04

Dear Friends, Bangalore now has a Free Software User's Group (FSUG)! Starting off from the 'GNUs Grazing' initiative by Rakesh Ambati we have met up twice already. During Arun's trip to Bangalore earlier this month, we were able to press out a firm agenda for Free Software related activities in Bangalore. Broadly speaking, FSUG (Bangalore) works towards two broad areas: o Free Software advocacy, lobbying and awareness in Bangalore o Technical help for Free Software and GNU/Linux The minutes of previous two meetings are available in the list archives (not yet web-viewable) and will be put up on a web-site by tomorrow. (Or I could post them here to the fsf-friends list if that's more convenient!) FSUG (Bangalore) discussions happen on the fsub-bangalore mailing list. To know more about what's happenning, who's involved and how to get involved, please subscribe to the mailing list by sending an email to fsub-bangalore-subscribe(a)lists.deeproot.co.in . A lot of activities are planned for the next few weeks - please do participate and give you comments and feedback. Regards, Abhas. -- Abhas Abhinav <abhas(a)deeproot.co.in> CEO, DeepRoot Linux http://www.deeproot.co.in / +91 (80) 2856 5624 Getting Linux to work for you. Faster. Better. Today. Every way.

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Say 'NO' To SCO !
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 21 May '04

21 May '04

Dear Friends, Take few minutes off your nice weekend and read about the subpoena. Let's unite our voices to say no to SCO http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/subpoena.html TIA --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Domains � Claim yours for only $14.70/year http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer

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FLOSS "Concept Booklet" WIKI!
by Aniruddha Shankar 20 May '04

20 May '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The FLOSS Concept Booklet Wiki is online at http://wikibooks.org/wiki/FLOSS_Concept_Booklet For those who are not exactly clear on what a wiki is, it's a collaborative Web site comprised of the collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to easily edit, delete or modify content that has been placed there. This method of working, apart from being a literal application of the collaborative opensource methodology will allow many many more people than would otherwise be possible to contribute. The more the people who read, comment and modify, the denser will be this resource base, so please, people, contribute! The original introduction to the FLOSS Concept Booklet that I had posted in my earlier mail is appended with the appropriate modifications: Hello. I work in a non-profit organisation (www.sarai.net) that is deeply involved in and committed to Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We're in the process of creating and publishing a Concept Booklet on Free/Libre/Open Source Software that will, hopefully, be accessible even to people with an extremely limited understanding of computers and absolutely no knowledge of open source/free/libre software. In collaboration with one such layperson, we created a set of questions on FLOSS and are in the process of generating the answers and the additional content for the concept booklet. We'd be thrilled if you people would contribute as many answers as you can to the questions that are outlined in the wiki. Of course, please feel free to comment on the existing questions and to make additions to them. All contributions will be gratefully acknowledged. The booklet will either be published under the Creative Commons/Share Alike License or the GNU Free Documentation License and distributed free or at a nominal cost. We will, of course, be providing a full version online, including print-quality PDFs. This call for contributions from the wider community interested in free/libre/open source software is an effort to extend the methodology used in creating free software into the arena of collaborative publishing. All contributions, no matter how small, trivial or they might seem, are extremely valuable to us. Please, do take the time to read the questions and contribute, if possible. I apologise to those who are subscribed to two or more of the lists to which this is posted for the crosspost. Please feel free to forward this email to people or entities that you feel might be helpful. cheers, - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFArFVNhJkrd6A3rSsRAlgZAKC4yee13L3tCTb/k3n/6XP+JbcRBgCgnK4o HgX6ZHf4OczksDK0DEaX8BY= =3fIN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Some news aand some threats
by Mahesh T. Pai 19 May '04

19 May '04

An update to the FSF site. http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/subpoena.html And oh. That is a non-threat. So what are the real threats? See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040226003735733 -- "Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty"

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Re: [Fsf-friends] FLOSS concept booklet...
by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh 19 May '04

19 May '04

I have answered a few questions. But I guess the questions need a little bit of reordering and rephrasing. I am posting this to the fsf-friends list so that the experts can correct me. It would be better if this could be done on wiki. Vijay ---------- Intro / Concept: What is free software? Free software is software that gives the user the following four freedoms Freedom 0: Freedom to run the program. Freedom 1: Freedom to help yourself, by studying and modifying the program to your needs. Freedom 2: Freedom to help your neighbour, by distributing copies of the program. Freedom 3: Freedom to help build your community, by publishing a modified version of the program. Well tell me what's not "free" about other kinds of software? So "free" means that I don't have to spend any money then? With free software, it might not be possible to "sell" the software itself. But when you get free software, you might be paying for the distribution media. Or you might be paying for support bundled along with the software. Or you might be paying for printed manuals that come along with the software. So in some cases you might get the software for zero dollars, in some cases you might be paying a small amount, and in yet some cases you might be paying a lot! Whether the software is gratis or not is an unimportant side issue, what is important is whether you have the above said freedoms. Proprietary software could also be obtained gratis. For example Microsoft is giving schools gratis copies of Windows, that does not make Windows ethically legitimate. How is Free Software actually made? You mean, how do people raise funds to develop free software? Many people who write free software are volunteers, they probably have an unrelated day time job. These people spend their free time developing free software. Commercial organisations that benefit from free software distribution or that provide free software support also develop free software by investing portions of their profit. Example of such organsiations are Redhat and Mandrake. There are many non-profit organisations that raise funds to develop free software, through donations from free software users. The Free Software Foundation is one such organisation. Other examples are SPI, Gnome Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, and the like. Some free software packages are developed by universities. The Festival text to speech engine, Octave - the Matlab clone are examples of software developed by universities. Many commercial organisations also contribute to the development of free software, because these organisations benefit from the existing free software code base. For example IBM maintains the port of the Linux kernel to the PowerPC, because it needs a OS for its processor. So how is this different from the production of other kinds of software? Well, freedom three has enabled a new development methodology, in which a lot of people can collabrate through the internet and can help make the software better. This has resulted in free software being superior in quality to other non-free software. So the term Free Software is a legal definition then? What do you mean by "Copyleft" ? What's wrong with copyright? How is this different? One way to make your software free would be put the program in the public domain. That way there would be no restrictions on the program and the users of the software would have the above four freedoms. But there is a problem with this approach. It enables uncooperative people to take free software make modifications in it and release it as non-free software. The new features might tempt some of the users to give up their freedom. And the free software developers would be forced to compete with improved versions of their own software! This is not mere speculation, this has happened with the X Window system and the BSD operating system, where less restrictive free software licenses were used. Copyleft is a way of using the copyright provisions to prevent people from parasitically using free software code in non-free programs. Copyleft ensures that the freedoms are passed along in every version of a free software program. The GNU General Public License is a realisation of the copyleft. What's wrong with copyright is a very different issue. You might want to read Stallman's essay on "Misinterpreting Copyright - A series of errors". But remember most of the free software programs are copyrighted. Is this Copyleft against the law? No. What does GNU GPL stand for? The GNU General Public License. If this software is free as you say then why do we need legislation to protect it? What is this supposed to mean... What other licenses exist to protect Free Software? There are many license that make a software free. But only some of them preserve the freedom aka copyleft. The non-copyleft license include MIT, BSD, ... The copyleft licenses include the GPL, LGPL, ... -- ______________________________________________ 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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Open Access Initiative
by V. Sasi Kumar 19 May '04

19 May '04

The scientific journal Nature presents some discussions on the Open Access paradigm: Nature Web Focus on "Access to the Literature" http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/ The Green and the Gold Roads to Open Access http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html (Harnad, Bordy, Vallieres, Carr, Hitchcock, Gingras, Oppenheim Stamerjohanns & Hilf) -- V. Sasi Kumar <vsasi(a)hotpop.com>

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Software Patents and India
by rajeev joseph sebastian 19 May '04

19 May '04

Dear friends, I support Pai's call for discussions on patent issues at local groups. I also urge the leadership of the FSF and also the lovers of free software, and freedom in general to rise-up against these series of events. I frankly think that its only awareness that will solve the issue - "they" can't buy them all. Rajeev J Sebastian __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/

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Debian Weekly News - May 18th, 2004 (fwd)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 19 May '04

19 May '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/20/ Debian Weekly News - May 18th, 2004 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 20th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. In an [1]interview Miguel de Icaza [2]said that Debian's community commitment is fantastic, but it is a very hard platform to support for an independent software vendor. Philip Charles also [3]announced new K6 mini [4]iso [5]images. 1. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6989 2. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6989&page=2 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2004/05/msg00034.html 4. http://na.hurd.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/K6/ 5. http://eu.hurd.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/K6/ Two Debian Developers died. Debian [6]mourns the loss of two project members. Manuel Estrada Sainz (ranty) and Andrés García (ErConde) were killed in a tragic car accident while returning from the [7]Free Software conference held in Valencia, Spain. The Debian Project honors their good work and strong dedication to Debian and Free Software. The contributions of both Manuel and Andrés will not be forgotten, and other developers will continue their work. 6. http://www.debian.org/News/20040515 7. http://www.lliurex.net/congres/cas/ Status of Java to main Effort. Arnaud Vandyck [8]reported on the progress of moving packages that use Java but can be run without the aid of non-free software from contrib to main. A number of packages have been moved to main and new releases of [9]GNU Classpath, [10]SableVM, and [11]Kaffe promise further steps ahead. Two of the major issues currently being looked at are making [12]gjdoc a proper javadoc replacement and building [13]ant with Free Software only. People wanting to help can start by inspecting packages labeled as unknown on the [14]Java to main wiki. 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2004/05/msg00023.html 9. http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/classpath.html 10. http://www.sablevm.org/ 11. http://www.kaffe.org/ 12. http://packages.debian.org/gjdoc 13. http://packages.debian.org/ant 14. http://java.debian.net/index.php/MovingJavaToMain Debian powers Binoculars. The world's largest selection of [15]binoculars is powered by Debian GNU/Linux as Jon Thralow [16]reported. The site uses a technology they call dynamically generated HTML. The pages are regenerated every five minutes and pushed to the web server as static pages. This looks similar to the technique used for the Debian website itself with regeneration just more frequently. 15. http://www.binoculars.com/ 16. http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/12/157257 Status of GNOME 2.6 for unstable. Sebastien Bacher sent in another [17]status report covering GNOME 2.6 in Debian. The reason is to ask the release team for advice regarding the transition to unstable, given the [18]progress the packages have made in the last few weeks. The packages have been [19]tested by many users without any major issues reported. In response Anthony Towns [20]told him that many architectures are still missing and that GNOME is ready when everything has been uploaded to experimental and only the version number needs to be bumped up for unstable. 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/05/msg00064.html 18. http://pkg-gnome.alioth.debian.org/package-status.html 19. http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?GnomeTwoDotSixFAQ 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/05/msg00071.html Should Sun use Debian GNU/Linux? David Edmondson [21]argued that Sun should base their GNU/Linux efforts on Debian. A key advantage of Debian is the breadth and depth of applications just an apt-get away. Glynn Foster [22]agreed with him and noted that for the most part Debian 'Just Works'. 21. http://www.dme.org/log/2004/05/14/linux-debian-bad-news 22. http://www.gnome.org/~gman/blog//15052004 Supporting more Features. Eric Dorland [23]wondered how Debian should handle requests to activate compile-time controlled features. He [24]asked to [25]enable deactivated features or split out packages with these features enabled, but the maintainers were concerned by feature-creep and having to maintain more packages than needed. Matthew Palmer [26]suggested to either create new binary packages, to add the features into the existing packages or to make it very easy for the user to rebuild the package to support the optional feature. 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00811.html 24. http://bugs.debian.org/222421 25. http://bugs.debian.org/231472 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00813.html Removing System Accounts. Stephen Gran [27]wondered how system accounts should be treated upon removal if they were created upon package installation. Wouter Verhelst [28]explained that it may be a good idea to leave the system user since arbitrary files could still be owned by it. 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01151.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01156.html Right of Publicity. Branden Robinson [29]explained why he is annoyed by no-advertising clauses in several licenses. In the United States, there are several legal [30]remedies available to people whose names or likenesses are misappropriated for advertising or promotional purposes. In order to prevent similar misuse no special clause is needed. Branden seeks information on how this is handled in other countries in order discourage no-advertising clauses more actively. 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00540.html 30. http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/publicity.html IBM Public License. Frank Lichtenheld [31]stomped over the [32]IBM Public License again and wondered if it is suited for Debian. [33]MJ Ray and [34]Walter Landry raised some concerns. However, this license is already used for [35]postfix as Steven Augart [36]pointed out. 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00597.html 32. http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/license10.html 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00600.html 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00603.html 35. http://packages.debian.org/postfix 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00617.html Sendmail Open Source License. Richard Nelson [37]reported that a new license for [38]sendmail is discussed and the authors are seeking feedback. In particular they want to know whether the new license is as acceptable as the sendmail 8 license. [39]Henning Makholm and [40]Nathanael Nerode asserted that a license is non-free if one is forced to go to San Francisco to defend ones innocence. 37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00598.html 38. http://packages.debian.org/sendmail 39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00636.html 40. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00742.html Concerned about new GPL Version. Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho is [41]concerned about the [42]Free Software Foundation (FSF) developing the next generation GNU [43]General Public License (GPL). One of the rumours about potential changes involve a requirement to post sources of GPL'd software that is used to power a website, which would probably fail the [44]Debian Free Software Guidelines. He also wondered whether differences about the GNU [45]Free Documentation License are symptoms of a deeper difference of opinion between Debian and FSF. 41. http://www.kaijanaho.info/antti-juhani/blog/en/debian/gpl-dfsg.html 42. http://www.fsf.org/ 43. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html 44. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 45. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [46]mah-jong -- Denial of service. * [47]heimdal -- Potential buffer overflow. 46. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-503 47. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-504 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [48]recently or contain important updates. 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main * [49]amavis-stats -- Virus statistics RRDtool frontend for Amavis. * [50]aspell-bn -- Bengali Wordlist for Aspell. * [51]bittornado -- Bittorrent client with enhanced GUI and curses mode. * [52]diogenes -- Web content management system. * [53]hspell-gui -- Graphical front-end for the hspell hebrew spell checker. * [54]kstreamripper -- KDE frontend for streamripper. * [55]lksctp-tools -- User-space access to Linux Kernel SCTP - command-line tools. * [56]mtink -- Status monitor and configuration tool for Epson inkjet printers. * [57]perlindex -- Index and query Perl manual pages. * [58]siproxd -- SIP proxy/redirect/registrar. * [59]tcng -- Linux traffic control language interpreter. 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/amavis-stats 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/aspell-bn 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/bittornado 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/diogenes 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/hspell-gui 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/kstreamripper 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/lksctp-tools 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/mtink 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/perlindex 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/siproxd 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/tcng Debian Packages introduced last Week. Every day, a different Debian package is [60]featured from the testing distribution. If you know about an obscure package you think others should also know about, send it to [61]Andrew Sweger. Debian package a day introduced the following packages last week. 60. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/ 61. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=debaday * [62]binclock -- binary clock for console with color support. * [63]mywiki -- Personal wiki on GNUstep or Cocoa environment. * [64]srs -- Command-line Sender Rewriting Scheme client. * [65]telnet -- The telnet client. * [66]procmail -- Versatile e-mail processor. * [67]whitespace -- Programming language where only whitespace counts. * [68]regexplorer -- Visual regular expression explorer. 62. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13221.html 63. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13432.html 64. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13601.html 65. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13874.html 66. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14220.html 67. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14410.html 68. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14835.html Orphaned Packages. 2 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 159 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [69]WNPP pages for the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package. 69. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [70]imwheel -- Program to support the "wheel" on most new mice. ([71]Bug#249533) * [72]libmail-audit-perl -- Perl library for creating easy mail filters. ([73]Bug#248606) 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/imwheel 71. http://bugs.debian.org/249533 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/libmail-audit-perl 73. http://bugs.debian.org/248606 Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [74]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [75]dwn(a)debian.org. 74. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 75. mailto:dwn@debian.org --

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Fsf-friends May 2004