Fsf-friends October 2005

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

33 participants
47 discussions

RMS: The GNU GPL Is Here to Stay
by Anivar Aravind 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

RMS: The GNU GPL Is Here to Stay "There are some who say that a collaborative development model, taking advantage of these freedoms, tends to make software that is technically better. They may be right, and it would be nice if freedom brings such a practical bonus. However, the freedom itself is more important than the bonus, so the Free Software Movement focuses on the freedom." Read the full interview between Federico Biancuzzi and Richard Stallman at ONLamp.com. http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6222 -- Portal Administrator _______________________________________________ info-fsf mailing list info-fsf(a)gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-fsf -- __ __ gnu /noo/ n. Ox like antelope; (abbr.) /gnoo/ n. (recursive acronym) Gnu's Not Unix.

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Re: CDAC fonts with Emacs.
by Richard M. Stallman 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Thank you. The fact that the emacs-indian/m-17 site I am not familiar with this site. What is its full name? Could you tell me the names and email addresses of the people who run them? mentions the CDAC fonts, and provides them for download had me assuming that they might be available under the GPL (or some equivalent for fonts) license. I shall see if someone from CDAC can clarify. If these fonts are in fact still non-free, then it is a very bad thing for a site associated with Emacs to be offering them for download, or even to mention that they exist. We need to find out the real situation. There is no need to talk with "someone from CDAC" about it; that is not reliable, since the "someone" might try to confuse the matter--or might simply be mistaken. It could take you lots of work and time to find the right "someone" and get a straight answer. That work is unnecessary anyway. The question is: what is license on these fonts? That is a simple factual question, and you can check the answer directly. Just download them from the "emacs-indian/m-17 site" and look at what license they contain. Could you please download them, extract the license that they carry, and show it to us?

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KDE vs GNOME
by balachandran c 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Objective Section: Qt4 is available with a GPL licence on *all* platforms. GTK+ is LGPL. Subjective Section: Unless we are working with some kind of "sins of the father" model, we should just stop attacking KDE based on Qt being non-free at some point in the past. This is just too tedious. The company has been very nice to the community, and the cooperation is ever increasing. You don't hear too many people attacking GTK for being LGPL. Even more Subjective: I believe that KDE was behind GNOME in terms of looks. Not anymore. If you like clearlooks in GNOME (the current default), try out QtCurve for KDE. It gives the same look and feel to the widgets. Similar color themes can also be installed. KDE is much more customizable than GNOME, and can be made to look and behave like GNOME, if you like it that way. As far as iconsets go, oxygen (shown at akademy 2005) is very beautiful! With projects like Tango, you could get similar iconsets for KDE and GNOME anyway. The best part of KDE is the technology. It feels like a well integrated set of components, each excellent at its job. Unix philosophy extended to the desktop. I just love the ioslaves, kparts, dcop, and nx technologies. Ioslaves provide features like excellent network transparency. Fish protocol is godsent. Excellent use of kparts in kontact. I can right-click on a postscript file, and select an action, which would convert it to a pdf file, and upload it to my remote server over ssh. (No, kfmclient is much more general purpose and powerful than gnome's remote folders. And ioslaves are used more consistently than gnome-vfs). Dcop makes it easy for the user to do stuff like link his superkaramba themes (like gdesklets in gnome) to his music player or chat client. It is trivial to, say, take an incoming message from kopete (chat client) and make ktts speak it out over your speakers. (Not that you want to do that, but you could, with 10 lines of code). Some other features are given here: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+Power+Features http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Scripts+with+a+KDE+Feel The upcoming technologies in KDE are even more exciting. Plasma is nice, and Tenor, a highly innovative project related to tracking context of data on your computer. It is far more ambitious than beagle / spotlight / winfs kind of projects. I guess my point is, KDE is an excellent and exciting project, and if you haven't tried it out recently, give it a try. The real fun starts when you customize KDE with your own cute little scripts! I was a cli / KDE user, switched to GNOME with 2.6, and now back to KDE with 3.3/3.4. I try to track the progress of both the projects. Cheers, Bala.

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Indian blogger v/s IIPM whats up?
by Thejesh GN 12 Oct '05

12 Oct '05

Here is my dissection and opinion about the issue. Comments welcome :) http://www.techmag.biz/Indian_blogger_vs_IIPM_whats_up -- Thanks, Thej http://www.techmag.biz

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Free and Open Source Software: A Blind Alley for Developing Countries? [With a comment added by FN]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 12 Oct '05

12 Oct '05

COMMENT ADDED BY FN: [A rather dismissive paper of Free/Libre and Open Source Software in the so-called 'developing countries'. Needless to say the "interest in the 'e-development' community" is often out of touch with reality, and what developers are doing at the grassroots. It's often based on hype. But that doesn't mean FLOSS is ineffective! The "5% of computer systems" overlooks the role played by FLOSS in servers, in keeping the Internet running, in giving unprecedented access to developers of the Third World to take part in a global movement, and more. By saying "proprietorial software is free" for the bulk of the 'developing' world, the study is guilty of both tolerating/encouraging the illegally copying of software ('piracy' is a loaded term, unfortunately accepted by academia too) and missing the essence of what Free Software is all about (offering the freedom to be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed). We are not fighting just for the right to remain 'pirates'... By focussing on Africa, the report probably overlooks the benefits flowing to other 'developing' countries from FLOSS. Including countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa and a whole lot of other nations located in an intermediate stage of 'development'. Whatever the latest fashion among the development network, FLOSS will probably just continue to make its impact. Significantly, it's growth till now went largely unnoticed by academia, and researchers, till the media-blitz post 1998. --FN] PS: A more detailed and realistic, in my view, study can be found at http://www.maailma.kaapeli.fi/FLOSSReport1.0.html (this poster had a role to play in part of the Maailma report).] -- _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ _/ Frederick Noronha | Independent Journalist | Ph 832.2409490 _/ 784 Saligao 403511 Goa India | fred(a)bytesforall.org _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/dig/briefings.htm eDevelopment Briefing No. 1 Development Informatics Group, University of Manchester Free and Open Source Software: A Blind Alley for Developing Countries? There is considerable interest in the "e-development" community about FOSS: free and open source software. It is argued to be cheaper and more customisable than proprietary software; it is argued to be a potential kick-starter for the local IT industry; it merits a mention in the WSIS Plan of Action. So what is its likely trajectory? We can turn first to historical evidence because we have been here before. In the 1980s, "shareware" – FOSS' forerunner – was a temporary source of excitement for exactly the same reasons; even attracting the attention of the World Bank. Yet the developmental equation for shareware was "Impact = Zero". What of the evidence today? A recent survey on our eGovernment for Development Information Exchange plus survey data from Africai suggest at most 5% of computer systems in developing countries have any open source software running on them, and that is almost entirely represented by Linux. Even in Cuba, where the US embargo should make conditions highly propitious, proprietary software dominatesii. Because of piracy and the limited size of initial purchase price within total cost of software ownership, there is no clear, general evidence of FOSS delivering cost savings. Because, by and large, FOSS means Linux, the benefits of customisation and IT industry kick-start are also nebulous. The lack of strong evidence of FOSS benefits helps explain its lack of success vis-a-vis proprietary products. In particular, proprietary software may not be open source but it is certainly free for the great majority of developing country users, thanks to piracy. Other key factors uncovered include: * Lack of awareness of FOSS: the African evidence suggests most IT managers simply don't know about it. * Poor international links: to work effectively with open source code you need to be part of an active, global community of like-minded developers; links to such communities from developing countries are weak. Donors have moved in with interventions to support FOSS, as recently seen in Tanzania with the development of Jambo Office. Yet such efforts are found to make little impact. To date, they have been amateurish; focusing on the techies who write the code, and failing to introduce a business focus that would draw in needed market research, marketing, distribution and support skills. As so often, too, donor FOSS projects have been short-terms flares of interest rather than the required sustained efforts. They are no match for proprietary firms who are in for the long-haul, and who will use the carrot of low pricing and the stick of anti-piracy actions to achieve their aims. Even the potential "backfire" of anti-piracy actions, leading organisations to abandon their pirated proprietary products and adopt FOSS instead, seems exaggerated. Microsoft and the Indonesian police recently launched a crackdown on cybercafesiii. As could be predicted, many owners changed over to FOSS. However, users then stopped coming to those cybercafes because of their unfamiliarity with the software. Soon after, the pirated products were back in place. FOSS' trajectory, then, is intimately bound up to proprietary software, especially Microsoft products. At best, FOSS looks like a lever to extract concessions from Microsoft and similar vendors. In its present state, FOSS will remain a marginal activity that does not deliver on its development promise and that is no match for the enduring power and business acumen of major proprietary players. Richard Heeks, October 2005 richard.heeks(a)manchester.ac.uk www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/is/index.htm i Kamuzora, F. & Baruch, J. (2005) 'Contextualising the challenges of free and open source software adoption in African countries', UK DSA conference, Connecting People and Places, Open University, 7-9 Sept ii Mitra, A., Garcia, A. & Somoza, A. (2005) 'Imperatives of free and open source software in Cuban development', UK DSA conference, Connecting People and Places, Open University, 7-9 Sept iii Robinson, A. (2005) 'Square pegs for round holes?', UK DSA conference, Connecting People and Places, Open University, 7-9 Sept

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Re: CDAC fonts with Emacs.
by Frederick Noronha 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

Hi friends at FSF: Could someone help Krishnakumar please? Also copying this to RMS; maybe he could offer some pointers. Best wishes VK and thanks for writing in. FN ============================================================ From: Krishna <v.krishnakumar(a)gmail.com> Date: 2005/10/11 Tue AM 02:44:29 GMT+05:30 To: fred(a)bytesforall.org Subject: CDAC fonts with Emacs. Hi Frederick, I've read your posts on ILUG-C and from those I know that you have a long standing association with FSF-India. I was hoping you could help me out with some Emacs/CDAC licensing related issues. On http://www.m17n.org/emacs-indian/ it says : "Thanks to the C-DAC at Pune, Emacs Project Team has received the permission to use C-DAC ISFOC fonts for Emacs-Indian support in 1998." However, I'm unable to find any further licensing information either on the Emacs site or from CDAC. My vested interest in getting these fonts under the GPL is using these with our opensource/GPLed editor that is currently under development (http://imli.sf.net) . Though I know you are not directly related to either the Emacs project or CDAC I was hoping your association with FSF-India can help me get some clarity in this issue. I have turned to you for help because the Emacs-indian mailing list seems to have gone silent since 2003. Given Emacs's status as one of FSF's most visible projects I thought I would approach somebody from FSF-India for help. I know this is a demand on your time and I apologize for this but I was unable to think of any other avenues for information. I would be very grateful for any help you can provide. If you are not the right person to contact about this, can you point me in the right direction, please. Thanks and regards, -Krishna -- "The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man." - Richard Feynman ============================================================ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frederick Noronha 784 Near Convent, Sonarbhat SALIGAO GOA India Freelance Journalist TEL: +91-832-2409490 MOBILE: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks fred at bytesforall.org http://www.bytesforall.org

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Building a Community of GNU/ Linux Sysadmins for keeping watch over each other
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

Hi This is something i feel requires a little attention. So posting here. Apologies for wasting your time, spelling mistakes, lack of knowledge, all in advance. I have been using FLOSS (GNU/ Linux) and related software on our servers for around 5 years now. Most of the servers face Internet. And as is the case with any evolving software even in GNU/ Linux(s) vulnerabilities are discovered and ofcourse patched form time to time. But alas we ppl who manage servers are sometimes lazy, or forget and do not patch servers in time. Alas we are only human. And in general act as open invitations/ sitting ducks to crackers and malicious ppl around the word. I have seen this happen to a lot of ppl around, same has happened to me as well, sometimes we are made to realize, by the crackers, that we havnt been vigil in our duties. And whatever experience I have in managing server i still cant deny this fact that this can happen to me in future. But hey we learn from mistakes and usually grow up. But what about newbies, ppl whom we GNU/ Linux fans motivate, we ask them to switch over to a better system from _you_know_what_$$_crap_they_are_using_ I still remember the old days when the number of script kiddies was much less, atleast in India. Now ever Ram and Sham has Internet access and is eager to lay its hands on some script, trying to be the super kiddie. And the poor newbie sysadmin we motivated to switch over to something better, is an easy target. They becoem the victims, kiddies exploit their servers. The machines are listed in XBL, RBL and in general cause disservice to their users and others also. And the newbie sysadmin also get the impression that GNU/ Linux is difficult/ insecure/ whatever (which is not true). Usually we blame the newbie sysadmin that he havnt been too vigil. Most of such ppl remain clue less on what happened and why their systems have misbehaved, what is happed to their servers. Some of such guys also consider moving back to _you_know_what_$$_crap_they_were_using_. And ppl like us who motivated them are back to zero, all out time spent motivating them goes down the drain. Some of the glaring mistakes newbies make are Installing whatever version of older unpacthed versions of GNU/ Linux they can lay their hands on. AAnd then not configuring firewalls, not closing unnecessary services and what not. All of this has been documented we all know that, but still happens. And all of the above is true for experienced sysadmins also. I have seen so many websites being defaced/ mail servers being used for spam. After all we are only human. Cant we as a community of good ppl/sysadmins do something about it. Is it possible to build a community where we can watch over each others back, and report any problems in time to vulnerable system/ or systemes that are already down the drain. And from community I do not mean another mailing list or user group. Is it possible to do something automated, to keep watch over servers, a distributed system. Where ppl who have subscribed to the system would have their system checked/ scanned periodically by other systems, and sysadmin can be forwarned of existing/ new problems. Something like an XBL, RBL but without the black list thing, but with a warning to sysadmins. Similar services are offered by some commercial vendors, but i believe a community effort would be a better option, due to its very distributed nature and scale. (More technicalities can be discussed later) I am trying to forge such an alliance with two other sysadmins i know, and hope something will come out of it. And we plan to make newbies, around our area, part of it, and maybe help them with their newly setup servers, so that they dont go back to _you_know_what_$$_crap_they_were_using_. Most of it would be initially manual, except periodic port scans to locate vulnerabilities, but later on more things can be automated. If there is anything similar in place, or any advice or comments, please. Please dont tell me that: * a good sysadmin dont need such a crap. * real sysadmins secure their systems like forts * real sysadmins dont make mistakes * pull out your network wire to secure your servers * RTFM * go away, you cant run a GNU/ Linux workstation, dont even think of servers * blah blah I think i have some experience, but still sometimes i need help and confirmation that my servers are ok, what is wrong in third party confirmations, if it is only a remove vulnerability scan. And why not i can do that same for others and others can do it for me. I have been doing this for 2-3 ppl already. And why cant we automate this process and in a distributed manner. What is my motivation for writing all this ========================================== Recently i had some discussion with someone who is an advocate of FLOSS and a dedicated GNU/ Linux user pasting it here without his permission (this is part of an email discussion) some parts edited/ changed --------- snip ------------- What ever you observe, that was correct. However, I am only user of ******* services. I forwarded your Email to concerned man on Friday .. and he told me today (Monday), that system was hanged on Saturday on rebooting, it fail to boot. In nutshell, there is *real problem* with server. He is trying to fix it. --------- snip ------------- another part of email, some part edited --------- snip ------------- Before we start discussing, I would like to know frank opinion, about FLOSS, is it going to help us. --------- snip ------------- Another discussion with someone else parts of a telephonic conversation (whatever i can remember) --------- snip ------------- Him: The nameserver lookup is not working Me: Have you checked the logs Him: I cant, somehow the logs aint showing anything at all Me: (Puzzled) that should mean, maybe server has been compromised Me: (after a port scan of his machine, next day) there is sshd service running on port 1422, you server is definitly compromised. Time to reinstall. --------- snip ------------- And on Internet we can find a lot of machines which are either compromised or ready to be compromised and we do nothing about them, ofcourse unless the machines are honeypots and have been left like that intentionally. Cant we help each other!! Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal (Just Another GNU Users)

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Fwd: [Commons-Law] Nalsar signs MOU with Microsoft
by Anivar Aravind 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

What we can do on it. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lawrence Liang <lawrence(a)altlawforum.org> Date: Oct 10, 2005 5:42 PM Subject: [Commons-Law] Nalsar signs MOU with Microsoft To: Commons law <commons-law(a)sarai.net> Hi all This is very interesting, when I went to teach at Nalsar a year ago I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that all their systems were running on GNU Linux. But this raises some serious questions of institutional capture Microsoft had also sponsored a workshop in the national alw school a few years ago which was meant to train the lower judiciary in the evils of software piracy Lawrence =========== >From http://www.varindia.com/VNS/Oct5_1.htm Microsoft Corporation India has signed a 3-year Memorandum of Understanding with the prestigious National Academy of Legal Studies and Research University (NALSAR), Hyderabad, to implement the "Microsoft Intellectual Property Scholar Program". Under the aegis of this program, Microsoft aims to establish a Knowledge Bank in the area of Intellectual Property. Microsoft will select three "Microsoft Scholars" from the final year batch of the B.A. B.L. (Hons.) program at NALSAR, to undertake fundamental research and author papers on topics related to Intellectual Property (IP) rights. Research scholarships will be provided by Microsoft to these scholars and based on the research generated by them, a lecture series will be organized by NALSAR. Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Ranbir Singh, Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR, said, "As an institution which fosters a challenging and exciting intellectual environment, we are extremely excited about our new partnership with Microsoft. We are confident that our students will immensely benefit from the program and will be able to further the growth of Intellectual Property in the country." Under the terms of the MoU, NALSAR will make available to the Microsoft Scholars a dedicated study room, which was inaugurated by Hon'ble Mr. Justice K. Ramaswamy, Former Judge of the Supreme Court of India at the Dr. N. C. Banerjee Centre for Intellectual Property Law Studies. Relevant library and research resources will also be made available to the students, All software required in this computer facility for the Microsoft Research Scholars, will be provided free of cost, by Microsoft. The Professor of Intellectual Property at NALSAR, Professor V. K. Unni, will act as the resident administrator for the Microsoft Scholar Program in conjunction with the Legal and Corporate Affairs Department of Microsoft. An empowered project Review Committee comprising Dr. Ranbir Singh, VC, NALSAR, Shardul Shroff, Managing Partner, Amarchand Mangaldas, and Rakesh Bakshi, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft India, will be constituted to monitor the progress of the projects. _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law(a)sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law -- __ __ gnu /noo/ n. Ox like antelope; (abbr.) /gnoo/ n. (recursive acronym) Gnu's Not Unix.

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KDE vs GNOME war
by Tinku Sampath 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

The great battle between the two most popular ( sorry.... if my word hurt any one whose use other lightweight desktops ...) KDE and GNOME (i am not the one who can decide which one is better ... ) continues. Here i am not concerned about spread the war to this mailing list. But we together can discuss the reasons behind it and conclude with individuals comments. GNU/Linux is taking small steps.. or creeping... towards desktop users. As far as the desktop environments, which are built upon Xwindow system, are concerned, they are gaining popularity and their look and feel and also the performance are improving with each new releases. Users in the free software will have so many choices. From hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions to admirable no. of quality desktops... the same things happens in the field of applications. But what is there for the fresh users to the world of GNU/Linux?. Initially they will be confused in choosing a GNU/Linux distribution at first which satisfies their requirements. The next difficult thing will be finding the application which will satisfy their day to day work they continued with other proprietary systems. But the desktop environments are the most important instances which will stick the users with GNU/Linux. So each desktop project has to be working to make the things done with easiness. But something strange in happening for past few months. The fight between KDE and GNOME is there from the beginning of the GNOME project which was started in protesting in the change of license of Trolltech Qt development tool, tool to develop KDE, to proprietary. But later Trolltech changed its license in to a dual license scheme which allows free use of qt for the applications released under GNU GPL V2.0. But the GNOME project continued and also turned as desktop environment favored by geeks and developers (may be for new users!). A lot of companies like Novell, Sun, Red Hat etc started supporting GNOME... and few of the distributions changed their default desktop environment in to GNOME from KDE.. But majorities are still staying with KDE giving a second rank to the GNOME. But the fight between these two environments are now in to public. This is visible if you go through previous few issues of Tux Magazine (http://www.tuxmagazine.com )<http://www.tuxmagazine.com/>. As a newbie GNU/Linux magazine, Tux Magazine's publishers make things going in KDE way. That means they are answering basic queries considering KDE as most users working environment. They may be right since all of we admit the fact that majority are KDE users than those who use GNOME. Since KDE gives a polished look like other proprietary systems (eg: Mac OS) and it is highly customizable than any other operating desktop in the world. Additions to this it provides quality applications of almost all kind. The KDE factor was also visible in the 2005 READER'S CHOICE AWARDS conducted by the magazine vendors on August. (Refer September 2005 issue of Tux Magazine). A lots of letters are coming to include more GNOME flavor equal to that of KDE. But the publishers are reluctant to give more recognition to GNOME. They continue to reply why they are strictly following KDE by showing only the user base. There is section called Q&A with Mango Parfait where newbies can ask Mango Parfait, a young woman (or may be acting like a young woman), for help. But her comments and way of convincing is not liked by a few users (or most?.. I can't say.. But i like her presentation... ). After hundreds of request from GNOME followers, finally she burst flames towards GNOME in the September issue of Q&A section. Her few comments are as follows ... *" Hint to GNOME developers: some of GNOME is okay, but most of it works like you hate users. Some of GNOME runs like you think users are too stupid to wipe themselves. What do you do for these users? You do not make GNOME easy. You just take away their toilet paper and force users to wipe themselves your way. Some of GNOME runs like you want users to suffer. The file open and save dialog is worse than bamboo shoots under fingernails. Better to call Nautilus an attack from space invaders than a spacial file manager. Here is my advice. Make your monkey-brain environment a configuration option if you want to keep using GNOME your way. The rest of us are not monkeys. Give us a default desktop for humans. If you keep having no clue, less and less people will use GNOME, and the only GNOME users will be monkey-brain GNOME developers. "* But the request for GNOME coverage continues. One of the user's comment is as follows ... *" More GNOME Coverage. I read the latest TUX today, and somebody asked the same question as me. Why not more GNOME coverage? Your response was that KDE is the preference of most new users. What distro are they using? Because in another breath, you heartily recommend Fedora, which uses GNOME as its standard desktop. And that's not even mentioning the popularity of Ubuntu. - Robert Holmes " *After lots of protest against magazines coverage and Mango's comments, Tux publisher NICHOLAS PETRELEY addressed readers with more specific reasons for their GNOME hate. A few of his comments from the P2P column of this moth's Tux... " *What bothers me is not GNOME, but that we critics of GNOME have been accused of disliking GNOME simply because we don't understand it. I don't think that's the case, but if we really don't understand it, shouldn't that tell you something? Why wouldn't we understand it? Could it be because GNOME is one of the most unintuitive, inconsistent desktop environments ever designed? Could it be because GNOME keeps undergoing dramatic changes in its philosophy toward how a desktop should behave?... Indeed, the frequent overhauls to the philosophical approach to how a desktop should behave puts GNOME evangelists and defenders in a very awkward position. Take Nautilus, the file manager, for example. "It's great because it does everything." When GNOME dumped the buggy Midnight Commander file manager in favor of the original version of Nautilus, the hype was all about how Nautilus would be a Swiss Army knife for GNOME. It was a file manager, browser, system administration tool, package manager and more. It was considered the core component of GNOME. See http://www.businesswire.com/webbox/ bw.032001/210790539.htm for a sample press release in 2001. "It's great because it's so simple and does only basic tasks." Later, GNOME developers decided to rip out most of the features in Nautilus and strip it down to basics for the benefit of speed and ease of use. But if you read the press release mentioned above, the original point of making Nautilus do everything imaginable was for the benefit of "ease of use". So which approach actually made GNOME easier to use? "It's great because it has a revolutionary new spatial design." Then Nautilus morphed into a "spatial" file manager. This "spatial" file manager was supposedly revolutionary, although anyone who has used OS/2 knows better. The idea was that every folder should have its own size and place on the desktop, which gives that folder a unique "spatial identity". Every time you opened a folder, that folder would appear in the same position and size on the desktop you had used the last time you visited that folder. Unfortunately, whenever you open a new folder, the previous folder window remains on screen. As you navigate deeper through subfolders, your screen becomes cluttered with open windows. When I complained to a GNOME advocate about this behavior, his response was that I could change the default behavior of Nautilus back to the way it used to work by changing a registry setting. A registry setting? That's GNOME's idea of ease of use? Eventually the Nautilus developers relented and added a preferences option to choose between the new "spatial" behavior and the old explorer version of Nautilus. "It's great because it's not spatial anymore." Now I've downloaded and installed the preview of Ubuntu 5.1, which includes the latest version of GNOME. I assume that GNOME still makes the "spatial" behavior of Nautilus the default behavior. I don't know. But Ubuntu makes Nautilus default to an explorer mode that works similarly to prior versions of Nautilus. This raises the question, if the "spatial" approach to file management was so terrific and simply misunderstood and underappreciated, why did the Ubuntu team decide not to use it by default? I'd applaud the change, but the new Nautilus explorer mode includes one of the most abominable features ever conceived, ostensibly "borrowed" from the hideous GNOME file picker. In one of the toolbars, you'll see a back arrow, after which buttons appear as you navigate through folders. Each button represents a folder, a subfolder, a sub-subfolder and so on, as a history of where you've been. If you go back one step, it keeps the extra button there, in case you want to go forward again. Why buttons are supposed to represent folders is a mystery to me. But here's a bigger mystery. If you navigate deep enough, there's no room for all the buttons, so a scroller appears. A scroller for buttons? Now that's revolutionary. This is especially a problem with the file picker, where there's even less space for the buttons. Worse, I still haven't figured out why the back arrow I mentioned earlier creates two buttons called home and then changes into an icon that, if clicked, takes me to the top level of the entire filesystem. This is intuitive? Here's the point. GNOME defenders can rant all they want about how critics simply misunderstand it. The problem illustrated by the crazy history of Nautilus is that there's no "it" to misunderstand. If "it" is so great, why does "it" keep going through so many radical changes in philosophy? I have sympathy for longtime GNOME advocates because they've had to defend both the original designs and the contradictory overhauls as being the best approach..... *" ... and the publisher concludes as follows.... " *So, many of the people who complain that we are obsessed with KDE and never deal with GNOME, obviously aren't reading TUX. Has someone told GNOME fans and evangelists to spam us with these letters? I don't know. But if so, it's time to call off your dogs. TUX will become a GNOME-focused magazine the day GNOME users vastly outnumber KDE users. So if you GNOME fans want more GNOME coverage, I suggest you improve GNOME first. Until then, we'll continue to publish according to the balance that we believe serves our readers best.* " What is happening every where?. Are you coming to my point?. The fight continues and have reached at a stage that must be seriously considered by every member of the Free Software community. I have a doubt. If GNOME is not great enough ( I am extensive KDE user from the beginning... No doubt in it... I tried GNOME at each of its release.. But i am not satisfied a little bit about it in considering as my desktop... I can't see any of my friends using GNOME as their desktop... I can see a few other people who are newbie to GNU/Linux using GNOME since most of the beginners start with Fedora and go for a personal desktop installation where the Red Hat guys continues to deselect KDE from their install section as default... Fact that, most of them don't know there is a feature rich polished alternate desktop named KDE ...), then why it can't be improved?. I don't know whether you know this fact. The birth of Mandrakelinux ( now Mandriva Linux) is a result of this war which started long ago when Red Hat removed KDE from their distribution supporting only GNOME. But after the popularity of Mandrakelinux, Red Hat was pressurised to include KDE with their distro but still GNOME as default. Even nowadays Red Hat is showing their excessive discrimination towards KDE. Most people ( including me ) are away from Fedora due to this attitude. Is GNOME is preferred since GTK is purely under GNU GPL?. I can see two types of outcome from this fight... Positive factor : This fight may create a competing environment in FOSS field and may result in the improvement and enhancements of each of the desktops. Negative factor: Rather than concentrating in the spread of GNU/Linux and FOSS across the world, rather than fighting against those actions that will wipe out the freedom in software field, this can make the community development to a debate and result in a creepy progress for free software revolution. What you think about all these? Comments please.... - Tinku Sampath

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FN'sEyeOnFLOSS *** Few hours to midnight... and FOSS.in deadline
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

................................................................ FN's Eye on FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software ........ ................................................................ [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] MEET INDIAN FLOSS BLOGGERS: http://planet.foss.in/ ---------------------------------------------------- FOSS4US blog (NGOs and FLOSS) http://foss4us.org/blog [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] NEWS FROM BANGALORE AND PLANS FOR FOSS.IN: Atul Chitnis <mail(a)atulchitnis.net> writes on the http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foss-in-announce/ list: This is it, the last day of speaker and talks registration for FOSS.IN/2005. By midnight tonight (October 8th), we will be closing registration for talks for the technical and community sessions of the event. Speakers who have registered but not submitted any talks will be removed from the speaker database tonight. So if you are planning to submit any talks - you have till midnight tonight (GMT+0530!) FOSS.IN seems to be generating massive amounts of enthusiasm in the Linux community, and *especially* in the BSD community (who have proposed several talks and workshops), the Gentoo community, the Debian community, etc. The FOSS community rulez! I will send in another mail giving you some top level stats about talks and speakers once we close registrations tonight. Once registrations close, we will spend a couple of days sorting things out, checking which talks need work on, and will release the first shortlist (minus work-in-progress talks and "star" talks) on schedule in the evening of the 12th of October. (See the schedule at http://foss.in/2005/cfp/). Once clashes and WIP talks are sorted out, we will release a second list with these added. "Star" speakers will be announced as soon as the remaining major sponsor confirmations come in. Call for participation for business sessions and student talks will go out early next week. Stay tuned. Atul ----------------------------------------------------------- FOSS.IN/2005 India's Premiere Free & Open Source Software Event Nov 29 to Dec 2, 2005 Bangalore Palace. foss.in/2005 Speaker Registration open till Oct.08, 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------- [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] WANTED, CODERS FOR AN EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT-ORIENTED GAME: Sunil Abraham sunil(a)mahiti.org of Bangalore sent across this note from his friend Dev <dev(a)thairuralnet.org> who put forward a specific proposal. Dev wrote: "I need your help to find young social technopreneurs (in your circle its probably Open source software engineers who might want to design a game like WFP Food Force or other software)." Global Knowledge Partnership's Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) fellowships are designed to help social entrepreneurs achieve their goals from the initial idea through to project implementation and impact creation. They seek to support projects by young people who are creating impact with innovative solutions to social problems, especially those using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development. YSEI will support fellows by providing mentorship and training programmes; networking; and seed grants. If you are a young social entrepreneur (age <30) from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Philippines and Malaysia in search for support and opportunities. Please visit www.globalknowledge.org/ysei OR www.futureshifters.net to learn more and submit your proposal by 31st October 2005. Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) is a Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) Youth Program supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Its partners include MITRA, OrphanIT, TakingITGlobal, YoungAsiaTelevision, Philippines Resources for Sustainable Development (PRSD), Development Research Network (D.Net) with TRN as the intiative's lead. Sunil Abraham <sunil(a)mahiti.org> also happens to be manager of the IOSN.net In addition, he's behind the Mahiti group in Bangalore. http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mob: (91) 9342201521 UK: (44) 02000000259 [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] YOUNG NETWORK IN GOA: Our friend 'DP' of the Goa Lug rediscovered this abandoned network and is trying to rebuild it. It's in the town of Ponda in central Goa. A place where a small but committed number of techies are deeply interested in GNU/Linux. Please offer your support: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-ponda [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] AN INTERESTING LINK: Guru Prasath <aprasadh(a)gmail.com> posted to the SonaLUG <sonalug(a)yahoogroups.com> recently, a link that gives an interesting background, in all its graphic detail: Unix history in graphic. http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] ENGICOS TAKE TO FLOSS, AND THEIR COLLEGE DISTRO IS BORN: Prof George Easaw <geasaw(a)gmail.com> of the Goa Engineering College, the live-wire behind Free/Libre and Open Source Software in that part of Goa, reports: The Goa Engicos linux iso, it is available for download from http://www.gec.ac.in/me , the temporary homepage of the mech engg dept. There you can find the link to engicos.iso. Right click and click on 'save link target as' and save it to your pc. Cut it on a cd and you can start the pc afresh. Contact: George Easaw Mech Engg. Dept., College of Engg. Ponda, Goa, 403 401. INDIA. ring : (0832) - 2319185 [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] WHY GNU/LINUX NEEDS A MENTOR PROGRAM: See this interesting essay at http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/09/13/1816200&from=rss Why Linux needs a mentor program By: Tarun Agnani: Imagine you're a new Linux user. You ordered an Ubuntu CD weeks ago and forgot about it. You're surprised it actually comes in the mail. You slap the shiny disc into your PC and cross your fingers. The installation is quite slick. You're impressed by the splash screen and attractive desktop. Wow, you think you're hot stuff -- a Linux user. But the euphoria fades as you realize there's a problem with your modem. Now what do you do? ... [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] FLOSS FELLOWSHIPS FROM SARAI: V Vivek <viyyer(a)sarai.net> announces the Sarai/CSDS Short Term FLOSS Fellowship, 2005-2006. The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (www.sarai.net) invites applications for fellowship to projects in the area of Free Software, Open Source Software and Social Usage of Software. Sarai invites developers, researchers and programmers (practitioners as well as students) to propose projects in the area of free and open source software applications relevant to educational, social and community needs. They are looking for original ideas, as well as proposals to localize and adapt existing software and applications to South Asian conditions. They are also looking for ideas around technical manuscripts, beginners' manuals, review manuscripts etc. Some of the focus areas are: - Indic Computing - Developing/Distributing/Supporting a standalone / addon localized Linux distribution - Printing support (i.e. ability to print in Indian Languages) - Multimedia / Publishing Tools Research - Developing / Enhancing Tools like GIMP, Scribus for publishing quality work - Enhancing current audio/video tools available under Linux - Fixing/Supporting Cinelerra, LiVES etc - P2P - Researching on feasibility and implementation of P2P news distribution network - Researching and developing - Collaboration Tools/Frameworks (Apnaopus, CreativeDot ) - Developing extensions for the project newsrack http://floss.sarai.net/newsrack - Low Resource Computing - Devising solutions for networked computing in Low Resource Spaces (Define the parameters of the "low resource space" and work on it) - Generic - Developing Linux drivers/software for easily available hardware (usually the cheapest hardware available on the market is not supported under Linux (scanners, webcams etc)) [This would include writing a howto on how to get it to work under popular distributions (redhat, pcqlinux etc) and all.] - Review papers on emerging technologies - Indic Computing - IPV6 - Wireless Networks - Manuscripts for beginners For more information visit www.sarai.net. Sarai says it "is committed to promoting the free software and open source vision". Conditions: Applicants should be resident in India, and should have a bank account in any bank operating in India. These are support grants and grantees will be free to pursue their primary occupations, if any. Mail your project proposal, workplan and CV to both the following addresses: floss at sarai.net <https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc> Please mark your subject line 'FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Initiative'. Also point out what you see as the relevance of your work, and how you plan to share the resultant software once finalized. Enquires: floss at sarai.net Note: Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives, faculty are welcome, so long as the grant amount is administered by a single individual, and the funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual. *** Knowlege is power... share it equitably! [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] MAILING LIST FOR e-learning in FLOSS: ELEARN-OPENSOURCE(a)LST.IIEP-UNESCO.ORG [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] Copyleft -- verbatim copying, with credits -- allowed/encouraged.

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Fsf-friends October 2005