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?
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+Featureshttp://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.
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
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.nethttp://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks
fred at bytesforall.orghttp://www.bytesforall.org
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)
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.
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
................................................................
FN's Eye on FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software ........
................................................................
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MEET INDIAN FLOSS BLOGGERS: http://planet.foss.in/
----------------------------------------------------
FOSS4US blog (NGOs and FLOSS) http://foss4us.org/blog
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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
----------------------------------------------------------
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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? ...
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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!
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MAILING LIST FOR e-learning in FLOSS:
ELEARN-OPENSOURCE(a)LST.IIEP-UNESCO.ORG
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Copyleft -- verbatim copying, with credits -- allowed/encouraged.