Fsf-friends June 2005

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

33 participants
48 discussions

[Fsf-friends] Fwd: [Ilugc] [Photos] FSFS Conference, May 28-30, 2005, Kerala
by Ramanraj K 07 Jun '05

07 Jun '05

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shakthi Kannan <cyborg4k(a)yahoo.com> Date: Jun 7, 2005 9:12 PM Subject: [Ilugc] [Photos] FSFS Conference, May 28-30, 2005, Kerala To: ilugc(a)ae.iitm.ac.in Cc: fsf-tn(a)gnu.org.in Greetings! I have uploaded the photos (32 of them) taken during the Free Software, Free Society Conference held between May 28-30, 2005 at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala at: http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/GNU-Linux-FSF-Community-Work Thanks to Anand Babu and Ramanraj for the photos. The conference site: http://fsfs.hipatia.net/ SK P.S.: I am one of the unfortunate ones who couldn't get a ticket to travel to Kerala :( Argh. I missed so much. -- proudly anti-micro$oft -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Shakthi Kannan, MS Software Engineer, Specsoft (Hexaware Technologies) http://www.shakthimaan.com 98407-87007 (M) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email ilugc-request(a)ae.iitm.ac.in with "unsubscribe <password> <address>" in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc

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Re: [Fsf-friends] CBSE/NCERT
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

Dear Nagarjuna, The author is Sangeetha Panchal a teacher at Hans Raj Model School, New Delhi who has co-authored (alongwith Alka Sabharwal of the same school) the text "Computer Science Information Technology for Class 5" of CBSE. She claims to have been a member of Computer Science Syllabus designing committee for both NCERT and CBSE. The text is full of MS stuff, and the authors seem to be blind in love with MS products. The questions framed reflect their intentions of making students commit to an unflinching love towards these products. Somehow, this reminds me of the scandalous indulgance of IKM (Information Kerala Mission), an incubatory project of Microsoft under Govt of Kerala, whose chief (PV Unnikrishnan) was desperate to get photographed with Bill Gates, when the latter visited India. Media personnel took the story head on and commented that this was a "sell-off" (the development of Microsoft based software for local bodies in Kerala). This gentleman even took the Minister for IT and arranged for the *shake-hand* session. PV Unnikrishnan had earlier written (after making EM Sreedharan , son of EMS, a co-author of the article presented in the 13th Science Congress) that he was going to *set up the biggest deployment of MS SQL Server in Kerala*, when the computerisation of the Local bodies would be completed. Cadres of LDF, whenever opposed were silenced, telling them that *the project* had the blessings of (late) EM Sreedharan Nambudiri. People often get into *radical extremes* falling into love with *dollar power* of the richest corporate, without realising that their folly would only be short-lived and that they would be dumped forever into waste basket by common citizens. And this seems to be exactly what is unfolding in Kerala when the School Teachers Association would have completed their training of Free Software. CK Raju, Thrissur

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Reminder: FSUG, Bangalore
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

Self-description. From "Rakesh 'Arky' Ambati" <rakesh_ambati(a)yahoo.com> Free Software User Group-Bangalore http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/ an active group of Free Software enthusiasts, GNU users and students. We started FSUG two years ago with a view to mentor, help the use Free Software in Schools and colleges and for common good. Recently we have made a successful public campaign to adopt Free Software Solution in educational courses by Visveswaraiah Technological University. http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?VTU-FLOSS_Campaign Currently we are working on creating a massive directory of Indian Free Software Projects, consisting of all the contributions from Indian Sub-continent. http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?IndianFreeSoftwareProjects END OF FORWARDED MSG .......................................................................... Frederick (FN) Noronha | Freelance Journalist | Mobile +91 9822 122436 Tel +91.832.2409490 | http://fn.swiki.net | http://www.bytesforall.net ..........................................................................

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Mumbai Free Map
by Kanti Jadia 06 Jun '05

06 Jun '05

Hi Shekahr, This is really good. Now a lot of issues with developement would get resolved. In ref. the open series maps (OSMs) could eventually replace the maps already present Related news : http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2005052002830300.h… Regards Kanti On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 Shekhar Krishnan wrote : >Dear All: > >Please see the latest demo of the Mumbai Free Map on http://freemap.crit.org.in > >This now contains detailed vector layers for roads, railways, buildings and plots, projected onto a satellite composite image of the city. The data has been sourced from existing municipal development plans, surveys, and maps, which we have scanned, traced and stitched together with our archive of project materials at CRIT. > >This project has been developed using completely free and open source software (Map Server, GRASS, QGIS) and copyleft and public geographic data. > >The project web page is on http://www.crit.org.in/projects/gis and we welcome comments and feedback on it as we begin developing an interface by which to annotate the maps and develop this as an open source and interactive archive and community information infrastructure. > >Regards, > > >S.K. >_____ > >Shekhar Krishnan >CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) >B-43, Shravasti >Goregaon-Malad Link Road >Malad (West), Mumbai 400064 >India > >http://www.crit.org.in/members/shekhar > > >_______________________________________________ >Fsf-friends mailing list >Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in >http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends ----------------------------------------- Enjoy your Freedom,use GNU/Linux. http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html -----------------------------------------

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CBSE/NCERT
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 05 Jun '05

05 Jun '05

Fred, The CBSE curriculum still has Microsoft based themes. Worse still, one of the members of the curriculum revision committee for NCERT/CBSE has written a text book, published by Oxford University Press - ulterior motives are explicit. CK Raju

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Wanted volunteers:Indian Free Software Projects page.
by Rakesh 'Arky' Ambati 05 Jun '05

05 Jun '05

Wanted volunteers to support and encourage the growth of this page. http://bangalore.gnu.org.in/?IndianFreeSoftwareProjects It's very important to all. Can you help? -- arky Rakesh 'arky' Ambati GPG Key ID: 0x92BCF7D4 Blog [ http://arky.in ] Member FSUG-Bangalore [ http://bangalore.gnu.org.in ] Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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How Free Software Pays my Bills (Steven M Rubin)
by Rakesh 'Arky' Ambati 05 Jun '05

05 Jun '05

Hello There, Often Free Software developers are projected in bad light,perhaps this autobiographical article will enlighten quite a few. http://www.free-soft.org/FSM/english/issue03/paybills.html How Free Software Pays my Bills by Steven M. Rubin Static Free Software I've been playing with computers since I was in High School 35 years ago. And in those 35 years, I've done it all: a Computer Science Ph.D. and a host of jobs including systems administrator, researcher, professor, author, entrepreneur, and most of all, programmer. What I like most about computers is that I can build useful programs for other people. The idea of free software has always made sense to me. And now free software is my business. A program that I wrote nearly 20 years ago ("Electric") is a GNU offering, and I work on it full-time. For the past 3 years, I've earned more than ever before by consulting, training, and selling products related to this system. I'm so busy that the "dot bomb" didn't even touch me. And everyone who I consult for (Sun, Intel, etc.) agrees that I may take the improvements - that they pay for - and give it out to the GNU community. How did this come about? Here is my story. Electric, 1982 It all started back in 1982 when I was working at the Fairchild Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. It made sense, when working for a chip manufacturer, to investigate ideas in Computer-Aided Design (CAD). And this was at the time when the famous textbook by Mead and Conway came out ("Introduction to VLSI Systems"). With this book, integrated-circuit design became less of a black art and more accessible to the masses. After using two other CAD systems, I decided to write my own, and so I built Electric. Even by today's standards, this system has clever ideas that make it powerful. Soon, everyone in the lab was using it to design chips. Now Fairchild, at that time, was owned by Schlumberger, a large company that had many other holdings. One of those other holdings was Applicon, a maker of CAD systems. When we showed Electric to people at Applicon, they declared that they already knew all of these ideas, and so they had no interest in it. This news made me very happy, because I could then suggest to the lab director that we give this worthless CAD system away to others. The lab started giving out the Electric source code to universities and other nonprofit groups (licensed in the style of Bell Labs' UNIX). After a few years, it was widely used. For example, Canada and New Zealand set up agencies in their countries to support Electric for the schools of their nation. Leaving the Womb But then I quit working for Schlumberger, and since they owned my system, I also quit working on Electric. Or so I thought. One day a man named Brian Gardiner called me on the phone and told me an incredible thing: he had just bought the rights to Electric from Schlumberger. He was forming a company called Electric Editor Inc., and he needed my help. For 10 years, Electric Editor lived on the edge of survival. Brian took no salary for many of those years. At first, the system was priced low (it was already developed and ready to use). But people were afraid to purchase it because of its suspiciously low price. So Brian raised the price to be competitive. Then the customers had another reason to avoid us: we were too small. Complex CAD systems require extensive training, and people were afraid of having to retrain if our small company folded. It was a double-edged sword. The only place where Electric did well commercially was as a "custom-solutions" CAD system. A few large software development projects were undertaken for customers whose needs were outside of the mainstream. Electric was easy to customize to these special needs. But it wasn't enough, and Electric Editor decided to close its doors. It was at this point that I was able to convince them to place Electric at GNU. Was it a last act of desperation for a dying company? No, it was a crafty way to solve all of Electric's problems at once! Free at Last The two objections to the use of Electric were price and company stability. As a piece of "free software" from the most well-known free software collection, both of these issues are finally put to rest. The low price is no longer suspicious, because everyone knows and understands the "free software model". And people also feel that GNU is at least as stable as any company in business today. I purchased the rights to Electric from the old company and formed a new one: Static Free Software (www.staticfreesoft.com). My new company finally had the perfect product: a CAD system you can trust, at a price you can afford. But what's in it for me? First off, it's still great to see people using my programs, and now I have users all over the world. University professors teach classes with Electric, many individual "hobbyists" are designing chips at home, and engineers at large companies are evaluating and using it. I'm doing a modest business just selling supported binaries, documentation and CDs on the web. But the real payoff comes when a large company wants Electric, and pays me to help them. For the past 3 years, I have consulted continuously at Sun Microsystems. During that time, I have also done projects for Intel and a number of smaller companies. Free software consulting has turned into a modern "cottage industry", where I sit home in my "cottage" uploading software to the web, and customers on the other side of the world wire payment to my bank account. Staying Free Everyone knows the classic work-world model: when you work for "the man," he owns your soul. And when a company pays me to develop Electric, they own those improvements. But thanks to GNU, this scenario gets changed. Because improving Electric could trigger the GPL and force distribution, most companies see this as an encumbrance that has potential "downstream cost." So corporate lawyers regularly assign ownership of the improvements to me. That way, they don't have to worry about fulfilling the terms of the GPL. Corporate lawyers hate the GPL for another reason as well: its "viral" nature. If even a single subroutine of Electric's code is used in any other company product, that entire product gets "infected" and must be given away free (this is not my analogy: I've heard it from corporate lawyers more than once). One company, to protect itself, purchased a "commercial license" from me that circumvented the GPL and granted them more control of distribution. But I was still able to stipulate in this commercial license that the bulk of the improvements, and all of the bug fixes, would be owned by me and thus remain free. In the 17 months since that agreement was made, none of my work has been restricted in any way, and all of it gets sent to GNU. So every day, I work on Electric, and I still love it. I don't work very hard: about 25 billable hours per week, plus time in the evening to answer "fan mail". No boss can kill my project, and there's never been a lack of work. I even have colleagues all over the world who contribute code and help me to build a well-respected piece of software. It could never have happened without GNU. About the Author Steven M. Rubin is the author of the Electric VLSI Design System, and the CAD tools textbook "Computer Aids for VLSI Design." He received his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University and has done research at Bell Labs, Schlumberger, and Apple. Specializing in visually-oriented computing, his research has spanned computer vision, graphics, and CAD. Steve is also the lead singer of Severe Tire Damage, the first band to perform live on the Internet. Knowlege is power... share it equitably! -- arky Rakesh 'arky' Ambati GPG Key ID: 0x92BCF7D4 Blog [ http://arky.in ] Member FSUG-Bangalore [ http://bangalore.gnu.org.in ] Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Re:[Fsf-friends] draft gnowledge manifesto
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 05 Jun '05

05 Jun '05

Dear Nagarjuna, >I have uploaded the oulines of the talk given at Trivandrum conference. Sounds soft now. But there may be issues related to construction of "mind" - perhaps, the theme of "mentality" over mind may be more suitable to this context (it would smash away a few more remaining brmnkl concepts). In fact culturation could directly and easily be exchanged with mentality - saying explicitly that there is no "mind". Regarding "Copyrights and Patents", we should remove that *bias*. "...When the English Parliament passed the first modern copyright law, the Statute of Anne, in 1710, it did so in part to stop publishing monopolies 'from oppressing authors, potential competitors, and the public'. The first American copyright law, in 1790, covered only books, maps, and charts, and granted monopoly control for a mere 14 years (renewable for another 14). The Copyright Clause itself specifies only 'limited times' for monopoly control of creative works, after which they enter the public domain � that is, they become freely available for anyone to publish, sell, copy, or preserve...." (www.fepproject.org) Historically, hence the concept of Copyright were quite different from what they are interpreted today by Corporate-based education/legislations. One more issue remains. And that is to commit that though there are ways today to get *interconnected* globally, in reality, there is no *communication* (Nizar-ian theme, which includes "mentality" - ex Kanpur IIT, your alma mater). People just do not communicate, they mimic, coerce or terrorise. Here the ethics centred around *principles of sharing* that is embedded with Free Software, gives a way out, probably the best way - and that's why citizens world over do not scared when Free Software is becoming *global*, getting ready to *colonise* with its own anti-inhuman *imperialistic designs*. The most fundamental departure from Marxian idealogy is that "revolution" here doesn't pit human beings against human beings, it forces human beings to come together and work for *commons*. Maybe, your theme already covers these ideas. CK Raju

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draft gnowledge manifesto
by Nagarjuna G. 05 Jun '05

05 Jun '05

I have uploaded the oulines of the talk given at Trivandrum conference. Though this is not a complete essay, most of you could make out what is between the lines. I waiting for some peaceful time to complete the draft. Meanwhile do give me your inputs, criticism, etc. the link is: http://db.hbcse.tifr.res.in/gn/gnowledge-manifesto.html Nagarjuna

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Free CDs spread open source in India
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 04 Jun '05

04 Jun '05

http://news.com.com/Free+CDs+spread+open+source+in+India/2100-7344_3-572000… Free CDs spread open source in India Published: May 25, 2005, 9:17 AM PDT By Ingrid Marson Special to CNET News.com The Indian government is trying to encourage the use of computers across the country by distributing free CDs that contain localized versions of popular open-source applications. The government has started distributing CDs containing Tamil-language versions of various open-source applications, including the Firefox browser, the OpenOffice.org productivity suite and the Columba e-mail client. It plans to freely distribute 3.5 million copies of the CD to Tamil speakers worldwide, according to R.K.V.S. Raman, a researcher at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, a Bangalore-based organization involved in the production of the CD. Open Source Software In India, seeking avenues for growth There's no standing still in a competitive global market--just check out the tech action in Bangalore. Raman told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that the CDs have been in considerable demand following a newspaper-and-television advertising campaign last month. "We have had a tremendous response to this (initiative)," he said. "In the first two weeks of the campaign we got about 100,000 hits daily on the Web site offering CDs, and about 2,000 to 3,000 downloads (of Tamil-language applications). We have already sent out around 50,000 CDs and have a backlog of 35,000." Once the requested CDs have been sent out, more copies will be distributed with computer magazines and newspapers, according to Raman. Even the president of India, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, has taken an interest in the project and earlier this month met the team involved in the production of the CD. The next stage of the project is to distribute CDs containing applications in Hindi, the national language of India. This stage will be launched on June 21 and likely will involve more than the 3.5 million CDs earmarked for the current phase, said Raman. Eventually, the government plans to release CDs in all of the 22 official languages of India. Raman believes open-source software has two main advantages for the Indian population--it is relatively inexpensive and it can be modified fairly easily. "We are sometimes not comfortable with Western user interfaces--they don't make sense in our culture, particularly for rural people who haven't had much access to technology. If we want to modify the software we have to have access to the code," he said. The Indian government's decision to ship free software in this way likely will be a blow to Microsoft, which plans to release a low-cost version of Windows in India soon. Microsoft originally hoped to release its Windows XP Starter Edition--a low-cost, feature-restricted version of Windows XP--by the end of March, but it's now aiming for a June release. Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK reported from London.

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Fsf-friends June 2005