Fsf-friends January 2006

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

29 participants
36 discussions

FSF-India in LinuxAsia
by Sameer N Ingole 13 Jan '06

13 Jan '06

Hi All, Sorry for my previous post (subject: Re: [Fsf-delhi] FSF-India in LinuxAsia 2006). There have been some discussion going on whether to put some GNU stuff on sale on FSF-Delhi. I want to know how/when/where can we get GNU books/Manuals, T-shirts (with GNU messages/graphics) that we can put on sale in LinuxAsia? Regards, -- Sameer N. Ingole Blog: http://weblogic.noroot.org/ --- Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.

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Re: Re: [Fsf-friends] Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7
by Krishna Pagadala 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

>Mishi Choudhary wrote: >>On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 Krishna Pagadala wrote : >> Likewise Free Software developers will produce what >> they need for themselves, it just so happens that the >> rest of soceity also benefits. Also Free Software >> developers will develop whatever we pay them to >> develop, just like everybody else. >yes of course however most of the software developers or anyone >for that matter is paid monetarily for him or her to survive This line of thinking is errorneous when it comes to thinking about Free Software. Out of necessity each one of us is partly a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, or a software developer etc. The sum total of the knowledge that we have in those roles will dwarf any professional organisation and its output. The main problem with tapping such knowledge is transaction costs. Let me give you an example. I have to do my taxes in a few months, and I am planning to do it on my own by reading the tax code. I am sure there are many more people doing the same. Now imagine that all the people who are doing this were to somehow able to put their knowledge in a very accessible way to everybody who wants it. That would pretty much be Free Accounting movement. In this instance none "of the accounting developers" need to be paid "monetarily for him or her to survive" because that is not their profession, however if some of them are adequately compensated by the public then they will make it their profession. >i wish to ask that who is this "we" whose paying the > free software developers? By we I meant the general public who consume free software. >and is the money being paid enough in comparison to > what one can make by working for a proprietary > software developing company? This is not an issue because the expectation is that people will make a living by means other than proprietary software. Customization, selling services, or developing Free Software as a hobby, or because they want to make the product that they bought better etc.. I would recommend that you read FLOSS survey report http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/ particularly free software developers motivations which can be found at http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/Final4.htm DEMOCRATIZING INNOVATION by Eric Von Hippel http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ.htm or atleast some of his papers at http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/papers.htm if you dont have the time to read the whole book. >> It has been estimated thatsourceforge alone >> is equal to 1 Microsoft. >whats is sourceforge Sourceforge is a place where Free Software projects are hosted. http://sourceforge.net/ > in what terms and manner is it equivalent to one microsoft By the estimated amount of man-years spent on development of code. >pardon my very basic queries but i wish to understand > every bit and am a complete novice in this waiting > for a response It is my pleasure to answer thoughtful questions like yours. Please ask anymore questions that you might have. >Warm Regards Krishna >Mishi Choudhary ===================================== To Reflect, to Inspire and to Empower http://www.employees.org/~krishnap/ The great moral question of the twenty-first century is: If all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information, can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone -- if everyone can have everything, everywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? -Eben Moglen --------------------------------- Yahoo! Photos Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays, whatever.

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7
by Mishi Choudhary 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

hello everyone since i am new to all this and allof you seem to be pros can u please spare sometime to answer certain questions i have .i'll look forward to hearing from you all can you please explain the economic viability of using free software? how are the developers of free software adequately compensated? how big is free software in comparison to proprietary software? Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary

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Fwd: FSF Announces GNU Gnash - Flash Movie Player
by Anivar Aravind 11 Jan '06

11 Jan '06

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Sullivan <johns(a)fsf.org> Date: Jan 10, 2006 9:59 PM Subject: FSF Announces GNU Gnash - Flash Movie Player To: info-fsf(a)gnu.org Media Contact: Free Software Foundation <pr(a)gnu.org> Phone: +1-617-542-5942 Boston, Massachusetts, USA - Monday, January 9, 2006 - The Free Software Foundation announced today the addition of Gnash, the GNU Flash movie player and Firefox plugin, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). Gnash is a project to build a SWF version 7 compliant flash player with high-quality imaging. It is the most advanced free flash player that currently exists, and an important addition to the GNU project. The release of Gnash represents the achievement of one of the free software movement's high priority projects (see http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority.html). Rob Savoye, maintainer of Gnash, outlined details of the project and made a call for developer support, "Right now Gnash is playing more movies than any of the other free players. All ActionScript classes exist and work, but not all the methods of each class are fully implemented. With a few more developers, it could be reasonably complete in a few months." Features include: Runs as a standalone application - Gnash can run standalone to play flash movies. Firefox plugin - Gnash can run as a plugin from within Firefox and Mozilla. SWF v7 compliant - Gnash can play many current flash movies. XML Message server - Gnash also supports an XML-based message system as is documented in the Flash Format specification. High Quality Output - Gnash uses OpenGL for rendering the graphics. The home page of the project is at <http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/>. The Gnash development sources are accessible via anonymous CVS from <http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnash/>. The anonymous CVS services are provided by Savannah, a web front-end for hosting and maintaining project homepages, bug tracking, CVS, FTP, and mailing lists, running entirely on free software, without ads, for the entire community. Gnash development is being funded by PubSoft. PubSoft supports free software projects by connecting developers with funding <https://www.pubsoft.org/pubsoft.py/viewprojects>. About the Free Software Foundation: The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software - particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants - and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their Web site, located at www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support their work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. Their headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA. _______________________________________________ info-fsf mailing list info-fsf(a)gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-fsf -- Knowledge is power... share it equitably! http://www.gnu.org

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Reverse engineering in India
by Thejesh GN 10 Jan '06

10 Jan '06

The new amendment (1999) brought forth a few changes in the fair use provision pertaining to computer software. It added three new provisions in the Act in Section 52(1) (aa). The new provisions read: "(ab) the doing of any act necessary to obtain information essential for operating interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs by a lawful possessor of a computer program provided that such information is not otherwise readily available; (ac) the observation, study or test of functioning of the computer program in order to determine the ideas and principles which underline any elements of the program while performing such acts necessary for the functions for which the computer program was supplied; (ad) the making of copies or adaptation of the computer program from a legally obtained copy for non-commercial personal use I have doubt with (ac). If I buy a software with the license prohibiting me from reverse engineering it. Decomposing it will become copyright infringement ? Any help with the point (ac) will be great. -- Thanks, Thejesh GN http://www.techmag.biz

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 8
by kiran pvsm 10 Jan '06

10 Jan '06

aa On 1/10/06, fsf-friends-request(a)mm.gnu.org.in < fsf-friends-request(a)mm.gnu.org.in> wrote: > > Send Fsf-friends mailing list submissions to > fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > fsf-friends-request(a)mm.gnu.org.in > > You can reach the person managing the list at > fsf-friends-owner(a)mm.gnu.org.in > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Fsf-friends digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7 (Mishi Choudhary) > 2. Re: Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7 (shibu c varughese) > 3. Re: Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7 (Harish Narayanan) > 4. Re: Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7 (Manilal K M) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: 9 Jan 2006 15:10:39 -0000 > From: "Mishi Choudhary" <mishi_c(a)rediffmail.com> > Subject: [Fsf-friends] Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7 > To: fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in > Message-ID: <20060109151039.27120.qmail(a)webmail50.rediffmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 > > hello everyone > since i am new to all this and allof you seem to be pros can u please > spare sometime to answer certain questions i have .i'll look forward to > hearing from you all > can you please explain the economic viability of using free software? > how are the developers of free software adequately compensated? > how big is free software in comparison to proprietary software? > > > Warm Regards > Mishi Choudhary > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:38:00 +0530 > From: "shibu c varughese" <admin(a)itmission.org> > Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7 > To: "Mishi Choudhary" <mishi_c(a)rediffmail.com>, "Principal Support > List of FSF-India" <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in> > Message-ID: <op.s249rmdza7821a@ibm> > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; delsp=yes; charset=utf-8 > > hi ..mishi, > "open source" software, and is distributed under the GPL (GNU General > Public License), this is the difference from other major systems. > Open source can provide your application : speed, reliability, > performance, portability and affordability....An example is the killer > application [Apache], just check out the market share for the Apache web > server at http://news.netcraft.com/...also do just check out A case study > in open source business for Trolltech at > http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/10/03/155235 this is just an > example which tells how Trolltech is obviously a successful company. > > Thanks, > Shibu C V > --- > > On Mon, 09 Jan 2006 20:40:39 +0530, Mishi Choudhary > <mishi_c(a)rediffmail.com> wrote: > > > hello everyone > > since i am new to all this and allof you seem to be pros can u please > > spare sometime to answer certain questions i have .i'll look forward to > > hearing from you all > > can you please explain the economic viability of using free software? > > how are the developers of free software adequately compensated? > > how big is free software in comparison to proprietary software? > > > > Warm Regards > > Mishi Choudhary > > _______________________________________________ > > Fsf-friends mailing list > > Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in > > http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends > > > > > > > > -- > Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 19:02:00 -0500 > From: Harish Narayanan <harish(a)gamebox.net> > Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7 > To: Mishi Choudhary <mishi_c(a)rediffmail.com>, Principal Support List > of FSF-India <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in> > Message-ID: <43C2F978.3030903(a)gamebox.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Mishi Choudhary wrote: > > >hello everyone > >since i am new to all this and allof you seem to be pros can u please > spare sometime to answer certain questions i have .i'll look forward to > hearing from you all > > > > > I am going to be very brief. > > >can you please explain the economic viability of using free software? > >how are the developers of free software adequately compensated? > > > > > Those two are related questions. > > Functional business models around Free software mostly follow a path > that involves releasing the software Free (as in freedom and price), and > then charging the users for support or services around the core > software. Often times, since people need customised variants of software > to suit their specific needs, they can (and do) pay developers to work > on modifying Free software to suit these requirements. This way, they > get what they want without having to build things from scratch, and the > software itself benefits as these improvements work their way back into > the parent projects. > > >how big is free software in comparison to proprietary software? > > > > > It differs based on what areas you're looking at. At the core levels > (the sorts of thing that drive the web: Apache, sendmail, ...), Free > software is huge; much bigger than proprietary software. This is also > quite true in realms such as high performance scientific computing in > research at large universities (where distributions of GNU/Linux, gcc, > Free numerical libraries rule the roost). If you were asking about the > "desktop space", its installation base is much much smaller than > proprietary software, like Windows. But I would be willing to wager it > is in the order of magnitude of popularity as Mac OS X. > > Harish > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 10:40:37 +0530 > From: Manilal K M <libregeek(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7 > To: Principal Support List of FSF-India <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in> > Message-ID: <2315046d0601092110g594e0a07n(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Dear Mishi, > I hope the book *Innovation happens elsewhere* may be a good > starting point to know how you can make business using Free/Open > source and how to participate in Free/open Source projects. It's > available online at http://dreamsongs.com/IHE/IHE.html and is licensed > using Creative Commons > (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/) > > regards > Manilal > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Fsf-friends mailing list > Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in > http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends > > > End of Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 33, Issue 8 > ****************************************** >

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Free software poster making competition
by Arun M 07 Jan '06

07 Jan '06

Hi, As part of state conference of KSTA, Teachers Union in Kerala, they have arranged a poster making competition. Only condition is poster should be made with free software. Topics are Globalisation; Commercialisation of Education. regards, arun.

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Ubuntu in Asia, Jan-Feb 2006
by Shekhar Krishnan 06 Jan '06

06 Jan '06

Dear FSF Friends: The folks from Ubuntu and Canonical will be making a tour of many cities in East, South and Southeast Asia in the coming weeks, and I have been asked to help spread the word regionally. Please go to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/AsiaBusinessTour and help fill in the wiki page for your city and you will be contacted by someone from Ubuntu/Canonical. You will first need to signup for a Launchpad account to use the Ubuntu Wiki. There are sections for business, government, academic and voluntary sectors. I have already helped fill in the Mumbai and Bangalore pages. Looking forward to seeing more inputs from the rest of the free software community in India (and no, I am not being paid to do this, I really like Ubuntu and want to see it spread in the region). Best, S.K. -- Shekhar Krishnan 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 Dadar, Mumbai 400014 India http://www.crit.org.in/members/shekhar http://web.mit.edu/~shekhar/www

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COMMENT: Google may not go Simputer way
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 05 Jan '06

05 Jan '06

>From HINDUSTAN TIMES January 5, 2006 GOOGLE MAY NOT GO SIMPUTER WAY Venkatesh Ganesh Mumbai, January 4 GOOGLE's ENTRY into the sub-Rs 10,000 PC market has rattled the cage of existing players. But the search-engine giant's entry into the hardware sector in India with a thin-client model (a PC with no hard disk and computing) may not be a walkover. HT was the first to report on December 15, 2005 about the Google's plans to enter the Indian market with thin-client model. Early entrants like the Simputer and other low-cost PCs are being still viewed skeptically. Globally too, thin-clients have managed to make only small inroads. But the real fight is for a different space. Google appears to be looking to dethrone Microsoft from its desktop throne. "Thin clients have been viewed in a cautious manner primarily due to the price factor. But with Google entering the fray at such an attractive price point, things might change," says Nitin Mukadam, an e-commerce consultant. The advantage with thin clients is that the storage happens in a central server. For example, all data and applications (like word processors, spreadsheets, etc) are hosted in a central server. This solves a lot of problems right from storage to viruses. Also, with bandwidth prices coming down, the commercial viability of a thin-client device is now more feasible. Then, therere are issues with regards to Random Access Memory (RAM) that can run with even small memory space. Industry analysts opine that Google has a rough road ahead. "Delivering complete functionality in a thin-client is most challenging," Sameer Kochhar CEO of Skotch told the Hindustan Times. Translated, it would imply that since Windows is the pre-dominant operating system, operating on non-Windows system would take some getting used to (Google would bundle Linux-based applications). Sanjeev Sharma, managing director, Fujusan Technologies, an Indian representative of Fujitsu, the Japanese IT and communication solution provider, feels that the acceptance of a device of this kind will be predominantly in the small office-home office.(ENDS)

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Debian... the quest for more developers in India
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 04 Jan '06

04 Jan '06

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/12/msg00538.html To: debian-devel(a)lists.debian.org * Subject: Report from foss.in/2005 * From: Kartik Mistry <kartik.mistry(a)gmail.com> * Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 05:41:27 +0530 * Old-return-path: <kartik.mistry(a)gmail.com> ________________________________________________________________________ Hello, Since, I am not 'valid' poster of this list, my mail me be blocked by listadmin! I asked DWN to report for foss.in/2005 conference in India and Debian activity during event. Joey can answer about this post. Thanks Joey to encourage me. Background: foss.in/2005 was earlier known as Linux Bangalore -YEAR [1] Starting from 2001 it was highly sucessful in terms of both - attendences and speakers. Speakers was from all over the world. The conference was renamed in aim with to change focus to particular city and only to linux - it is now represents more wider choice of Free and Open Source Software - foss.in itself represnts website name! [2] Debian at foss.in! India, the second largest nation in the world - which is top in IT all over, lacks contibutation towards FOSS and particulary Debian! There are only 2 active Debian Developers in India. Jaldhar Vyas [3] who headed Debian-IN Project [4] was worried about the situation. Jaldhar made it possible to India. Thus, two talks was arranged in conference! Jaldhar spend most of time in meeting people to explain and answers question about Debian and Debian-IN. Vaidhy who was DD in past helped a lot during jaldhar was busy with other work. Debian-IN BOF was organised and it was successful. Many people signed each other's key and make thier way towards become Debian Developer. What Next ? Lots more! We expect that there should be 20 Debian Developers in near future. Representation at DebConf6 [5] from India will also make some difference in situation too. If you are coming to India, please make announcement and arrange to meet people so that more key-signing party can be organise. Well, People behind foss.in is here [6] which includes speakers and oraganisers. [1] http://linux-bangalore.org/ [2] http://foss.in/2005/ [3] http://debian-in.alioth.debian.org/ [4] http://www.braincells.com/debian/ [5] http://debconf.org/ [6] http://planet.foss.in/ Thanks!

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Fsf-friends January 2006