Fsf-friends January 2006

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Careers in FLOSS... (Dec 2003 issue of LFY)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 06 Jun '24

06 Jun '24

=========================================== LINUXForYou * Dec 2003 (Vol 1 No 10) In India Rs 50 (with CD) http://www.linuxforu.com Pages 102 * US$7.95 0 74470584957 =========================================== THIS ISSUE has probably reached your city. Saw it in Bangalore, and also got a complimentary copy from the LFY team at LinuxBangalore2003. But when I reached back to Goa on Dec 4, it wasn't in as yet. So it might take time to reach 'small town' India... FN REVIEWED: Mandrake 9.2 * PhProjekt * StarOffice 7.0 COMPUTERS AT TIS HAZARI, the session courts for the city of New Delhi, are being shifted over to Linux, courtesy the National Informatics Centre. - Rahul Chopra in this month's editorial. LINUX LEARNING CENTRE at Bangalore is offering courses in administration, security, development (internals and programming essentials, programming with Qt, device driver programming, MySQL & PHP), RHCE and Red Hat rapid track certification. www.linuxlearningcentre.com DotGNU RELEASES CD: It can now be used to implement application programs and Web services in C# and C applications under multiple operating systems, including GNU/Linux, FreeBSC, MacOS, MS Windows. The 219 MB release 0.1 CD is available as a free download at http://download.freedom.biz/dotgnu/dotgnu-0.1-cdrom.iso.gz.torrent e-Bridge calls itself "the new state-of-art training facility from eSpark Infotech is now open in the heart of Bangalore". It's offering embedded Linux courses (Linux fundamentals, programming Linux, embedded C & Linux, realtime C & Linux, Linux internals, device drivers, networking) and DSP courses (DSP fundamentals, TI/analog dev programming, audio/video, image processing, bio-medical systems). www.ebridgesolutions.net Linux.net provides a free e-mail service to those who want an e-mail address that ends in '@linux.net' MAJOR UPDATES and releases: OpenNA Linux 1.0, Gibraltar Firewall 1.0, Xandros Desktop 2.0, Onebase Linux 2.0, CUPS 1.120rc6. CAN YOU MAKE money with open source? Registration entails a "nominal fee" of Rs 5000 for a three-day conference. http://www.linuxasia2004.com/attendees/ February 11-13, 2004, New Delhi. SEND IN YOUR favourite slogans for a tee-shirt, and win five free copies of the shirt... LFYedit at efyindia.com MONEY CAN't buy respect, says Robert Adkins. Some of us might have met this guy at LB2003 in Bangalore. He's the CTO of Technetra Corp, and an advocate and implementer of FLOSS solutions for government. He can be contacted at radkins at technetra.com CAREERS WITH FLOSS: The number of students opting for courses in Open Source is growing steadily, even as industry experts predict a growing need for trained professionals in this expanding field. EXIT RED HAT, ENTER FEDORA: It's official now; the free (of cost) version of Red Hat Linux will not be available anymore. This has created a lot of FUD in an already unstable environment, thanks to the SCO episode. But is Red Hat closed for good? WEB-BASED COLLABORATION SOFTWARE: PHProjekt is an easy-to-install collaboration suite, which runs on the open source platform and databases. As the design of the system is developer-friendly, adding new features and components is a piece of cake. STAROFFICE: The latest version of Sun's office suite, StarOffice 7, may just be the right solution for the cost-conscious user. It loads faster than the earlier version, and sports some noticeable improvements. IN THE LFY CD THIS MONTH: Slackware (the "oldest Linux distro") and a range of GNU software for Windows users. FALLING BACK on backup systems. MAKING ADOPTION OF Linux in the enterprise easy. www.linux4e.com Business partners required: http://wwww.linux4e.com/partners ooWRITER HELPS YOU create your own templates and styles so that you can work with documents easily. Open Source is key to IBM's vision of computing. User empowerment is key to Microsoft's, writes Alolita Sharma USING DATABASE functions in Calc, a tutorial. (Wish there were more how-tos for the user in this mag! --FN) HALDIA DOCKS: it has a uniquely designed Linux installation with an active-active cluster set up, which is considered the best of its kind. This has ensured efficiency and cost-effectiveness. BASIC UNIX commands and concepts: an extract from *Running Linux* (Shroff Publishers, Pp 674 only Rs 425 in India). VxWorks and LynxOS are definitely the biggest embedded operating systems in use today. But slowly they are acknowledging the power of GNU/Linux and how it can help them maximise deployments. HELP LINUX GO INDIAN: By using various translation tools, you can join Language translation groups working across India to help translate GNU/Linux into your language. EXPERT INTRODUCTION: Multi-threaded programming under Linux. KICKSTART YOUR Linux installation (Part I): Installing Red Hat Linux on multiple machines one after another can be quite tedious. To avoid answering the same question over and over again, try the KickStart method, as it does not need any user intervention. WRITE CHEQUES. NOT JUST BOOKS: Niyam Bhushan on how anybody can turn thoughts into words, and words into wealth. NFS CLIENTS for Windows. OpenSSL PACKAGE offers a vast crypto library of algorithms WAIT QUEUES in Linux device drivers UNDERSTANDING recursive sub-routines INDIA-RELATED NEWS: HP launches GNU/Linux laptop Mandrake's latest distribution Oracle announces 10g for GNU/Linux Delixus offers India Linux CxProtect anti-virus mailing solution for mail-servers Trade management system from Network Programs Netweb Technologies unveils Tyrone MRO-Tek rolls out Network Management Systems Review of FLOSS at BangaloreIT.com =========================================== DISCLOSURE: This journalist (FN) writes a monthly column for LFY and gets paid for it. Promoting awareness about the content of LFY however is not part of the job, and is carried on with the intention spreading awareness about FLOSS among different GNU/Linux user groups in India. -- Frederick Noronha : http://www.fredericknoronha.net : When we speak of free Freelance Journalist : http://www.bytesforall.org : software we refer to Ph 0091.832.2409490 : Cell 0 9822 122436 : freedom, not price.

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Open and popular ... FLOSS in Tamil
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 30 Jan '06

30 Jan '06

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2302/stories/20060210003909700.htm Open and popular A CORRESPONDENT An open-source suite of Tamil applications for the Windows operating system is the first of its kind for the platform. PANACEA DREAMWEAVERS, a Chennai-based software company, has released an open source suite of Tamil applications and tools into the public domain. It includes an accounting package, two dictionaries, a management software for self-help groups (SHGs), a simple text editor and a feature-rich word processor, and about 250 free fonts. Most of the products ship with the source code. It is claimed that this is the first such initiative by a company or organisation in the area of public domain Tamil software. A similar effort was sponsored by the Central Government, in which a collection of tools was acquired from private players and released for public consumption in a compact-disk form by Minister for Communications Dayanidhi Maran. However, none of the software included in the package was in open source format. Besides, the company claims that its efforts are a first in the Microsoft Windows-based Tamil computing environment. Most open-source Tamil applications are developed for the Linux operating system. Open-source software is software whose source code is made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify or redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees. Open source is associated with collaborative development, wherein developers who have access to the product's code correct any problems or deficiencies in it or add additional features, thereby helping the software to evolve. Many such applications are backed by a large number of developers from all over the world and have evolved into robust systems. Some well-known examples of open-source initiatives are the Linux operating system, the Integrated Development Environment Eclipse, the Apache web server and the Mozilla suite, including the web browser Firefox, which recorded its 100 millionth download recently. One of the most prominent advocates of free software is the Free Software Movement started by Richard Stallman in 1983. The movement is also active in India, but its adherents focus all their energies on writing software for open-source operating systems such as Linux and not for the commercial Windows platform. In the CD under review, the products are neatly divided into sections: Panacea Apps (short for applications), Panacea Desk, Panacea Valaiyodi, and Source. Panacea Apps comprises Mugavari (Tamil-English address book), Sangam Pro (SHG management package), Selvam (accounting software), Valluvan (documentation software), and Pulavan-Paalam (dictionaries). The Panacea Desk folder comprises Pathippu-250 (collection of 250 fonts), R4U (English-Tamil word processor), Saarathy (keyboard driver) and Tamil Olai (simple Tamil text editor). The Source folder includes the source code of all the products except R4U and Valaiyodi. According to the company, Sangam Pro is meant for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to assess and evaluate the performance of SHGs. Some of the features are the ability to enter and save details of loans, repayments, meeting schedules, deposits and membership. Selvam, the software for maintaining accounts in Tamil, is aimed at small and medium enterprises and is also suited for home users. R4U, a Tamil-English word processor, easily creates Tamil and even multilingual documents. Users can easily switch between English and Tamil typing. The other products in the suite are also useful and easy to navigate. The company's stated mission to develop the Valaiyodi browser into one that can translate English Web pages into Tamil is something to look forward to. Th applications have a few bugs, but they are minor and should not stand in the way of encouraging such attempts. The country sorely needs free software and open-source initiatives for the Information Technology revolution to reach most segments of society. And it is widely accepted that the best way to go about achieving this is to write software in the language of the people and make it available free of cost. Nevertheless, a few points need to be made. The collection of fonts in TAB and TAM formats is no doubt excellent but run the risk of obsolescence in a world that is quickly adopting Unicode as the standard for recognising non-English textual characters. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique a number for each character. In other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way, and leaves the visual rendering (size, shape, font or style) to other software, such as a Web browser or a word processor. Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP make extensive use of Unicode as an internal representation of text, while Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD and Mac OS X have adopted it as the basis of representation of multilingual text. Secondly, the dictionaries - both of which are well-structured and simple to use - need to be updated. The Tamil language has kept pace with the modern world and a dictionary with contemporary words and phrases and their usage will be most handy. It is hoped that the budding entrepreneurs behind the venture will do what is needed, for the collective good of the Tamil computing world. Panacea Dreamweavers, which is hardly a year old, is the brainchild of a group of entrepreneurs whose goal is to develop solutions for the Tamil language computing space, according to the founders. Their corporate philosophy is that Tamil language software must not place any financial compulsions on the end-user. The software developer community in India and abroad would do well to emulate this endeavour and come out with more such products so that the divide between the digital haves and have-nots is bridged.

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Meeting minutes of 27th Jan
by प्रव ीण् ए (Praveen A) 29 Jan '06

29 Jan '06

Hi, The last meeting at Kunningahm Road on 27th about FOSS Month ( http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Bangalore/FOSS_Month-2006 ) was awesome. We came up with a lot of ideas. Checkout the details http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/BoFs/Jan27-2006 Cheers Praveen -- "GNU is the system, and Linux is the kernel." A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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Localization as a movement in India (Rajesh Ranjan)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 29 Jan '06

29 Jan '06

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/015jan06/features/rhindia/ Localization as a movement in India by Rajesh Ranjan A few days back, a famous writer from Kannada, India, U R Anantmurthy, mentioned in an interview that languages are the repositories of culture. The importance of enabling this culture of languages to not merely survive but flourish in this digital age cannot be understated. If a language is not becoming part of digital advancement then the language will become outdated and endangered and in some cases might even become a thing of the past. End of a language means end of a culture. Thanks to the free software ideology and contemporary open source development methods that have given a new lease on life to many different languages, no matter how small we are, we now have the potential to fix this fundamental issue. Free and open source software, unlike other bureaucratic processes, enable each individual, including you, to contribute toward enabling local language computing and thereby expediting the process of adoption of technologies enabled by computers in rural India. We all can cherish Mahatma Gandhi's quote "Whatever you do will be insignificant but it's very important that you do it." That is why the free software movement enabled by collaborative peers in the community is of paramount importance here. It is a fact that proprietary groups cannot afford to fulfill the needs of the masses, especially in an economy with limited purchasing power, but we in the community of open source computing can rise to the occasion. In India, so many groups are working to have their languages enabled on computers. "Localizing free software for a free country" is the slogan of IndLinux, a major and popular group having enormous success with this work. IndLinux is a group of people who believe, not so surprisingly, that the benefits of information technology must be widely and freely available to the Indian masses. They are a group of people who combine skills in written scripts, free/open source technologies, and technology journalism to make this happen. This organization has inspired so many new groups to come forward to work together. Punlinux is one of the most successful examples. Within two years, this group has localized an enormous amount of content in Punjabi, a vibrant language and culture of India. Everything from Fedora® to GNOME to KDE to OpenOffice and all! A great success story from an organization based in rural India! None of the Punlinux members has any urban base! Mix of love for language and open source has produced unbelievable results like this one example. There are several other efforts being made to Indianize Linux®. One major effort, the Ankur Bangla Project, is a collaborative initiative aimed at bringing Bangla to the FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) desktop. The core objective of the Ankur Bangla Project is to make available a completely localized GNU/Linux OS and they have received notable success in this field. Open source contribution of Utkarsh in giving the power of computers to the Gujarati speaking populace is also immense. It is one of the most professionally managed organizations. IndianOSS is another one committed to the cause of Gujarati computing. Tamil has several active communities. http://sourceforge.net/projects/zha is one of the major efforts. TAMIL-LINux is another group involved in the development of Tamil on Linux/Unix. The BharateeyaOO project is an initiative to bring OpenOffice to India in Indian languages by the ICT Research and Training Centre (India). It is being done as part of the activities of the Development Gateway Foundation. Project Malayalam for the Malayalam Package offers a set of macros and fonts for typesetting Malayalam, which is the primary language of an estimated 33 million people in the South Indian state of Kerala. The Linux in Oriya project is the initiative for making Linux available in Oriya. The GNU/Linux Telugu Localization Effort aims at localizing most common applications on GNU/Linux to Telugu including GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, and OpenOffice. Swathantra Malayalam Computing at present is focusing on translating/localizing GNU/Linux GUI into Malayalam. Swathantra Malayalam fonts is a sub-project of Swathantra Malayalam Computing. Their aim is to make enough free (Swathantra) Malayalam fonts. Indic Trans also works in the field of Linux localization in Indian languages. The Indic-Computing Project is providing technical documentation for Indian language computing issues. There are several more names: Kannada Localization Initiative works for Kannada language and Thamiz Linux is yet another effort from the Tamil language. Free software localization in Assamese works for Assamese, MarathiOpenSource works for Marathi language, Swecha is a GNU/Linux Telugu localization effort for Telugu language, and http://thamizha.com encompasses multiple projects such as localization of Firefox and OpenOffice among others. A project has even started for minority languages like Maithili, which is spoken in a particular part of a state of India and was incorporated in the schedule of the constitution of India in recent years. It is a fact that in some projects, the pace of work may not be as rapid, but the above examples show there is great awareness and response towards transparent and collaborative open source localization and its methodology. If the subcontinent of India could be described in a single keyword, diversity would be it. There are about 500 languages in India in which 22 of them are considered official. It's easy enough to imagine the situation merely by knowing that in a small country like Nepal there are more than 50 languages. Sooner or later these smaller languages can hope to go hand in hand with information technology but only through the free software philosophy. The localization movement in the neighboring countries of India has also started. The language of the mountains of Gorkhali, a.k.a. Nepali, has only 1.6 million speakers. A group working with Madan Puraskar Pustakalay has shown a significant momentum in the field of localization in Nepali language last year. This group has completely localized the Gnome desktop. Dzongkha, sometimes called Bhutanese, is the national language of the Kingdom of Bhutan. The goal of Dzongkha Localization Project is to incorporate Dzongkha script into Linux to enable computing in Dzongkha to provide the benefit of information and communication technology to the Bhutanese masses. This project is implemented by the Royal Government of Bhutan and is being funded by International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada, through its Pan Asia Networking (PAN). The Sinhala Linux Project is another project to localize Linux in Sinhala. This was started by Lanka Linux User Group (LKLUG). The PAN Localization Project has a broader reach. It is a regional initiative to develop local language capacity in Asia. This organization is working for the following languages: Bangla, Dzongkha, Khmer, Lao, Nepali, Pashto, Sinhala, and Urdu. Generally, dominant languages suppress minority languages. But in the case of Punjabi in Pakistan it is different. In Pakistan, Punjabi is spoken by the majority but the government there does not seem to support this language. So Punlinux has planned to start the localization of Punjabi in Shamukhi script and already filed an enhancement request to create a separate locale for it. This can only be possible in the world of open source! Just like a democracy where every person is equal, in the eyes of open source, every language can be made equal in computing! Localization of open source software is a transparent and community-driven process. That is why it is easier to customize the software according to local needs. Sometimes, due to cultural differences, people may not be comfortable with western user interfaces. But the difficulty does not stop there. Imagine the struggle of the typical rural Indian to understand metaphors like folders and recycle bins! You might as well as speak Greek, no offense to the friendly folks from Greece. It is particularly true in the case of a major language like Hindi and languages like Bengali and Punjabi that are spoken in two different countries that the whole language is basically split into different zones in two neighboring countries. Hindi is spoken and understood by more than half of the Indian population and has innumerable dialects. In the open source environment, it is easier to modify things according to specific needs irrespective of the profit-loss theory so very typical of the proprietary world. The open source model is not only helping to achieve the local need but also maintains respect for the local emotions. For example, Bengali is now divided into two separate locale (bn_BD and bn_IN) in Fedora and Mozilla after the demand from the community. Basically, localization in open source alone has the power to represent futuristic language computing. The contribution of Red Hat making the localization effort successful and lively is enormous. By selecting five Indian languages (Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi and Gujarati), Red Hat has given great impetus to l10n and i18n works related to Indian needs. Working on a computer with local languages was never so easy. Red Hat launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora in those five Indian languages and localized them at not only the application level but at the operating system level also. Red Hat is going to launch similar efforts in eight more languages: Assamese (as), Kannada (kn), Malayalam (ml), Marathi (mr), Oriya (or), Sinhala (si), Telugu (te), and Urdu (ur). This is enough to demonstrate Red Hat's compassion and commitment to India and its local language computing industry. The President of India, Abdul Kalam once said, "In India, open source code software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people." In a poor country like India where per capita income is much lower than the average, words of our president and visionary Mr. Kalam should be an important bottom line. These localized computers will be very useful in the field of rural computing. The people of real India only speak their native languages. For them, English represents the language and culture of British domination and exploitations. In analyzing why radio and television has a deep-rooted impact in India, especially in the rural areas, we can understand that the main reason is the availability of television programs produced in local languages. The localization movement in India has made 'alien' computer 'desi' one--hamara computer, tumhara computer. The Local Language IT market is in a development stage and it is rising with exponential growth. E-governance is one major field where localization of software is a must. The cost of hardware is going down very fast and in this context, the future of localized open source software is great. Last year the government started a program to launch localized CDs in all 22 official languages. Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu language CDs have already launched. Many of the applications available on the CD were released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This is a success story of the localization movement in India. The initiative has been funded by the Indian government. It has planned to distribute 3.5 million copies of the Hindi Language CDs after the popularity. IndiX is a project funded by TDIL working on Indian language support for Linux. CDAC, a government organization, has also done important work for supporting open source software localization. There are many people and several organizations in India that support the open source ideology. A strikingly unique example of this is the establishment of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya (Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University) in 1997. An eminent Hindi poet and former Secretary in the Ministry of Culture of India, Mr. Ashok Vajpeyi was the first vice chancellor of the university and he made the decision to run the university completely on open source. During his tenure, two books (in Hindi) and a bilingual magazine (in Hindi and English) were published completely on open source technology. Having open source computer based technology which works in a native language, particularly in Hindi, was the main target of the university. (On the website it is still the same!!) It is unfortunate that the situation hasn't been so positive after the completion of his term! The Delhi-based non-profit organization Sarai is fully committed to the use, propagation, and development of free software. Sarai has played a key role in the localization of some of the Indian languages. According to Sarai, free software emerged as a democratic alternative to proprietary control over code. Sarai has encouraged so many people to engage and enlarge this domain by giving fellowships and having several workshops. The work of localization started long before and now it has taken the form of movement. Internet availability, lack of resources, and illiteracy are some hindrances in the path of local language computing. The major hurdle is the mentality of the English speaking elite who sneer at the local language computing efforts. The elite have not had any grass-root experience, but they are still controlling the major positions within administration and finance. But ultimately they have to stumble down against the force of the local language computing market. Two decades ago, the condition of the television industry was similar to the present computer industry in India. Positive changes are inevitable and also not very far off in the field of computers. Poet Mr. Ashok Vajpeyi once wrote that the Indian tradition of selfless distribution of knowledge is very old and universal. We can say that the free software movement is the western version of the old Indian tradition. Mr. Vajpeyi's statement is very right and so, in the long term, Indian soil will prove itself very fertile for open source software. "Where knowledge is free" was the dream of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore for his nation and now the time is moving ahead toward his dreamland About the author: Rajesh Ranjan is Language Maintainer, Hindi at Red Hat. He is working with several localization projects including Fedora, GNOME, Openoffice.org, and Mozilla. He is the Indic Language Co-ordinator for the Native Language Confederation of Openoffice.org. Before joining Red Hat, he worked with The Indian Express Group and Literate World, Inc.

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(no subject)
by sarang pathak 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

--------------------------------- Jiyo cricket on Yahoo! India cricket

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Microsoft to give access to code
by james mathew 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4649348.stm *Microsoft has said it will allow rival software companies access to license parts of the source code for its Windows operating system.* The concession was made in response to a 2004 European Commission anti-trust ruling, which ordered the company to be more open to competitors' needs. It came three weeks ahead of the EU's compliance deadline, which threatened fines of 2m euros (£1.4m; $2.4m) a day. The commission said it was not sure the offer would help resolve the dispute. Microsoft's legal chief, Brad Smith insisted "the source code is the ultimate documentation. "It should have the answer to any questions that remain." But competition commissioner Neelie Kroes disagreed. "Normally speaking, the source code is not the ultimate documentation of anything," she said. "[This is] precisely the reason why programmers are required to provide comprehensive documentation to go along with their source code." *Needle in a haystack* Microsoft said the code will help rivals make their software compatible with its own. "We will ... license the Windows source code itself," said Mr Smith. "Today we are putting our most valuable intellectual property on the table so we can put technical compliance issues to rest and move forward with a serious discussion about the substance of the case." Rivals were not impressed. "Even the most sophisticated software engineers would be lost," said Thomas Vinje, a lawyer who represents some Microsoft opponents, dismissing Microsoft's move as a PR stunt. "They would dump millions of lines of code and finding what competitors need to interoperate would be like looking for a needle in a haystack." *Record fine* The compliance deadline was set in December when the European Commission said that Microsoft's offer of 12,000 pages of documentation and 500 hours of free technical support was not adequate. The landmark 2004 ruling said the world's biggest software company was guilty of abusing its position and hit Microsoft with a record 497m euros fine, telling it to open up its operating systems. Microsoft said that the latest concession went "far beyond" the 2004 decision. It maintains that it has tried to comply with the EU's demands, but says that Brussels keeps changing its guidelines. The EU's second highest court, the European Court of First Instance, will hear Microsoft's appeal against the 2004 ruling in April. -- "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? Is is neither able nor willing, Then why call him GOD??"

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[Fwd: NetBSD live CD]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

Thanks Haidut, I'll pass the word around. FN -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Haidut <haidut(a)metawire.org> To: fred(a)bytesforall.org Subject: NetBSD live CD Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 23:14:24 -0500 (EST) Hello, I am one of the developers of Arudius - a live CD Linux distro targeting information security professionals. The CD has a large collection of security tools and a very small footprint (210MB) so it fits on a mini-CD, thus it can load its tools completely into RAM and run them very fast. In addition to this security-related Linux distribution, we also developed a NetBSD live CD focusing on the non-security community. It is called NeWBIE (or simply Newbie). This acronym is pronounced just like the word "newbie" and stands for (Ne)tBSD (W)are (B)urned (I)n (E)conomy, a naming convention similar to the one used for the well-known FreeSBIE CD. Newbie caters to the desktop-user (i.e. with applications for web browsing, chat, multimedia, document editing, etc) but will also serve as a core for creating a NetBSD-based live CD for network security auditing just like Arudius (see the website). We are also in the process of developing a DragonflyBSD version of NeWBIE. The goal of both CDs is to promote the usage of Linux/BSD and hopefully serve as useful tools for people who need that kind of software. We would appreciate it if you try out the CDs and give us some feedback on how we can improve them (i.e configuration, install additional software, etc). If you find any of the CDs to be useful, please mention them on your site or post a link to the homepage - http://arudius.sourceforge.net Thank you very much for your attention and if you have any questions feel free to send an email to haidut(a)gmail.com best regards, Haidut

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Samba 4.0 getting ready
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

Samba on its maturity path. ------ "Q: For how long has development on Samba 4 been going on now? Jeremy Allison: I think it started about a year ago, maybe longer. And it's big, it's biting off a lot of stuff. Right now the Kerberos Domain Controller and the LDAP server are less well developed than other areas, and that's where a lot of the work is going on with now... The problem is, people tend to trust their LDAP server; the one they have. So there are some tensions in Samba 4. One of the things is, there are many many people who have - let's say - they've got a small office with 50 computers or whatever. They don't have an LDAP server, they don't want an LDAP server, they don't know what an LDAP server is, they just want something that will standardise all their accounts in a single file. So for that, a built-in Samba 4 LDAP server is great, is exactly what they want...." Complete story at http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&… CK Raju

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Free Software Award Winner Announced
by Anivar Aravind 25 Jan '06

25 Jan '06

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Sullivan <johns(a)fsf.org> Date: Jan 26, 2006 12:53 AM Boston Massachusetts, USA - Wednesday January 25, 2006. At the ceremony for the 2006 Free Software Awards, Richard Stallman presented Andrew Tridgell with the award for the advancement of free software. Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell was recognized for his work as originator and developer of the Samba project. Samba reverse-engineered Microsoft's version of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, which is used for file-sharing and print services. This software enables free operating systems to fit into Microsoft-based environments, encouraging greater use and adoption of free software. Samba has been implemented on millions of servers throughout the world. Tridge also released rsync, a highly respected remote file-distribution system, and contributed code to the Linux kernel. During 2005, Tridge wrote a free software client to interoperate with BitKeeper, a proprietary revision control system used at the time by the Linux kernel developers. His reverse-engineering efforts led BitMover Inc. to remove permission for the use of BitKeeper, paving the way for a free software replacement. The Linux kernel is now being developed using a revision control system called Git, begun by Linus Torvalds and licensed under the GPL. Every year, three finalists are nominated for the award by the free software community. This year's other two finalists were Harmut Pilch, recognized as founder of Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) and for his leadership during the fight against the Software Patent Directive in Europe, and Theodore T'so, recognized for his work on file systems and the Linux kernel. Previous winners of the Free Software Award * 2004 Theo de Raadt * 2003 Alan Cox * 2002 Lawrence Lessig * 2001 Guido van Rossum * 2000 Brian Paul * 1999 Miguel de Icaza * 1998 Larry Wall This year's Award Committee: Peter H. Salus (chair), Richard Stallman, Alan Cox (winner 2003), Lawrence Lessig (winner 2002), Guido van Rossum (winner 2001), Frederic Couchet, Jonas Oberg, Hong Feng, Bruce Perens, Raju Mathur, Suresh Ramasubramanian, Enrique A. Chaparro, Ian Murdock. The Free Software Foundation sponsors the annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software, to recognize and honor those that have made a great contribution to the progress and development of Free Software (free as in freedom as defined in the Free Software Definition), through activities that accord with the spirit of software freedom. Any kind of activity could be eligible---writing software, writing documentation, publishing software, even journalism---but whatever the activity, we want to recognize long-term central contributions to the development of the world of software freedom. "Accord with the spirit" means, for example, that software, manuals or collections of them (online or on CD) must be entirely free. Work done commercially is eligible, but we give this award to individuals, not to companies, organizations, or teams. You can support the award and the work of the Free Software Foundation here.[1] [1] http://www.fsf.org/donate -- John Sullivan Program Administrator | Phone: (617)542-5942 x23 51 Franklin Street, 5th Fl. | Fax: (617)542-2652 Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA | GPG: AE8600B6 Anivar Aravind -- Knowledge is power... share it equitably! http://www.gnu.org

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GNU/Hurd on Qemu
by प्रव ीण् ए (Praveen A) 25 Jan '06

25 Jan '06

Hi, This is the most easiest way to try GNU/Hurd. http://www.zabor.org/balrog/hurd/ A beautifully built qemu image of GNU/Hurd. Try it now !! Cheers Praveen -- "GNU is the system, and Linux is the kernel." A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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Fsf-friends January 2006