Fsf-friends October 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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RSF: 24-hour online demo against internet censorship (November 8)
by Anivar Aravind 31 Oct '06

31 Oct '06

Reporters without borders urges internet users to join in 24-hour online demo against internet censorship http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19459 Where: www.rsf.org When: 11 A.M. on 7 November to 11 A.M. on 8 November No one should ever be prevented from posting news online or writing a blog, but they are in the 13 countries singled out by Reporters Without Borders for a 24-hour online protest against Internet censorship. Worldwide, 61 people are currently in prison for posting "subversive" content on a blog or website. Reporters Without Borders is compiling a list of 13 countries whose governments are "Internet enemies" because they censor and block online content that criticises them. The Internet scares. Censors of every kind exploit its flaws and attack those who pin their hopes on it. Multinationals such as Yahoo! cooperate with the Chinese government in filtering the Internet and tracking down cyber-dissidents. The defence of online free expression and the fate of bloggers in repressive countries concern everyone. So Reporters Without Borders is offering Internet users tools to campaign against Internet predators and is calling on them to participate in an INTERNATIONAL CYBER-DEMO. Everyone is invited to support this struggle by connecting to the Reporters Without Borders website (www.rsf.org) between 11 a.m. (Paris time) on Tuesday, 7 November, and 11 a.m. on Wednesday, 8 November. Each click will help to change the "Internet Black Holes" map and help to combat censorship. As many people as possible must participate so that this operation can be a success and have an impact on those governments that try to seal off what is meant to be a space where people can express themselves freely. Protests will also be staged by Reporters Without Borders bureaux around the world to condemn Internet censorship and ethical misconduct of the Internet giants when operating in one of these countries. Reporters Without Borders will publish the list of the 13 Internet enemies on 7 November and at the same time will launch its blog platform, rsfblog, and an Arabic-language version of its press freedom website. The agency Saatchi & Saatchi has created an Internet ad calling on the entire Internet community to take part in the 24-hour campaign. All media, websites and blogs that want to support this large-scale protest are invited to get in touch with Cédric Gervet at +33 1 4483-8474. Freedom of expression is not a luxury. It is everyone's right!

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Re: [ILUG-BOM] Mr. Stallman's talk at Himachal
by Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

> Here's a link to the report on the speech of Mr. > Stallman. Neat and simple. > http://www.himvani.com/news/2006/10/28/im-saint-ignucius-richard-mathew-sta… That article has been authored by Mrs. Saroj Thakur-- lecturer of English in NIT Hamirpur. There are a few typos though. > One could actually, be surprised, at the initial two > photographs. Why? Here are some more (not complete): ftp://glug-nith.org/media/rms/20061025-nitham/ ftp://glug-nith.org/media/rms/rms-20061025-nitham.tar.bz2 ftp://glug-nith.org/media/rms/rms-20061025-nitham.tar.gz Cheers, Debarshi -- "India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather a developed nation in an advanced state of decay." --Shashi Tharoor

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Mr. Stallman's talk at Himachal
by Roshan 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

Here's a link to the report on the speech of Mr. Stallman. Neat and simple. http://www.himvani.com/news/2006/10/28/im-saint-ignucius-richard-mathew-sta… One could actually, be surprised, at the initial two photographs. -- http://houdini-aboutnothing.blogspot.com/ __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/

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KERALA: MBC-LUG makes a silent entry ..
by Frederick Noronha 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

Prof George Easaw is our friend from Goa, geasaw @ gmail.com, who recently shifted to Kerala. He has played a key role in building GNU/Linux skills at the Goa Engineering College, including in arranging the visit and talk of Richard M Stallman to this institution! We all miss him in Goa. But at least, he's lighting fires elsewhere :-) FN MBC-LUG makes a silent entry .. The Linux User Group (MBC-LUG) at Mar Baselios Christian College of Engineering and Technology, Peermade, Iduki, Kerala has started functioning from 25 October 2006. Ms Reenu George, faculty from Comp Science Engg will be co-ordinating the meetings. The first meeting was attended by six staff members and almost 20 students from first year to final year of engg from diff branches. The meeting was held in the new 60+3 machine lab (all PIV, with LCD monitors) with it's own audio (5 + 1 woofer) and video projection facilities. Probably this is the first dedicated Linux lab with this capacity ( 60 + 3) anywhere in the state of Kerala ......!!!!! and hope it is the first in India too .. The meeting started with an explanation of the concept of free software and the birth of Gnu / Linux, the role played by RMS, ( he is a familiar name here..). The demo was very interesting for the staff and students most of whom were working on Gnu / Linux for the very first time .. It was interesting to navigate thru Linux using the text commands and also to do some matrix computations and 2D plotting using Octave. The LUG will meet every Tuesday from 4.30 to 6 PM (except during exam time..) The Lab will anyway be open for students to work upto 8 PM on any working day.. Internet connectivity will be given to the lab soon. The lab technicians are slowly getting used to networking in Linux which too will be done soon.., connecting all the 63 machines.. -- Kind regards, George Easaw Ph.D., Professor, Dept. of Mech Engg., MBC College of Engg. Kuttikanam, Peermade, Idukki, Kerala. 685 531 INDIA. mobile : (0)-924-931-9335 -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org 9822122436 +91-832-240-9490 http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/ Free Software gives you the freedom to run, study, copy and improve software!

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Top Story on Forbes : [RMS] Toppling Linux
by Baishampayan Ghose 27 Oct '06

27 Oct '06

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello, The guys at the Forbes magazine seem to have got something absolutely wrong. There is a front-page article on Forbes which claims ``Software radical Richard Stallman helped build the Linux revolution. Now he threatens to tear it apart.'' It then goes on to say, ``Richard M. Stallman is a 53-year-old anticorporate crusader who has argued for 20 years that most software should be free of charge.'' and also calls all the Free Software supporters ``a band of anarchist acolytes''. The author makes a lot of laughable claims in the whole article which in some way seems to be targeted directly at defaming rms and the Free Software Movement. I think we should protest against it by mailing Forbes. The full article is located at http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/1030/104_print.html I am quoting the full article here so that people can read it without visiting the website, text in [] are mine -- - --- On The Cover/Top Stories Toppling Linux Daniel Lyons 10.30.06 Software radical Richard Stallman helped build the Linux revolution. Now he threatens to tear it apart. The free Linux operating system set off one of the biggest revolutions in the history of computing when it leapt from the fingertips of a Finnish college kid named Linus Torvalds 15 years ago. Linux now drives $15 billion in annual sales of hardware, software and services, and this wondrous bit of code has been tweaked by thousands of independent programmers to run the world's most powerful supercomputers, the latest cell phones and TiVo video recorders and other gadgets. But while Torvalds has been enshrined as the Linux movement's creator, a lesser-known programmer--infamously more obstinate and far more eccentric than Torvalds--wields a startling amount of control as this revolution's resident enforcer. Richard M. Stallman is a 53-year-old anticorporate crusader who has argued for 20 years that most software should be free of charge. He and a band of anarchist acolytes long have waged war on the commercial software industry, dubbing tech giants "evil" and "enemies of freedom" because they rake in sales and enforce patents and copyrights--when he argues they should be giving it all away. Despite that utopian anticapitalist bent, Linux and the "open-source" software movement have lured billions of dollars of investment from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Red Hat and other tech vendors, plus corporate customers such as Wall Street banks, Google and Amazon and Hollywood special-effects shops. IBM has spent a billion dollars embracing Linux, using it as a counterweight to the Microsoft Windows monopoly and to Sun Microsystems' Unix-based business. Now Stallman is waging a new crusade that could end up toppling the revolution he helped create. He aims to impose new restrictions on IBM and any other tech firm that distributes software using even a single line of Linux code. They would be forbidden from using Linux software to block users from infringing on copyright and intellectual-property rights ("digital rights management"); and they would be barred from suing over alleged patent infringements related to Linux. Stallman's hold on the Linux movement stems from the radical group he formed in 1985: the Free Software Foundation. The Boston outfit, which he still runs, is guided by a "manifesto" he published that year, urging programmers (hackers) to join his socialist crusade. The group made Stallman a cult hero among hackers--and ended up holding licensing rights to crucial software components that make up the Linux system. Stallman hopes to use that licensing power to slap the new restraints on the big tech vendors he so reviles. At worst it could split the Linux movement in two--one set of suppliers and customers deploying an older Linux version under the easier rules and a second world using a newer version governed by the new restrictions. That would threaten billions of dollars in Linux investment by customers and vendors alike. Click here to see which tech companies Stallman's attack could hurt. A cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler, Stallman won't comment on any of this because he was upset by a previous story written by this writer. But his brazen gambit already is roiling the hacker world. His putsch "has the potential to inflict massive collateral damage upon our entire ecosystem and jeopardize the very utility and survival of open source," says a paper published in September by key Linux developers, who "implore" Stallman to back down. "This is not an exaggeration," says James Bottomley, the paper's chief author. "There is significant danger to going down this path." (Stallman's camp claims Bottomley's paper contains "inaccurate information.") Simon Lok, chief of Lok Technology in San Jose, Calif., a maker of cheap wireless-networking gear, dumped Linux a few years ago in fear of the Stallman bunch. "I said, 'One day these jackasses will do something extreme, and it's going to kill us.' Now it's coming to fruition," Lok says. "Some of this stuff is just madness. These guys are fanatics." He adds: "Who do these people think they are?" Even the Linux program's progenitor and namesake, Linus Torvalds, rejects Stallman's new push to force tech companies to design their software his way and to abandon patent rights. Torvalds vows to stick with the old license terms, thereby threatening the split that tech vendors so fear. The new license terms Stallman proposes "are trying to move back into a more 'radical' and 'activist' direction," Torvalds says via e-mail. "I think it's great when people have ideals--but ideals (like religion) are a hell of a lot better when they are private. I'm more pragmatic." But then, Richard Stallman rarely is pragmatic--and in some ways he is downright bizarre. He is corpulent and slovenly, with long, scraggly hair, strands of which he has been known to pluck out and toss into a bowl of soup he is eating. His own Web site (www.stallman.org) says Stallman engages in what he calls "rhinophytophilia"--"nasal sex" (also his term) with flowers; he brags of offending a bunch of techies from Texas Instruments by plunging his schnoz into a bouquet at dinner and inviting them to do the same. His site also boasts a recording of him singing--a capella and badly--his own anthem to free software. ("Hoarders can get piles of money / that is true, hackers, that is true. / But they cannot help their neighbors, that's not good, hackers, that's not gooood," he warbles, which culminates in polite applause from his followers.) He hasn't hacked much new code in a decade or more. Instead he travels the world to give speeches and pull publicity stunts, donning robes and a halo to appear as a character he calls "St. IGNUcius" and offer blessings to his followers. (GNU, coined in his first manifesto, is pronounced "Ga-NEW" and stands for "Gnu's Not Unix"; the central Linux license is known as the GNU license.) And though he styles himself as a crusader for tech "freedom," Stallman labors mightily to control how others think, speak and act, arguing, in Orwellian doublespeak, that his rules are necessary for people to be "free." He won't speak to reporters unless they agree to call the operating system "GNU/Linux," not Linux. He urges his adherents to avoid such terms as "intellectual property" and touts "four freedoms" he has sworn to defend, numbering them 0, 1, 2 and 3. In June Stallman attempted to barge into the residence of the French prime minister to protest a copyright bill, then unrolled a petition in a Paris street while his adoring fans snapped photos. Long ago Stallman was a gifted programmer. A 1974 graduate of Harvard with a degree in physics, he began graduate school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology but dropped out and took a job in an MIT lab. There he grew furious that companies wouldn't let him tinker with the code in their products. A Xerox laser printer was a key culprit. In the early 1980s he called on hackers to fight their oppressors by helping him create a free clone of Unix, naming it GNU. Stallman and his allies hacked away for nearly a decade but couldn't get GNU to work. In 1991 Torvalds, then an unknown college kid in Finland, produced in six months what Stallman's team had failed to build in years--a working "kernel" for an operating system. Torvalds posted this tiny 230-kilobyte file containing 10,000 lines of code to a public server, dubbing it "Linux" and inviting anyone to use it. Soon people were combining Torvalds' Linux kernel with Stallman's GNU components to make a complete operating system. The program was a hit. But to Stallman's dismay people referred to it as Linux, not GNU. Torvalds became famous. Stallman got pushed aside. The ultimate insult came in 1999 when his Free Software Foundation was given a "Linus Torvalds Award." Stallman accepted but said it was "like giving the Han Solo award to the Rebel Alliance." As programmers wrote hundreds of building blocks to add to Linux, Stallman's Free Software Foundation persuaded them to hand over their copyrights to the group and let it handle licensing of their code. Stallman wrote the central license for Linux: the GNU General Public License or GPL. For his part, Linux creator Torvalds never signed his creation over to the group--but he did adopt the GNU license, granting Stallman further sway. In recent years Stallman and the FSF have been cracking down on big Linux users, enforcing terms of the existing license (GPLv2, for version 2) and demanding that the big tech outfits crack open their proprietary code whenever they inserted lines from Linux. Cisco and TiVo have been targets; Cisco caved in to Stallman's demands rather than endure months of abuse from his noisy worldwide cult of online jihadists. Nvidia, which makes graphics cards for Linux computers but won't release enough of the code behind them to satisfy Stallmanites, also came under attack. "It's an enemy of the free software community, so we call them 'inVideous,'" says Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation. Now the Stallman stalwarts are pushing a new version of the Linux license--GPLv3, with its tougher restrictions and a ban on anything that would protect or enforce copyright and other digital rights. Thus Stallman is living an anarchist's dream: The tech giants he has spent his career attacking send lawyers to sit at his feet and beg. Stallman has invited companies to comment on his drafts but insists he alone decides what goes into the final version, due in early 2007. Often he won't listen. HP suggested changes in patent language in the new license. In a sign of how much fear Stallman inspires even at the largest tech company in the world, HP's lawyers emphasize they didn't "ask for changes"--they merely "suggested modifications." Whatever. Stallman rejected them. In September a committee of leading Linux companies spent two days in Chicago discussing the GPLv3 with Stallman's representatives--and left worried. Stallman's camp refused to answer even simple questions about whether v2 and v3 code will be able to coexist. "They've been at this for nine months, and it's time to clarify. Everyone wants to make sure that Linux keeps accelerating," says Stuart Cohen, chief executive of Open Source Development Labs, a vendor-funded consortium in Beaverton, Ore. that employs Linus Torvalds and supports Linux development. Most major tech vendors declined comment rather than risk tangling with Stallman's enforcers, such as his sidekick and attorney, Columbia Law School professor Eben Moglen. A spokesman for Novell, the second-biggest Linux distributor, says the company won't comment because negotiations are ongoing. Red Hat also declined to comment. Privately some Linux vendors say they hope Stallman will relent and soften the terms of GPLv3. One big potential victim of the Stallman stunt is Red Hat, the leading Linux distributor, with 61% market share. Red Hat bundles together hundreds of programs contributed by thousands of outside coders. If Linus Torvalds sticks with his old kernel under the older and less restrictive version-2 license, and Stallmanites ship version-3 code, what is Red Hat to do? The two licenses appear to be incompatible. There's also the problem of forfeiting patent enforcement rights if Red Hat ships v3 code. Red Hat could stay with an entirely "v2" Linux system, taking on the burden of developing its own versions of whatever programs move to v3. But it's not clear that Red Hat has the staffing to do that. "Red Hat gets a lot of code from people who don't work for Red Hat. They would have to replace all that and do the work in-house," says Larry W. McVoy, chief executive of software developer Bitmover and a longtime Torvalds collaborator. Even then, however, Stallman and his loyalists may carry on developing their own v3 versions. This "forking" of multiple incompatible versions could lead to "Balkanization" and derail Linux, the Torvalds camp warns. Red Hat and other Linux promoters also may find themselves in an awkward spot with customers. "IT managers want to buy stuff that puts them at as little risk as possible. If there was a risk that Stallman could become such a loose cannon, that's something most IT managers would have wanted to know before they bet their companies on Linux," McVoy says. Some customers are wary. ActiveGrid, an open-source software maker in San Francisco, originally planned to distribute its program under a gpl license but changed plans after a big European bank declared it wouldn't use products covered by the gpl, says Peter Yared, chief executive of ActiveGrid. The biggest beneficiaries of Stallman's suicide-bomber move could be other companies Stallman detests: the proprietary old guard--Microsoft, which pitches its Windows operating system as "safer" than Linux, and Sun, which lost customers to Linux but now hopes to lure them back to an open-source version of its Solaris system, which doesn't use the GPL. And a big loser, eventually, could be Stallman himself. If he relents now, he likely would be branded a sellout by his hard-core followers, who might abandon him. If he stands his ground, customers and tech firms may suffer for a few years but ultimately could find a way to work around him. Either way, Stallman risks becoming irrelevant, a strange footnote in the history of computing: a radical hacker who went on a kamikaze mission against his own program and went down in flames, albeit after causing great turmoil for the people around him. Collateral Damage Richard Stallman's kamikaze attack on Linux could hurt tech companies that have built thriving businesses on top of this free program. These are the top targets. [HP, Novell, Red Hat, IBM] - --- Regards, BG - -- Baishampayan Ghose <b.ghose(a)gnu.org.in> Free Software Foundation of India http://www.gnu.org.in/ 1024D/86361B74 BB2C E244 15AD 05C5 523A 90E7 4249 3494 8636 1B74 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFPfWLQkk0lIY2G3QRAsEpAKCLIvzRymnA7CWAOpW50tPL0WxEtQCgvXq6 vLBsQro33MrxpL0adKMHaKk= =sJjV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Linux on cheap BigApple PCs from Rs.3000 onwards.
by Nutan Ishfaq 27 Oct '06

27 Oct '06

Hi Linuxers, Now, if you folks saw the ad from BigApple in the Indian Express yesterday, you should see *tremendous* potential in it for both Linux and Linuxers. [BigApple is at http://bigapple.in/] You have expertise in installing and troubleshooting Linux. You have a shared knowledge base. You guys are helpful and open minded. You deserve to take this up and benefit from it either by credit or by cash. Here is how I think you can go about doing it: (1) BigApple is selling Pentium 1, 2 and 3 based PCs at prices as low as Rs. 3000/- !! Which means their target customers are the low income group. Naturally, they cannot afford to buy a licensed version of Windows. And obviously, you cannot expect Windows XP or Win2000 to run on those low end machines - trust me - I have an old P-1 166 MHz with 128 MB RAM and it is *pathetic* with anything more than Windows 98. (2) Enter Linux! Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux, Flash Linux, UTUTO Linux, SLAX Linux, and obviously, Knoppix. (3) I hear someone shout: "But Linux is not dumb-user friendly". Google for XPde, EDE, xfce. These *mimic* the Windows Look and Feel, running over X, and since they are just desktops, you can always switch your Linux distro keeping the look and feel the same !! We could have someone providing a migration application which would shift all your data from one distro to another, but set up the same desktop and of course, restore your data as well. (Just save all the migration settings and desktop data in an xml file) (4) We have GnuBharati already, so, BigApple can pre-install GnuBharati onto their PCs for non-English users - Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, etc. - that's a *big* user base. (5) People basically use PCs to make text documents, spreadsheets, presentations(Open Office), listen to music, watch movies, play games, chat, surf the web, send and receive email. All these apps are stable and mature on Linux long ago. You know more than I do :-). (6) So, what remains is user training, that is, *if* you still find XPde / EDE / xfce not good enough. NOTE: this situation is highly unlikely, but nevertheless. There are one hell of a lot of unemployed BSc and ITI-trained youngsters. Since the PCs come at Rs.3000/- to Rs. 5000/- and in Marathi or Hindi, everyone will want to own a computer. So, if these guys go around every house installing PCs, they will make a decent income as well. (I should be a Minister, don't you think? :-) :-) ) (7) None of the people who have bought P4's will ever revert to P3,2,1. I mean, that does not happen, simply. So, we are not troubling anyone's market share. Means, nobody will trouble us with litigation, threats or pressure. And, since nobody really purchases Windows licenses for home PCs, Microsoft wont lose any income either. So, this is clean business, without hurting anyone's revenue or business. (8) What has brought about this new change? BigApple kept aside the traditional profit hunger for the benefit of a non-targetted market segment. Normal hardware assemblers are out-and-out profit-hungry people. Even if they *can* provide older processors for cheap, they will say that they cannot, and so, they force the latest, unnecessarily high tech products down our throats. BigApple has decided to be different. So, poor folk in this country will also get computers. (9) Triband / DataOne is good. Majorly. Its freakin' cool! So, now, since your computer is going to be used only for mail, office documents, music and web surfing, you can depend on Web2.0 providers like Google, ZOHO etc. for online storage of your documents. So, in simple words, ********************************************************************************* Your old P3,2,1 PC is a *thin client* for your ZOHO / Google server! ********************************************************************************* (10) Now to the *fairy tale* angle: One Rs.5000/- PC in each village of India with *one* high speed broadband connection means that village is connected to the world for about Rs.1000/- a month. Permanently. Yup! (a) If you keep a program running that will relay weather forecasts, Thunderstorm warnings, farming information, rates of foodgrains, business outsourcing to villages from cities (idea released under GFDL), etc. you have a heaven just waiting to descend onto the Indian landscape. (b) e-governance. I think "samajhdar ko ishara kafi hai". (c) [more applications waiting to be invented in the near future by FSF / Mum-LUG / BigApple ] I guess I have taken a lot of your time by now. The big idea is out. Run and grab it! (Gosh! I sound like an ad maker !! ;-) ) Wishing you all (at least some) success with this new idea, Best wishes, A badly trapped M$ slave :-) Btw, I am NOT a BigApple employee! Instead, I'm a poor M$ ASP.Net programmer venting out my frustration at being forced to buy Windows XP Pro for $149 + INR 1800+ as custom duty and shipping charges (= INR 8000+) , because all my customers have Windows (pirated, of course) on their machines. One thing that does strike me is that these folks find *Windows* difficult to use!! So maybe there is some *important* lesson for aspiring desktop Linux support engineers. I emailed the CEO of BigApple and it seems this potential of Linux wasn't so clearly envisaged by them as well! Yet another reminder that Linux is yet to catch on. PS : EDE = Equinox Desktop Environment

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Ubuntu 6.10 released
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 26 Oct '06

26 Oct '06

"Ubuntu is suitable for both desktop and server use. The current Ubuntu release supports PC (Intel x86), 64-bit PC (AMD64), UltraSPARC T1 (Sun Fire T1000 and T2000) and PowerPC (Apple iBook and Powerbook, G4 and G5) architectures...." Details at http://www.ubuntu.com CK Raju ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using NWebmail, BSNL's Webmail Program

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Fwd: [ANN] Tamil Tagset released
by Bharathi Subramanian 25 Oct '06

25 Oct '06

From: "Kenneth Gonsalves" i am thrilled to anounce that the NLP group of AU-KBC has released a tamil tagset under the creative commons license. you may view the tagset here: http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/activityfull/4/ and download it from: http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/down/5/ congratulations to Dr Sobha and her team Bye :) -- Bharathi S

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Top Story on Forbes : [RMS] Toppling Linux
by Vihan Pandey 24 Oct '06

24 Oct '06

Hello, Thanks a lot BG for putting this to everyone's notice. The article is extremely inflammatory and goes to the extent of demonising RMS and FSF. In fact i think FSF ought to sue forbes over it. i can understand constructive criticism but this is pure concentrated malice. There ais a link to a discussion thread about the same and i think ALL of us ought to put a piece of our minds there. The sad part is in order to post, you need to register. i've used an alias: edudkniht spelt backwards to register and have posted my reply : http://forums.forbes.com/forbes/board/message?board.id=stallmanreaction&mes… PLEASE, others do the same. We can' take this lying down. Regards, - vihan

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Fsf-friends October 2006