Fsf-friends February 2006

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

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African Free Software on a firm footing... (Tectonic)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 28 Feb '06

28 Feb '06

TECTONIC NEWS Tracking the shifts in technology www.tectonic.co.za 27 February, 2006 AFRICAN FREE SOFTWARE ON A FIRM FOOTING ----------------------------------------- This week's newsletter is a little late because I have just returned from a few fantastic days in Nairobi, Kenya. I was there for the FOSSFA Idlelo2 conference which was a great opportunity to gauge how the free software movement on the continent has fared over the past two years since Idlelo1 in Cape Town. (Read more at http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=892&s=news) The good news is that African free software looks to be in robust health and it was heartening to see the links being developed between groups around the continent, in particular those with West Africa. As with any continental movement there are challenges of course - of language, experience and expections - but on the whole the trip well worth the time and an encouraging precursor to what we can expect over the coming year. Here's to a good African free software year, Alastair ------------ SITA TENDER WINNERS NAMED http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=884&s=news Eight companies have been selected to be the suppliers of open source software and support services to the government and the State IT Agency over the next three years. News of the winners of potentially South Africa's most lucrative open source deal ends months of nail-biting for tenderers involved. FREE SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS DO IT TO LEARN NEW SKILLS http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=883&s=news Despite an increase in the number of corporates involved in the development of free and open source software applications, the majority of FOSS code is still being developed by individuals and the vast majority of these do it primarily to learn new skills. Rishab Ghosh of Maastricht University said this during the opening of the Idlelo 2 conference in Nairobi, Kenya this morning. SHUTTLEWORTH URGES TELECOMS REFORM http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=888&s=news Entrepreneur and Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth yesterday hit out at the African telecoms sector saying the existing monopolies in the sector were not able to deliver effective and affordable bandwidth to the continent. He urged national regulators to unbundle their wired networks and develop competitive strategies to improve broadband access to Africans. SA TAX MAN EYES DESKTOP LINUX http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=882&s=news The South African Revenue Service has issued a tender for a proof of concept Linux desktop solution for the tax-collecting government department with a R355 billion ($58 billion) revenue. While SARS admits that the challenges of moving to Linux on the desktop are numerous, a successful proof of concept could see 14 000 desktops running Windows migrated to Linux. FOSSFA RATIFIES CONSTITUTION, ELECTS COUNCIL http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=887&s=news The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa last night formally adopt its constitution and elected a new council to take the organisation forward for the next to years. ======================================== TECTONIC SURVEY 2006: TELL US WHAT YOU THINK AND WIN ---------------------------------------------------- What do you think of Tectonic? What are you interested in? What do you want to see us write about? Now it is your turn to tell us by taking part in the Tectonic 2006 reader survey. (www.tectonic.co.za/survey/) All we need is five minutes of you time and in return we'll enter your name into a draw for a box of Linux goodies kindly sponsored by Obsidian Systems. There are also a handful of Tectonic Magazine subscriptions up for grabs. ======================================== UBUNTU GOES SMALL http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=889&s=news The family of operating systems based on the Ubuntu platform continues to expand – this time to the ever-growing embedded world of small, light devices like PDAs and Internet tablets. A new Ubuntu project, Embedded Ubuntu, hopes to bring Ubuntu down to size. LENOVO BRAND LAUNCHES IN SA http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=890&s=news Lenovo South Africa launched its products officially on Friday, with desktops and laptops that look distinctly non-IBM. The new company is hoping to capture a slice of the lucrative home user and SME markets with its 3000 series, while the Think brand continues to play in the corporate arena. PROJECT HIGGINS FOR USER-CENTRIC ID MANAGEMENT http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=891&s=news IBM, Novell and Parity Communications today announced that they are contributing code to an open source initiative -- code-named 'Project Higgins' -- that will spawn a new generation of security software, giving people more control over their personal online identity information. Project Higgins builds upon a concept developed by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. FREE SOFTWARE MOVEMENT HEADS FOR NAIROBI http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=878&s=news Free software developers and advocates from across the African continent will be heading for Nairobi in Kenya this week as they gather for the second Free Sofware and Open Source Foundation for Africa conference. Keynote speakers during the opening day of the conference will include Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth as well representatives of Google. INNOVATION HUB HOSTS OSS SHOWCASE http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=881&s=news 1 April is the date set for an open source event to be held at the Innovation Hub near Pretoria. The event will include LPI certification exams, guest speakers and an open source technology showcase. OPINION ----------------------------------------------------- THE STATE OF AFRICAN FREE SOFTWARE Alastair Otter http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=892&s=news A trip to Nairobi, cocktails with Microsoft, and a conference room full of African free software advocates. Alastair Otter checks in with the growing African free and open source movement to see how things are going. IN BRIEF ----------------------------------------------------- PANDA SECURES DESKTOP LINUX http://www.tectonic.co.za/viewatw.php?sel=885&s=news REDHAT'S ANSWER TO NOVELL'S EYE CANDY http://www.tectonic.co.za/viewatw.php?sel=886&s=news ---------------------------------------- Contact Tectonic: Editor Alastair Otter alastair(a)tectonic.co.za 083-267-7657 -- Tectonic's newsletter is sent out weekly to subscribers and delivers the best of open source news from around the continent direct to their desktop. To subscribe visit http://phplist.tectonic.co.za/lists/?p=subscribe or send your email address to news(a)tectonic.co.za. To advertise in Tectonic's weekly newsletter email info(a)tectonic.co.za or phone 083-267-7657. For more information on the newsletter visit http://www.tectonic.co.za/default.php?action=m_d Visit http://www.tectonic.co.za for the latest news and most up to date resources on open source software on the continent of Africa. All material copyright Free Speech Publishing. You are free to distribute copies of this newsletter on the condition that credit is given to www.tectonic.co.za. For permission to re-print articles that appear in this newsletter or on the www.tectonic.co.za website email news(a)tectonic.co.za

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LDD in MIT Feb. 26.
by navaladi a 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Hi guys,Coming Sunday (Feb. 26) Linux Demo Day in MIT is jointly organized by ILUGC & NRCFOSS.This demo is dedicated to all newbies,advanced programmers,hackers,Geeks,addicts,This demo also explore future of open source & Linux,and lot more.... So i request everyone participate and make really a fun & joy.All your queries are clarified by eminent persons from ILUGC &AU-KBC. The list of topic's are, http://carteblanche.in/Demos.html For more Details http://carteblanche.in/ Entry is Free... Open To All... Thanks & Regards, ;-) :-) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "It does not matter what your computer can do;But what you can do with computer"

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Invitation to NITC FOSS Meet
by प्रव ीण् ए (Praveen A) 27 Feb '06

27 Feb '06

Hi, This is an invitation to join NITC FOSS Meet 2006. The latest version of this document is availbale in wiki form at http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Calicut/NIT/FOSS_Meet/06/Invitation Regards Praveen A NIT Calicut, formerly known as REC Calicut <http://nitc.ac.in/> is hosting a two day FOSS <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS> event on 18th [Saturday] and 19th [Sunday] of March 2006 ( NITC FOSS Meet 2006 <http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Calicut/NIT/FOSS_Meet/06>). It is the second edition of the event [Last year it was called FLOSS Meet] - FLOSS Meet 2005<http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Calicut/NIT/FOSS_Meet/05> The event has grown from last years 4 speakers/3 talks/one day to 13 speakers/10 talks + 2 workshops/bofs and more/two days. It is part of the ongoing effort from the FOSS EDU group<http://foss-edu-in.sarovar.org/>to popularise FOSS among students. FOSS EDU already conducted successful events at BMS College of Engineering<http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Bangalore/BMSCE>, PES Institute of Technology <http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Bangalore/PESIT>, [Bangalore/MCC| Mount Carmel College]], Sapthagiri College of Engineering<http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Bangalore/SCE>(all in Bangalore <http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Bangalore>). Our next destination after NIT Calicut <http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Calicut/NIT> is MSRIT<http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Bangalore/MSRIT>, Bangalore. NITC FOSS Meet is a part of the FOSS Month 2006<http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Bangalore/FOSS_Month-2006>celebrations FOSS EDU group is started as an offort to provide FOSS Education tools customised for Indian educational institutions. The first step in this direction is to produce a dollar one encyclopedia<http://www.techmag.biz/dollar_one_encyclopedia>, ie, to bring out a CD/DVD edition of wikipedia <http://wikipedia.org/>. Now back to the event details. 9 Talks + 2 Workshops March 18,19 2006 - Arun M Foss - General Talk [FOSS in Society] Intellectual Property, Copyright, Licence issues - Gopal Vijayraghavan DotGNU / Mozilla Hack - Kalyan Varma Network Security - Philip Tellis Education/Creative Commons - Praveen and Dilip Debian Workshop - Premshree Pillai Ruby - Sharath Lakshman Live CD Workshop - Shreekumar Quake 3 - Fun and more - Shreyas Srinivasan GNOME Hack - Pradeepto K Bhattacharya KDE Development - Shyam Mani Gentoo Developer - Aanjhan R Embedded Linux - Kushal Das Fedora BOF Apart from the scheduled talks there will be bofs on various topics like we saw in FOSS.IN <http://foss.in/2006> Looking forward to your support and participation. -- "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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FLOSS breaks many walls... but not among the genders?
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 26 Feb '06

26 Feb '06

FLOSS, or Free/Libre and Open Source Software, has dramatically changed the way software is produced, distributed, supported and used. It has a visible impact on enabling a richer social inclusion. But how has it allowed the gender problem existing in the software industry to be replicated in the world of FLOSS? Amsterdam-based Taiwanese researcher Yuwei Lin lists seven reasons why women stay off FOSS -- including its strong long-hour coding culture, a lack of mentors and role-models, discriminatory language (including in documentation), a gendered text-based environment, a lack of women-centered views in FOSS-development, a male-dominated competitive worldview, and the lack of sympathy from woman peers. http://www.metamute.org/en/node/5596 -- ------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | http://fn-at-google.notlong.com Goa, India | fred(a)bytesforall.org Co-Founder, BytesForAll | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436 -------------------------------------------------------------

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Korea Plans to Build Linux City, University
by Anilkumar K V 21 Feb '06

21 Feb '06

"The Korean government plans to select a city and a university late next month where open-source software like Linux will become the mainstream operating programs. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) Wednesday revealed the scheme of building up the city and university, which will operate as test beds for the open-source programs......" read more<http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200602/kt2006021517494311780.htm> -Anil

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Parody of Pablo Neruda's poem
by Manilal K M 20 Feb '06

20 Feb '06

I came across a parody of Pablo Neruda's poem. http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/02/14/207248&from=rss regards manilal

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FSFI@LA2006 - Participation Report
by Amol Hatwar 18 Feb '06

18 Feb '06

Disclaimer: These are my opinions and doesn't reflect that of FSF in particular. Also, this was my first time at Linux Asia 2006, so I am not aware of tradition and expectations towards the event. Thanks to the good people at FSF, Kerala, we got handouts for SPACE and FSF in time (one day before the show). The SPACE handouts are all out, the FSF one's are still remaining. Sameer had gotten the posters and stickers printed well in advance. There were plans about T-shirts and CDs... but they remained plans. Well, next time. FSF India had 2mx2m space in the Org mela. The Org mela itself was unconveniently located at an unsheltered area; well away from where the main events were taking place. However, as early birds on Feb 8, we got ourselves a stall that was very visible from the entrance. This had its own benefits... Quite a few people, three to be precise, asked me whether the Org mela was a part of the main event. Besides that, our stall was an easy target for freebie mongers. There was a small card that was circulated with stall numbers on it. Get it signed/stamped at at least 15 stalls and get a freebie. Guess what? Stalls in the Org mela had no stall numbers at all! They weren't fetured on the stall directory or the stall map. General visitors to the stall included young students who wanted to do something on Linux but had no idea what; and middle-aged to old managers who knew that Linux runs somewhere in their organization but no idea of exactly where. I'd say 95% of people that came fell into these categories easily. People who knew about FSF was quite surprised to find an FSF stall. These guys got the GNU sticker. The rest 5% were uber-clever people from the Fedora stall... with the general opinion that FSF is all advocacy, and that we should do some projects for community benefit. They were right, but had no reason to cry about it. There is still quite a lot of confusion around. I'll clear it for one last time: FSF _IS_ advocacy. And yeah, we do projects... please head to http://gnu.org. Rahul Sundaram (Fedora) in particular gave a good suggestion of keeping a list of ongoing projects on a very visible URLs where people can get engaged. Someone (sorry I don't remember who) said that we should keep printed manuals for sale. I guess we were quite succesful in showing the 95% of the audience the differences between Open Source and Free Software. It was a good opportunity to tell how the GPL works, why there so few software companies for India's one billion+ population and how a few people got filthy rich. As far as fellowship and donations go, two people wanted to hand over cash... we asked them to go the URL at http://fsf.org.in/ instead. Cash corrupts! The FSF stall had quite a lot of people behind it: Sameer Ingole (_strike_), Vinod Ganjre, Bir Chandra Sanasam and Milind Paralkar. These guys stuck to stall even after being sponsored to attend the Tech Talks at the event. A special mention goes to Nikhil Prabhakar (nipra). He took a lot of effort to start the show early in the morning. However, there were a few times when the stall did get left unattended: lunch and private sessions with the Gurus (Knopper and Shuttleworth) with the rest of the guys from ILUG-Delhi. We were expecting Bhaisampayan to come and talk on Django. His last minute ditch wasn't going to go down well. Ramki and I made sure that Indranil Das Gupta utilized that space and gave a talk on the Free Software Philosophy. Unfortunately, I got stuck in traffic and couldn't attend the talk personally, but people spoke highly of it. Indranil and Ramki deserve kudos for being available at the last moment and saving the day. I was expecting to talk on Free Software in Education. Things turned bad at the last moment... made a presentation in distress and tight schedule... got no intimation of when and where the talk will be held... concluded no talk better than a bad talk... shelved the talk. Due to the event's extreme commerical nature I had a set kind of quality expectations in my mind. Many people (including me) felt it was a let down. It probably didn't get the audience for the hype. If there was any, only a few came down to the Org mela. Still, I'd say it was worth the effort as what the FSF and we had to say did change quite a few opinions. Also most of the 95% had a misconception of Free in Free Software equals Free Beer. Some had used GNU/Linux without knowing a thing about GNU or FSF for that matter. So our, handouts, discussions and talks did have a shattering effect. From my personal experience, this is a good thing. A paradigm-shift in one persons thinking goes on to affect at least 10 more people. With this, I'll repeat Dr Nagarjuna's words: "We'll go wherever we get a chance to tell people about our efforts". Our participation in the event wouldn't have been possible without his encouragement at the right time. Further, we should always keep events like FOSS.IN, GNUnify and Linux Asia 2006 in our radar and participate regularly with even better planning and preparation. Stall Pictures (thanks to Karunakar): 0. http://www.cartoonsoft.com/gallery/linuxasia06/271_7153 (Org Mela Area) 1. http://www.cartoonsoft.com/gallery/linuxasia06/271_7156 (FSF Stall - Bir and Vinod) 2. http://www.cartoonsoft.com/gallery/linuxasia06/272_7273 (Me, Sameer, Vinod and Milind) Warm regards, ah

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Leveraging with software
by Ramanraj K 18 Feb '06

18 Feb '06

A recent talk by Honb'le Mr.Justice Yatindra Singh on Leveraging Open Source Software was delivered at 9th e-Governance held from 2-4th February 2006 at Kochi Kerala and is available at http://www.allahabadhighcourt.in/event/Leveraging_OSS.odt I should invite attention to the Q & A session mentioned therein, between the President and the Author, which brings out the benefits of spontaneity that is free, open, natural and relaxed: <quote> 16. Last year I was at Bhopal attending a colloquium on 'Law, Science and ethics'. The President of India also addressed us through video conferencing. During the question session, I asked him, 'Computers and information technology have an important role in reducing the arrears in the court as well as in helping in other areas. Broadly there are two kinds of softwares to do that. Proprietary and Open Source. Which one is better? 17. He answered, 'First of all, I would like to clarify that the choice of proprietary vs. Open software is driven by the usage and requirements of the user at the operating system level. Since, proprietary software is predominantly used at the client level; many users are familiar and confor table with this. However, at the server level mature users choose the software as per their requirement. Open source operating system enables the development of language independent software's and also building one's own security algorithms to suit his requirement. Indian IT industry is capable of providing a solution for the justice delivery system and its eGovernance to the justice administration on top of any proprietary or open source systems. What is important here is justice delivery system should be interoperable system built on top of open standards such as web services.' 18. The challenges and difficulties in shifting over to OSS are apparent from the answer. The majority is used to proprietary software and is trained in it. The main challenge is, · in changing over; · getting used to the new environment; and · training the staff. 19. This is vicious a circle. If you don't shif t then you rely more on the proprietary sof tware and more you have to pay. Perhaps what is required is to change our perception regarding OSS and increse its awareness. We may consider the following points: (i) The awareness regarding OSS should start from the school level: Computer education is already in curriculum of the schools and colleges. There is hardly any representation of OSS in their curriculam. Most of the topics that are there belong to proprietary sof tware. The operating system of computers are in proprietary sof tware. Curriculum of schools and colleges should compulsory have topics on OSS and the computers should leave operating system in OSS. (ii) Utilisation of grant: The government gives grants for purchasing computers and for different projects. The government grant may be utilised for purchasing computers having OSS operating system. Apart from operating systems there are applications. Many applications are on OSS and run on all kinds of operating systems including the proprietary ones. Even if the operating system is the proprietary one, then at least it should have applications that are on OSS. (iii) Exclusive OSS cell: It is ture that we are leading IT community in the world but many IT exper ts in government organisation work exclusively with proprietary software. It will be good idea to create separate cell in government and semi government departments to develop applications exclusively in OSS. (iv) Solution in OSS first: A policy decision may be taken to find solutions of projects first in OSS and in case it is not possible only then it may be sought in the proprietary software. 20. The Allahabad High Court has taken a policy decision to work in Open Source Software and store documents in open document format. All new computers have linux as operating system. Apart from it, OpenOffice.org suite, Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird have been adopted as applications software. A chart mentioning others details and the projects under taken is appended as Appendix 1. </quote> If the observations are taken seriously by the policy makers here, it could ensure a certain victory for all. Regards, Ramanraj K __ A man to whom it has been given to bless the world with a great creative idea has no need for the praise of posterity. His very achievement has already conferred a higher boon upon him. -Albert Einstein at the Max Planck Memorial Services, 1948.

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 34, Issue 10
by Mishi Choudhary 14 Feb '06

14 Feb '06

hello rajshekhar yes youre absolutely right in your view about lawyers but dont forget i am a lawyer too though very new to all this but isnt prof moglen and his team already an inspiration.but yes you re right it could be boring for the free software community to hear things like whats a source code and things of the same genre.thnx a ton for this positive response and i'll be greatful if you could suggest what kinda topics we should cover apart from a basic key note address telling them about what we re talking.it will be of tremendous help.april is when i plan to hold this conference and would look forward to all of you guiding me through this with ideas ,suggestions, orders and participation ,i really think this can work out Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 34, Issue 13
by Mishi Choudhary 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

hi B.G thnx for the recommendation,i havent read it so far but i shall grab a copy soon.can you tell me who these coveted free software hackers in india are? i'll be delighted to know them the only one i am aware is MR ramanraj as for now.since you expressed your interest about the onference,can i request you to sparetime and attend the same,i'll forward details once things re aa lil settled and finalized Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary

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Fsf-friends February 2006