Fsf-friends September 2006

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

28 participants
42 discussions

olpc project in kerala or any other advanced state
by Kush 03 Sep '06

03 Sep '06

Is there any equivalent project like the one laptop per child project in Brazil here in any of the 30 plus states of India or in any of the 500 plus districts of India? What looks most interesting is the self cranking/auto powering feature of the OLPC laptops (because of our dismal electricity problem in most of India). Wonder what hardware they have and what softwares are put on them. Anybody here who has first hand experience of the gadgets and if they are worth anything. I mean lot of hype is created for such projects including our own under 10,000 rupees computers but these sadly fail because of 2 types of problems-- 1 mass scale manufacturing and management of distribution etc (large scale concerns) 2 problems in quality and benefits of the device plus no mechanism to improve on the existing device after users report defects and ask for enhancements. (individual concerns) Kush

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drupal
by Kush 03 Sep '06

03 Sep '06

Has anybody any idea how drupal is being adopted in India? i.e. the rate at which ngos etc are adopting it. http://drupal.org/handbook/is-drupal-right-for-you

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what pain windows users have to face which a linux user does not have to
by Kush 03 Sep '06

03 Sep '06

essential maintenance--desktop or standalone user /individuals *windows user* *ubuntu user* 1 run scandisk once a month or as required ext3 file system does this automatically 2 run windowsupdate manually or wait for slower automatic updates --once a week automatic updates 3 run defrag once a month part of ext3 File System 4 run diskclean once a week part of a cron job 5 update antivirus weekly or autoupdate no need --inbuilt security 6 keep antivirus and firewall on all the time--slowing down the computer no need --inbuilt security 7 update firewall weekly no need --inbuilt security 8 update antispyware weekly no need --inbuilt security 9 be always on the lookout for some new vulnerability etc because of the inherently insecure system less tension because of better architecture

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open source in windows
by Kush 03 Sep '06

03 Sep '06

Hi all, I recently came across turbocash which is open source. Since such a key software was missing for the business users(small and medium enterprises) (who could become the most effective champions of open source) is it possible for Indians to develop a module for the Indian accounting system? US, UK and other accounting systems have been built for this software but no Indian system exists. My question should have been --is any Indian group working to customise this software which has enormous market potential? http://www.opensourcewindows.org http://sourceforge.net/projects/turbocash/ kush

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Linux in Kerala Schools and MGP
by Baishampayan Ghose 03 Sep '06

03 Sep '06

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello, A good friend of mine sent me the following piece of information. I am quoting him verbatim here --- - --- About the storm in the tea cup about Kerala schools going 100% GNU/Linux, I am cynical about the story. 1. The decision was made by the previous government, several months back and there is absolutely no reason to make such a hue and cry about this right now; unless you want to attract some attention of the wrong kind. 2. The decision, AFAIK, applies to High Schools only. +2 schools have to teach Tally, (in the commerce stream) so will stick to the proprietary OS and/or dual boot. 3. Within the government, a massive software deployment is going on, under the name ``Modernisation of Government Programme'', or MGP. This is entirely M$ based, and govt. servants are provided a 7 working day training on using such exotic programmes like MS Word, MS Excel, etc. The training includes how to type Malayalam. How will the community counter this MGP thing? The training is being provided by Institute of management in Government, Kerala. Have a look at their web page - made in good quality M$ FrontPage. (http://www.imgkerala.org/) - --- 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) iD8DBQFE+Vh/Qkk0lIY2G3QRAvweAJ4mM18qlLASB3PMNJuw3v5F2a1pyQCeJp4E Z+RB/ZvQ98eJ/DOZJpqxU0s= =lRIt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Fwd: Response to Charles Assisi's Article
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 02 Sep '06

02 Sep '06

Some random (and similar to may other view points already experessed in this discussion and many previous discussions) comments on the Biased and confusing article: Mr assis cant decide if he is an (free beer seeking?) ordinary user or a software developer. Usually ordinary users cannot fix the software, they have to depend on the services offered by developers, and hey services are not free beer. But in case of free software users/ customers can choose any developer, benefit from the free market and of course pay. Under ideal conditions business will not benefit from monopoly but by the merits of their offers and services. There are incentives for developers and software developement: Developers get the money and ordinary users/ and the software itself benefits by competition and quality of services offered by the talented/ motivated developers. In the early days of free software movement IMHO the work was based on individual and usually free as in beer efforts (thanks to RMS and many other talented guys). But now it has attained its own momentum to break apart the monopolies and there is nothing stopping it now. But India is a free country (as in freedom) everyone can speak, lets not try to overwhelm ToI, the truth will still happen. There is lot of money and opportunities in free software, much more than Mr Assis can see or want others to believe. The article and our subsequenting discussion will bring out nothing new except for free (as in beer) publicity for Mr assis. Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Dept of CSE & IT BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib Punjab, INDIA -------------------------------- http://www.bbsbec.ac.in http://www.ajaypal.com -------------------------------- ajaypal[at]bbsbec.org, ajaypal[at]acm.org

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The Charles Assisi article
by Vihan Pandey 02 Sep '06

02 Sep '06

i totally agree with Nagarjuna, in fact i think all of us ought to send a piece of our minds to toieditorial(a)timesgroup.com . This is what i've sent them : ================================================== Hello, This is with reference to Charles Assisi's article on the 31st August, 2006 titled "No free lunches for me" in the Business and Technology section. I don't think Mr Assisi has understood anything about the Free Software philosophy at all. He call's himself a capitalist but forgets that one of the cornerstones of capitalism is a free market with no place for monopoly. Every individual player has a right to enter the market and the price and quality of their goods and/or services offered and/or rendered along with market conditions decides the success of a player. Any attempt to over ride this simple rule is unethical and illegal(remember "certain" anti trust cases). The Free Software philosophy gives such a transparent and fool proof business model wherein one has the required freedom in software usage, modification and re-distribution. It is true that you cannot make as much money via sales alone in Free Software, however the service, support, customisation, integration, and solution providing is the place where people profit from. Moreover these are generally bundled with sales to give a "comprehensive solution". This is the trend all over the world at this time. Thus you have ethics and profit existing in a natural harmony. Mt Assisi also mentions "When somebody tinkers with it two things happen. Firstly while the kernel may be mine, what finally emerges may not be mine, what finally emerges may not necessarily be mine. In fact it may turn out to be a highly evolved version of what I had originally thought up. The collective is always better than the individual. But by thinking something up and offering it to the collective to improve upon, I stand to loose my lively hood" The Free Software philosophy respects copyrite. Any work(software, documentation, or even artwork) done is always credited to its original author. Any successive revisions made by others are credited as well. The fact remains that the world knows who the original author(s) is and acknowledges that person(s). That would essentially To quote an example, Einstein's work on relativity changed the way we look at classical physics(attributed to Newton's work). Did that make Newton look like a looser? On the contrary people still admire Newton's work. Einstein himself acknowledged the fact that without Newton's work on Mechanics and Calculus there wouldn't have been a Special or General Theory of Relativity. Another irony here is that Calculus itself has been first traced as long as Archimedes(200 B.C), and Madhava of Sangamagrama(1300's) later improved and further researched by Issac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and several others. To be a little brash, it seems pretty unlikely that if these genius' existed around the same time they would be "loosing their lively hood". Oh yes, and if he does want his software tinkered with or fixed but doesn't want to do it himself, he can hire a Free Software developer to do it for him for a fee. If he doesn't have the money he could get some people(who also have the same requirement) together in a community and then pay the developer for this community software. This is exactly what Free Software stands for, a community of people collaborating and co-operating to achieve the greater good. I do agree with him that we live in a cynical world and most people want to be selfish out of choice or circumstance. But encouraging that attitude is not going to make things better, which is exactly what Mr Assisi is doing here. In today's world the only way we can exist is by some direct or indirect dependence on others. Hence a community spirit is what is needed to foster this. Free Software gives this ideal. To share ideas, jokes, poetry, feelings is that not the basis of us interacting with one another at all? The fact it also becomes implicitly true for sharing knowledge as a whole and that is the essence of being human. Regards, - vihan ================================================

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Broadening human resources
by Ramanraj K 02 Sep '06

02 Sep '06

I came across an article titled "Open Source Apps Broadening the Human Resources World" http://www.technewsworld.com/story/52761.html that begins with the introduction: <quote> Software is ultimately composed of congealed ideas, so ideas are very important in the minds of software developers. The key to market power in the software industry lies in the minds of developers. Fashion plays a role too; some ideas are fashionable and some are not. The idea, or philosophy, of open source is powerful, frictionless, and seductive. </quote> The article highlights an important advantage available *currently* with free software: <quote> OSS developers benefit from a reduction in the friction-to-idea exchange that commercial enterprises engender through the use of lawyers, contracts, and payments. They experiment with new tools immediately instead of paying for legally licensed access to technologies. OSS is winning the minds of developers -- and that is precious real estate </quote> Would the GPLv3 take away the advantage? I don't know, but time will tell. A gentle warning has already been issued: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2003dltr0023.html <quote> The [US] Supreme Court spoke clearly to clarify the relationship between copyright and trademark law, cautioning against an extension of trademark law into an area covered by copyright law. Understanding this relationship is of great value to writers, artists, and creators; for Fox and the other respondents in this case, that understanding came at a price of $1.6 million. </quote> If the free software community could see the distinction, it may make room for more widespread growth and adoption. Of course, not understanding means a kind of self destruction that is not really deserved.

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Fwd: Response to Charles Assisi's Article
by V. Sasi Kumar 01 Sep '06

01 Sep '06

From: V. Sasi Kumar <vsasi(a)cessind.org> To: toieditorial(a)timesgroup.com Cc: sasi.cess(a)gmail.com Subject: Comments on "No free lunches for me" by Charles Assissi Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 20:49:27 +0530 Sir, I was appalled to read the article by Charles Assissi entitled "No free lunches for me" in your newspaper dated August 31, 2006. Although he is perfectly within his rights to express his views, and that is what he has done, when it is published in an influential publication like yours, he should have been more careful in formulating and expressing his opinion, since a lot of people are going to take this seriously. My objections are as follows: 1. He effectively says that nice things should not be done because those who do them are bound to come last. This is shocking, to say the least. In today's world torn by strife and infected by terrorism, I would have thought that what we need is more nice things and nice people. I guess coming first is more important for Mr. Assissi than peace, kindness, empathy and other nice things. 2. He says, "my guess is free software will always remain on the fringes of the mainstream." If he had just bothered to look at some statistics, he would have changed his 'guess'. Just a few examples: The Free Software operating system GNU/Linux is the second most popular on desktops, after Microsoft Windows. Free software applications like Apache are by far the most popular on web servers. Apache, incidentally, has a share of around 65%. A number of companies, including large multinationals, are switching to Free Software for their network applications and even desktops. The city of Munich has shifted all their 13,000 or so computers to Free Software with help from IBM. 3. He says that the spread of Free Software would deny jobs to programmers. He would have found, if he had done some homework, that a vast majority of programmers are involved in developing or customising software for specific needs for specific clients. Interestingly, many of them do use Free Software. The fraction of programmers involved in developing the kind of software people use on their desktops is very small. And even in the Free Software world, there are companies like Red Hat, Mandriva, Novell, IBM, HP, and Sun Microsystems, who employ programmers to develop Free Software. 4. He compares his profession with software development. Though the final products (article and source code) are comparable, the work is not at all. Once he publishes an article (like the one under mention here), that is the end of it. He, or anyone else, is never going to improve it or do anything else with it. No one is going to use if for any purpose. Once it is read, and people like us write our responses, its purpose is over. Software, obviously, is nothing like that at all. If Mr. Assissi had spent a few minutes thinking about this issue, he would have realised this fact. Gandhiji once said, "They first ignore us, then they laugh at us, then they fight us, then we win." People like Mr. Assissi are still at the second stage -- laughing at Free Software. Proprietary software companies like Microsoft have started fighting Free Software with whatever means they have. History shows that they have little chance of winning. Best -- V. Sasi Kumar Atmospheric Sciences Division Centre for Earth Science Studies PB No. 7250, Thuruvikkal PO Thiruvananthapuram 695031, India -- V. Sasi Kumar <sasi.fsf(a)gmail.com> Free Software Foundation of India

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Fwd: Response to Charles Assisi's Article
by Nagarjuna G. 01 Sep '06

01 Sep '06

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nagarjuna G. <nagarjun(a)gnowledge.org> Date: Sep 1, 2006 3:49 PM Subject: Response to Charles Assisi's Article To: toieditorial(a)timesgroup.com Dear Editor, This is in response to the article "No Free Lunches for Me" written by Charles Assisi, Times of India, 31th August 2006. The author is either 'blind' or irresponsible or both. If this article were written by a newbie journalist, I would not have reacted this way, but Charles Assisi is a known name, also because he interwiewed me once or twice. He may be a popular technical writer, he may claim that he was once a socialist now a capitalist, or he was once convinced about free software but not now anymore etc. This style of writing informs some readers that the author has experienced both worlds and then writing with experience. What this journalist lacks, now I realize after reading the article, is a sense of responsible journalism. He is essentially reacting to the decision Kerala Govt is going for free software in place of proprietary software. The only reason that he says free software should not be used is because it is backed by a very good ethical principle of sharing and "nice guys finish last". So this irresponsible journalist is asking people to be bad guys and finish first. If this wasn't the message, what was it? Let me demonstrate how blind this journalist is. First: he assumes that nice guys don't finish. The already successful operating system, the only competitor for the proprietary software today, is the GNU/Linux operating system with a large number of applications for almost every purpose, including computing in Indian languages. If this operating system is not complete, how is this system being used by millions all over the world. Which concept of computing does this operating system does not implement, except possibly viruses, that the system be declared unfinished? The system is not only finished, several millions all over the world use it exclusively. That is not to say that the system is not evolving, it is evolving at a pace that people already began to call it a revolution. The second point of the argument made by the author is that it does not feed programmers, or why would software programmers work for free software without incentive. Again, this is entirely baseless. Save one major company, which other major company does not use or depend their business on free software? If there is no money why did RedHat, Novell, IBM, Sun Microsystems etc. ventured to business by supporting free software. Even the exceptional major company, saved above, is known to use whatever is borrowable from the free software world. True, free software business doesn't happen by selling what is essentially and eminently shareable entity called code. But, people who make money in free software make money by providing various services: making a free software accessible in the form of distributions, helping in installation, customization, maintenance, documentation, training and so on. In the case of propreitary software both the things happen, namely selling what is not sellable, as well as servicing. In free software only one of them is possible. Therefore it is true that one cannot make as much money as one would make with propreitary software. The reason why free software community chose to give up on the additonal profit is due to ethical committment, to live a moral life. A lot of service business in propreitary software also happens by providing service to fix vulnarabilities, such as software viruses, which were fixed by free software by choosing a secure multi-user file system. It is an open question: Why wouldn't a proprietary company doesn't fix a fixable vulnarabilty? It is true that several hackers (not crackers) who contributed to free software were hobbyists and worked out of their free time and without much in expectation. That is because they were intervening in a system that is ridden with evil practices. They are sacrifycing their time to give the world and its people freedom, a better and healthy place to live in future. No freedom movement will win without sacrifice. This jounralist is pleading the Govt and people not to go for free software because good things never win. What a hopeless irresponsible suggestion? He writes: "Take away their incentive to create it and the world will have fewer peices of software to work with." The author assumes that their incentives were taken away, which is a baseless. If you ask the users of proprietary software, who created the application they are using, they will be mum. You ask the same question to the users of free software, they will tell who the original contributors are. Even if they are ignorant, may be they didn't pay attention to it, they can find out by visiting their favourite search engine and will answer in a jiffy. In the case of proprietary software, even if you give them the library and also the Internet, it is very difficult to find out who contributed what. Acknowledgement and maintaining authorship is the real incentive any author, including journalists, would ask for. How many journalists will find their job worthwhile if they were to write articles without their names printed along with the articles. Reporters on the street do not get enough attention, true. But they continue to report with the assumption that one day when they become a known writer they can imprint their name with each article they write. This is the incentive that an author always asked for, which makes each of the authors immortal, for they wish to make their mark in the history. Proprietary software companies don't create any history by masking the code as well as the contributions of millions of programmers who work for them. This is the culture that free software movement is trying to correct in the society, among others. As scientists, we may never publish a paper in a journal if the publisher asks us to be anonymous, or intends ot use another person or company's name instead. The incentive we get is citation, readership, and name, apart from the salary that we draw for our service. Thisculture already exists in the traditional knowledge business, free software business follows and embellishes this tradition. Thus, the author's view that there exists no business model for free software is not true. What is true is, free software does not produce billionaires in half a generation time. Proprietary software was created by converting knoweldge into a commodity. This happened by encoding electronic documents in a format that only their systems can decode. By asking people to pay for decoding these documents for life is unethical lockin policy. This is, by ethical standpoint, an illegal activity, for knowledge doesn't continue transmission by privately locked code. Free software momevent is asking the policy makers, Government bodies all over the world, to correct this mistake too, and that is why we demand for all electronic documents to be in open standards. An unrepairable technology is evil. Proprietary software is unrepairable since the source code is not made public. No 'garages' are possible in this model. But we need garages for software too, since no software can be perfect. Free software is repairable just any system of ideas. Unless people at large participate knowledge does not evolve. If Kerala Govt. took the decision to change their schools to free software, that is a very wise decisiion. We wish that all other governements all over the world follow them to create a better digital world. I would request the editor to publish this response to correct the misunderstanding the article by Charles Assisi would create about free software movement. -- Dr. Nagarjuna G. Scientist, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Eduation, TIFR, Mumbai Chairman, Free Software Foundation of India, http://www.gnu.org.in/ -- Nagarjuna G. http://www.gnowledge.org/ http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/Data/Objects/n/nagarjun/viewObject

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Fsf-friends September 2006