Fsf-friends May 2007

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

17 participants
38 discussions

RGF-Sarai CSDS programme for short-term FLOSS fellowships

by Frederick Noronha

Gora Mohanty gora at sarai.net Fri May 25 13:34:49 CEST 2007 Hello all, Below is an invitation for proposals for the RGF-Sarai CSDS programme for short-term FLOSS fellowships. Please feel to circulate this far and wide. The deadline for submission of proposals is the 25th of June. Please feel free to address any queries with regards to this to floss at sarai.net. Regards, Gora -------------------------------------------------------------- Call for proposals: RGF-Sarai, CSDS, short-term FLOSS fellowships 1 Introduction The Sarai programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (http://www.sarai. net) is pleased to announce fellowships for projects related to Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) activities. This year, we have partnered with the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF) who are providing support for work in the specific area of computing, and localisation in five Indian languages, namely, Assamese, Hindi, Kashmiri, Oriya, and Urdu. We also invite proposals from projects in other FLOSS areas, especially ones that are relevant to educational, social, and community needs. Any project that meets the criteria given below is eligible for the fellowships, but we are particularly interested in: o Indian language computing, including work on fonts, rendering, locales, input methods, spell-checking, etc., as well as in advanced technologies like OCR, handwriting recognition, and speech-to-text. o Localisation into Indian languages of user interfaces, and translation of help documents for FLOSS applications. o In the interest of sustained development, we would like to see the enhancement of, and extensions for projects funded as part of past Sarai FLOSS fellowships. In particular, we draw attention to NewsRack (http://newsrack.in), Hindawi (http://www.indicybers.com), and ApnaOpus (http://apnaopus.var.cc). o Documentation for users of FLOSS tools, particularly in the area of Indian language computing. The production of video tutorials would be welcome. o Development of graphics, multimedia, and publishing tools. This would include applications for audio/video editing, animation, and desktop publishing. Enhancement of existing FLOSS tools is especially encouraged. o Putting together, distributing, and supporting a complete Indian language distribution, using FLOSS operating systems, and tools. o Collaboration software, and groupware solutions. o Writing Linux device drivers, and front-ends for common hardware, such as wireless cards, graphics cards, scanners, and printers. The other significant difference from past practice is that we will be asking for more of a collaborative approach from the fellows, both among one another, and with people at Sarai. The collaboration need not be in the actual development, but can consist of an ongoing conversation about one's work, its direction, and current status. While this has been an implicit expectation in the past, this time we are making the requirement explicit. The exact details of these will be worked out with the selected fellows, but will include things like discussions over IRC, email, and postings on the Sarai Project Resource Centre (PRC) mailing list. Fellows will also be asked to prepare a timeline for the projects, with intermediate milestones, and will be expected to adhere to them. 2 Applying for the fellowships We invite students, developers, researchers, and practitioners interested in the FLOSS arena to apply for the fellowships. While there is no prescribed format for the applications, we expect them to be in sufficient detail for a reviewer to sensibly evaluate them. Attention to details, such as a plan of work that addresses what is possible to accomplish within the limited project period, a projection of how the work might be continued after that, and a discussion of the possible impact of the project, is strongly recommended. In particular, we will look favourably on projects aimed at eventual deployment, rather than development per se. Please mail your application, along with a resume, to floss at sarai.net , with the subject line of "RGF-Sarai FLOSS fellowships". As this information is intended to be public, also subscribe to the PRC mailing list at https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc, and post a copy there, failing which your final proposal will be forwarded there by one of us. Enquiries are invited at floss at sarai.net , and on the PRC list, including questions on how to frame proposals. The last date of submission is midnight IST on Sun., June 25th, 2007. The projects will run for a total of about six months, with a final workshop to be held at Sarai, CSDS, Delhi, where the fellows will be expected to present a summary of their work. Besides this, as part of our engagement with the RGF, we will be holding workshops in regional locations, and the FLOSS fellows will be asked to be present at events local to them. The total amount of the fellowship will be Rs. 70, 000. 3 Conditions Applicants should have a valid bank account in any bank operating in India. These are support grants, and the fellows are free to pursue their primary occupations in parallel, as long as they keep working on proposed projects. The fellows must be willing to make a release of their final work under any open-source licence approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Please see under http://www.opensource.org/licenses for a complete list. Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives, and faculty on the behalf of a group of students are welcome, so long as the grant amount is administered by a single individual, and the funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual. -- FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST) Skype: fredericknoronha Yahoochat: fredericknoronha http://fn.goa-india.org http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com Email fred at bytesforall.org Res: 784 Saligao 403511 Goa India

15 years, 12 months

Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 49, Issue 20

by Mishi Choudhary

Dear Friends, Eben Moglen, Professor of Law in Columbia Law School and Founding Director, Software Freedom Law Center will be speaking on Software Patents at the IIC Annexe Conference Room 3 on 9th June 2007 at 10:30 am. Eben is a brilliant speaker and was recently chosen as one of the 100 most influential personalities in the world by eWeek magazine. This meeting is open to all so feel free to forward this invite to your friends who may be interested in this subject. Eben's talk is organised by the Delhi Science Forum, Software Freedom Law Center, India, Free Software Foundation India, Sarai (CSDS), Indian Linux Users Group, Delhi, and others. More info about Eben is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen Regards, Venky Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary

15 years, 12 months

Eben Moglen in Bangalore

by Vikram Vincent

Dear All, Eben Moglen, the architect of the GPLv3 is in Bangalore on the 3rd and he will be speaking at St. Joseph's college at 4pm. For details on the speaker please check out the links. Please forward this to all and definitely do attend. Mr. EBEN MOGLEN emoglen.law.columbia.edu/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen TOPIC: * "Freeing the Mind:* *Free Software and the end of proprietary culture"* Venue: Xavier's Auditorium, St. Joseph College, Lalbagh Road, Near Richmond Circle, Bangalore – 1. Time : 4.00 P.M on 03.06.2007, Sunday. Contact: Mr. Viju Krishnan, M: 94496 12237, Mr. Jaykumar.H.S M: 94481 63453 -- Regards Vikram Vincent +919448810822 http://groups.google.com/group/bangalore_alive/ http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Campaign_to_promote_free_software_in_karnataka

15 years, 12 months

Fwd: [eGovINDIA] One year of OSS implementation in ELCOT - the score card

by Ramanraj K

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Umashankar C <umashankarc(a)yahoo.com> Date: May 27, 2007 11:17 PM Subject: [eGovINDIA] One year of OSS implementation in ELCOT - the score card To: eGovINDIA(a)yahoogroups.com Dear friends, On the 26th May 2007, ELCOT completed one year of OSS implementation in its day to day activities. Currently the migration to OSS is close to 126 out of 130 desktop machines (97%) and 25 out of 26 rack servers (96%). Barring four desktops which use a popular windows based accounting software, the entire ELCOT's head office moved into Suse linux. A lone user has been using Fedora core. We have asked for the linux version of the accounting software from the vendor. He had agreed. ELCOT is also in the process of migrating to an open source based ERP shortly and so the four desktops also would be migrated to Suse linux shortly. ELCOT had also rolled out a powerful application software for administering family cards. Currently the contractors who do the data entry for the family cards have been using it. Government have given approval for decentralising the family card printing operations at the district level, thanks to the web based software developed by ELCOT using OSS. The family card software has a powerful local language interface which is built on Java script technology. It is absolutely platform independent and the user need not install any fonts. So far so good. ELCOT has been show casing its success in the migration to OSS to all Government departments. A few of them were thoroughly impressed and have decided to fully migrate to OSS. It is still too early. Yet, the way in which the people accept OSS after a hands on experience in ELCOT gives room for optimism. ELCOT's staff generously share their experience when Government users visit ELCOT's office. They also get to see the linux ATM and also ELCOT's 28 seater software development centre which uses only OSS. ELCOT has an 80 licence anti virus software which had become redundant. The officer in charge of the licence had asked my permission to sell it outside! Concurrence given. Anti virus software has no role in ELCOT. The latest success is the use of crossover and wine software to run application software that had already been developed in Microsoft client - server environment. ELCOT's team is shortly descending on Salem to provide on site support to a large co-operative bank (150 desktops) to migrate to Suse linux without any migration of the existing Ms application software (using Wine/Cross over) Regards. Umashankar C.Umashankar IAS., (TamilNadu Cadre) e-governance expert. & Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of TamilNadu Limited(ELCOT) (A Government of TamilNadu Undertaking) Co-Moderator: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eGovINDIA Mankind deserves open standards and open source software. Only the chosen ones get its taste. Others just hear the taste. Chennai: Ph: 91-44-42054443 ------------------------------

16 years

Free Advice for the Litigious...

by Praveen A

Free Advice for the Litigious... "All of which is to say - no amount of fear can stop the rise of free media, or free software (they are the same, after all). The community is vastly more innovative and powerful than a single company. And you will never turn back the clock on elementary school students and developing economies and aid agencies and fledgling universities - or the Fortune 500 - that have found value in the wisdom of the open source community. Open standards and open source software are literally changing the face of the planet - creating opportunity wherever the network can reach." Jonathan Schwartz, CEO, Sun Microsystems http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/what_we_did Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

16 years

Re: [Fsf-friends] Study: Developers Do Not Want GPL 3 to Police Patents

by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal

----- Mahesh M <maheshmukundan(a)gmail.com> wrote: > *News: Study: Developers Do Not Want GPL 3 to Police > Patents*<http://ct.enews.eweek.com/rd/cts?d=186-6473-8-85-153172-711179-0-0-0-1> > A new Microsoft-funded study has found that open-source developers do > not > believe licenses like the upcoming GNU GPL 3 should enforce software > patents > or prevent deals like the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement. > > Read More on > this....<http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2134788,00.asp?kc=EWKNLLIN052207FEA1> > -- > Mahesh > Did you say a Microsoft funded study :-D -- 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

16 years

Study: Developers Do Not Want GPL 3 to Police Patents

by Mahesh M

*News: Study: Developers Do Not Want GPL 3 to Police Patents*<http://ct.enews.eweek.com/rd/cts?d=186-6473-8-85-153172-711179-0-0-0-1> A new Microsoft-funded study has found that open-source developers do not believe licenses like the upcoming GNU GPL 3 should enforce software patents or prevent deals like the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement. Read More on this....<http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2134788,00.asp?kc=EWKNLLIN052207FEA1> -- Mahesh It takes 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile, But it doesnt take any to sit there with a dumb look on your face... http://maheshmukundan.blogspot.com/

16 years

The Market Function of Piracy

by Praveen A

The Market Function of Piracy By Jerry Kirkpatrick "One study found that users of pirated software sufficiently influenced — by word-of-mouth communication — eighty percent of the software's prospects to buy the legal product and another described several scenarios in which piracy can help increase the sales of legal products. The pirated product functions as a free sample that the innovator does not have to fund." Full story http://mises.org/story/2590 -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

16 years

Re :Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 49, Issue 17

by Mishi Choudhary

Dear AllSometime back i had seen a proposal about a meeting in bangalore in continuation to the lase session on GPLV3 , as Prof moglen shall be inindia in the first half of june this year , Mr Praveen A. however there has not been a follow up of the same.kindly direct me the person in charge of organising the same since time is running out.On fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in wrote Send Fsf-friends mailing list submissions to fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends or, via email, send a message with subject or body \'help\' to fsf-friends-request(a)mm.gnu.org.in You can reach the person managing the list at fsf-friends-owner(a)mm.gnu.org.in When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than \"Re: Contents of Fsf-friends digest...\" Today\'s Topics: 1. free software for film editing/subtitling, animation etc (Kussh Singh) 2. free software for better and cheaper diagnostics (Kussh Singh) 3. Re: free software for film editing/subtitling, animation etc (Ramanraj K) 4. Re: free software for film editing/subtitling, animation etc (Kussh Singh) 5. Re: free software for better and cheaper diagnostics (Raman.P) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 02:11:54 +0530 From: \"Kussh Singh\" Subject: [Fsf-friends] free software for film editing/subtitling, animation etc To: \"Principal Support List of FSF-India\" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Is there anybody in India working on free software for film editing/ film subtitling etc etc? There are a lot of ngos wanting to convey messages thru the medium of small documentary films but the studio costs are beyond their meagre capacities since all studios use imported/propreitary hardware/software which is very costly . Does anybody know of ways to reduce costs of film production --specially post production costs (studio, ad films, clips etc) Thanks and regards, Kussh ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 02:15:46 +0530 From: \"Kussh Singh\" Subject: [Fsf-friends] free software for better and cheaper diagnostics To: \"Principal Support List of FSF-India\" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Does anybody know of free software solutions in the field of MRI/cat/radiology scanning/diagnostics? Most of India\'s hospitals use imported hardware/software to do this medical diagnostic work and most of the time the machines and technologies used are really outdated and unnecessarily monopolised due to the licence raj of the govt which pushes up costs to the consumer. Thanks Kussh ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 06:10:20 +0530 From: \"Ramanraj K\" Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] free software for film editing/subtitling, animation etc To: \"Principal Support List of FSF-India\" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 5/21/07, Kussh Singh wrote: > Is there anybody in India working on free software for film editing/ film > subtitling etc etc? There are a lot of ngos wanting to convey messages thru > the medium of small documentary films but the studio costs are beyond their > meagre capacities since all studios use imported/propreitary > hardware/software which is very costly . Does anybody know of ways to reduce > costs of film production --specially post production costs (studio, ad > films, clips etc) http://ubuntustudio.org/ - I have not tried it though - do write if you give it a try. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/PackageList gives the packages that go into it. ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 07:17:18 +0530 From: \"Kussh Singh\" Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] free software for film editing/subtitling, animation etc To: \"Principal Support List of FSF-India\" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Thanks for the info. Much obliged. Kussh On 5/21/07, Ramanraj K wrote: > > On 5/21/07, Kussh Singh wrote: > > > Is there anybody in India working on free software for film editing/ > film > > subtitling etc etc? There are a lot of ngos wanting to convey messages > thru > > the medium of small documentary films but the studio costs are beyond > their > > meagre capacities since all studios use imported/propreitary > > hardware/software which is very costly . Does anybody know of ways to > reduce > > costs of film production --specially post production costs (studio, ad > > films, clips etc) > > http://ubuntustudio.org/ - I have not tried it though - do write if > you give it a try. > https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/PackageList gives the packages > that go into it. > > _______________________________________________ > Fsf-friends mailing list > Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in > http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends > -- Kussh 2639-9119 ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 05:22:48 +0100 (BST) From: \"Raman.P\" Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] free software for better and cheaper diagnostics To: Principal Support List of FSF-India Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 --- Kussh Singh wrote: > Does anybody know of free software solutions in the field of > MRI/cat/radiology scanning/diagnostics? Most of India\'s hospitals > use > imported hardware/software to do this medical diagnostic work and > most of > the time the machines and technologies used are really outdated and > unnecessarily monopolised due to the licence raj of the govt which > pushes up Free Software requires a special thrust on medical informatics. We need lot of catching up todo. Surprisingly the most of the medical informatics revolves round two well documented standards dicom and hl7. Still free software presence is not much. Following links may through some light a.For dicom image viewers and related http://www.sph.sc.edu/comd/rorden/dicom.html#links b.debian med project at debian.org c.general link to medical related projects http://www.minoru-development.com/en/healthlinks.html There is huge potential in developing software which interface the medical equipments like auto-analysers used in clinical testing. On a related note one of the member of ILUG, Chennai has started a project called gmedcon at sourceforege(http://gmedcon.sf.net). This aims to improve existing dicom viewer xmedcon to gtk2 with features a cardiologist will require.He needs help in coding. Raman.P __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Fsf-friends mailing list Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends End of Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 49, Issue 17 ******************************************* Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary

16 years

Crushed by the Wheels of Industry

by Praveen A

Crushed by the Wheels of Industry By Jeremy Allison, Special to ZDNet Being the geek in the family can get you in trouble. I was sat at a social function with my wife's friends, all happily chattering away in Mandarin. I can barely count to ten in the language so meaningful conversation is a little difficult unless it's about arithmetic. I got bored, which is always a dangerous thing. "My daughter has a new computer, would you help set it up ?" asked one of my wife's friends. "I'd love to," I replied. Finally, something to do that I would enjoy! Full Story http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6183476.html Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

16 years

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Fsf-friends May 2007