Fsf-friends August 2007

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

33 participants
42 discussions

Interview on Software Piracy - Microsoft India Chairman Ravi Venkatesan
by Viswanath Durbha 22 Aug '07

22 Aug '07

Hi, There was an interesting interview with Microsoft India Chairman Ravi Venkatesan on software piracy. The following are some highlights which most of us would not agree, but nevertheless, we can get some insight as to how they perceive this issue. Here's what he says about the issue. 1. Almost all developing countries tend to be high-piracy markets. 2. Bulk of the economic success in the near future will depend on "Intellectual Property", hence it makes sense for India to have a good regime around "Intellectual Property Rights". 3. Microsoft is trying to "educate" policy makers and governments and helping in setting up IPR courts. 4. If you are using a pirated version, your experience should be perceptibly different and worse. 5. NASSCOM has taken a very strong view on the importance of IPR, genuine software and so forth. 6. Indian businesses today are making record profits, and their refusal to pay for the software they use is a bit unconscionable. 7. If you have got a non-genuine copy of software, it will not be able to access those services. This is a very promising trend for software companies to crack down on piracies. 8. The best Microsoft or any technology company can do is to make it harder and harder, so that the casual pirate is deterred. It will be hard to stop the determined pirate. It doesn't matter whether we agree with any single point mentioned above, but the lens through which they see the issue of giving freedom to the users is very different from the lens through which our free software world looks at it. A worrying point in the interview may be how Microsoft is trying to "educate" policy-makers and governments and convince them that sharing is bad. Thanks and Regards, Viswanath

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[Fsf-friends] E-TV Kannada story on infiltration of Wikipedia by M$, CIA, others
by Vikram Vincent 22 Aug '07

22 Aug '07

Greetings! Yesterday, E-TV Kannada telecast a news story on how the content of the Wikipedia is being changed by organisations such as CIA, M$, others See links: http://wired.reddit.com/wikidgame http://wikiscanner.virgil.gr/ http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/08/14/the-cia-really-is-editing-w… http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=12673258&oldid=12672433 I wanted to jot down the points that I had made. 1. Wikipedia is one of the top 10 accessed sites in the world and is a tool/platform to build a free knowledge society. 2. It is community maintained and peer moderated. All users have the right to be contributors. 3. People and organisations with vested interest will try to use the Wikipedia to propagate false/misleading information. 4. Despite this, when the Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica was compared, Encyclopedia Britannica had 3 errors while the Wikipedia had 4. Thus the relevance and factual and historical content of the data is maintained as authentic and close to the truth as possible. While I was not able to catch the telecast I have to rely upon those who have to update on the exact contents of the news story. -- Regards Vikram Vincent +919448810822

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Fastest KDE Distro
by Mani A 21 Aug '07

21 Aug '07

Nimblex sub100 was released yesterday. From the release notes : "It was just released - the smallest live CD in the world with KDE. It's just under 100 MB and gathers together Linux kernel 2.6.21, KDE 3.5.7, xine media player, XMMS, GIMP and other software. NimbleX sub100 is most likely the fastest distro to boot in KDE and from the tests that where performed so far the fastest boot time was 35 seconds. You can get it from nimblex.net and use it as your portable OS. ... This is not a new version of NimbleX; it's just a different edition that has the technology that will be at the base of the next version." Their server did appear less capable though. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc

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Blue GNU interview with Sasi Kumar
by Praveen A 21 Aug '07

21 Aug '07

When was FSF India started, and what led up to its inception? FSF India was inaugurated by Richard Stallman at Thiruvananthapuram, in a Conference called Freedom First on July 20, 2001. This came about because several people took keen interest in the new operating system called 'Linux' and in the type-setting programme called LaTeX. As they got to know more about the ideological and ethical aspects of the software, many of them were attracted to it and thought about starting a Free Software Foundation of India. A movement called Freedevelopers, which eventually died out, also helped in drawing many people to the ideology of Free Software. The full interview here. http://blue-gnu.biz/content/fsf_india_039_s_impact_far_reaching Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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DMCA Means You Can't Delete Files On Your PC?
by Praveen A 21 Aug '07

21 Aug '07

DMCA Means You Can't Delete Files On Your PC? "According to Wired, John Stottlemire found a way to print duplicate coupons from Coupons.com by deleting some files and registry entires on his PC. Now he's being sued for a DMCA violation. He says, 'All I did was erase files or registry keys.' Says a lawyer: '[The DMCA] may cover this. I think it does give companies a lot of leverage and a lot of power.' So now the copyright cartels are saying that not only can we not copy things on our computers, but we can't delete things on our computers? Time to buy stock in Seagate." http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/08/21/023235.shtml Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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My Tongue-Lashing from Eben Moglen - Tim O'Reilly
by Sayamindu Dasgupta 20 Aug '07

20 Aug '07

Read the entire article at http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/08/my_tonguelashin.html Enjoy :-) Sayamindu -- Sayamindu Dasgupta [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]

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Gnash coming along nicely -- now have daily snapshots
by Praveen A 17 Aug '07

17 Aug '07

Hi, "The popularity of Flash has been a big problem for our community, and we've been urging people not to use Flash for anything. However, we've just about solved that problem and we're soon going to release a version of Gnash which can even handle YouTube." RMS http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070403114157109 GNU Flash player daily snapshots (source) are available from http://gnashdev.org/dev_snapshots/ Its good to see gnash coming along nicely. It plays most of the flash movies on the net including youtube (BEWARE: it is very slow) movies. Well you will definitely find movies which does not work as well as support for newer versions are getting added. You will need to have quite a lot of dependencies to build it from source, but the configure script is so helpful it will tell you which package to install !! like apt-get install or yum package names. Also gives a nice summary at the end of configure. I think we should fix all the configure scripts to behave like this. The developers are pretty helpful and the list is pretty active. Happy Hacking Praveen -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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ELCOT (Tamil Nadu) in Linux now
by Bimal Mankara 16 Aug '07

16 Aug '07

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU0708/S00318.htm Regards, Bimal

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"Malaysia formally embraces open doc format"
by Mani A 15 Aug '07

15 Aug '07

"Malaysia formally embraces open doc format" http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62030781,00.htm Malaysia formally embraces open doc format By Lynn Tan, ZDNet Asia Monday, August 13 2007 09:15 PM The Malaysian government today announced plans to adopt open standards and the Open Document Format (ODF) within the country's public sector. The Malaysian Administration Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) last week issued a tender for a nine-month study to evaluate the usage of open standards in its information communications technology (ICT) deployment. The study will also look into how the Malaysian public sector should migrate to open standards and the ODF, according to the Malaysia Open Source Software Alliance (MOSSA). "The decision taken has been deliberated carefully for a considerable amount of time, and much thought process has been put into it," Nor Aliah Mohd. Zahri, ICT deputy director general at MAMPU, said in a statement. "These discussions centered on open formats, particularly as they relate to office documents, their importance for the current and future accessibility of government records, and the relative 'openness' of the format options available to us," Nor Aliah explained. The study will document the benefits of open standards, suggest policies and guidelines for achieving openness and provide a roadmap for implementing the ODF in Malaysia' public sector, added MOSSA. The country unveiled its intentions to consider the ODF as a national standard for office documents in July last year. A month later, Hasannudin Saidin, a member of Sirim, the country's standards development agency, said on his blog that the proposal would have to gain approval from a higher-level committee within Sirim before it could proceed. In July this year, Japan became the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to embrace open software standards. Last August, the United Nations urged countries in the region to adopt the ODF. Published by OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the ODF--or Open Document Format for Office Applications--is an XML-based open standard, enabling any office software to format, save and exchange file documents such as spreadsheets, databases and text. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Best A. Mani -- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc

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Fwd: [Info-gplv3] Second discussion draft of GNU AGPL version 3 released
by Vikram Vincent 14 Aug '07

14 Aug '07

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: GPLv3 Information <info-gplv3(a)gplv3.fsf.org> Date: 14-Aug-2007 21:29 Subject: [Info-gplv3] Second discussion draft of GNU AGPL version 3 released To: info-gplv3(a)gplv3.fsf.org, info-fsf(a)gnu.org, info-gnu(a)gnu.org The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today released the second discussion draft of the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL). This new license is based on version 3 of the GNU GPL. It has a new requirement to ensure that users who interact with the software over a network can receive the source for that program. The original Affero GPL was intended to guarantee that everyone could receive the source for web applications that they used, so the software could always be shared and improved. The corresponding provision in the GNU AGPL applies this same principle to all software that interacts with users through a network, but doesn't impose additional requirements when the same code is used for other purposes. Since the GNU AGPL is based on version 3 of the GNU GPL, it will also provide improved internationalization, compatibility with the Apache License, and other benefits. This is the "Last Call" draft; the FSF will hear feedback on this new text from the public before publishing the final license. The additional provision is in the first paragraph of section 13, and we ask that comments be focused there. You can review the draft and provide your feedback at <http://gplv3.fsf.org/agplv3-dd2-guide.html>. -- Brett Smith Licensing Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation _______________________________________________ Info-gplv3 mailing list Info-gplv3(a)gplv3.fsf.org http://gplv3.fsf.org -- Regards Vikram Vincent +919448810822 Project Engineer, NRCFOSS, AU-KBC Research Centre, http://groups.google.com/group/bangalore_alive/ http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Campaign_to_promote_free_software_in_karnataka

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Fsf-friends August 2007