Fsf-friends September 2007

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

24 participants
24 discussions

School Admin
by Sarath Lakshman | ശരത്ത് ലക് ഷ്മണ് 18 Dec '07

18 Dec '07

Hi friends, Recently I have written an application which can be used in the schools in kerala as student admission register as per Kerala Educational Rules [KER]. This would make tasks such as T.C issuance, finding details about students etc easier. Checkout http://code.google.com/p/school-admin Platforms: GNU/Linux , M$ Windows Comments please :) -- Sarath Lakshman http://sarathlakshman.info

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[Fwd: [ilugd] Revoking/Objecting to Software Patents in Indian Patent Office]
by Anivar Aravind 03 Oct '07

03 Oct '07

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [ilugd] Revoking/Objecting to Software Patents in Indian Patent Office Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:02:56 +0530 From: Saurabh Nanda <saurabhnanda(a)gmail.com> Reply-To: The Linux-Delhi mailing list <ilugd(a)lists.linux-delhi.org> To: The Linux-Delhi mailing list <ilugd(a)lists.linux-delhi.org>, GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai, India <linuxers(a)mm.glug-bom.org> http://spicyipindia.blogspot.com/2007/09/spicyip-tidbits_23.html India, prima facie, does not allow pure software patents or business method patents. But that doesn't stop companies from trying. The Indian Patent Office is already being flooded with the patents described as "A web based system to do XYZ" or "A computer system in conjunction with XY to do Z" With no one opposing them (and not enough noise about this, like in the case of pharma patents), there's a high probability that this would get granted. Does anyone know of a concerted effort to keep this kind of cruft out from our country? Any pointers? Nandz. -- Anivar Aravind moving Republic Peringavu.P.O Thrissur-18 Kerala http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/about

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Fwd: list of audio software
by Frederick Noronha [फ़र ेदरिक नोर ोनया] 25 Sep '07

25 Sep '07

Could someone offer help and advice on this? FN ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: sajan venniyoor <venniyoor(a)gmail.com> Date: 21 Sep 2007 11:28 Subject: Re: list of audio software To: abhijit(a)mudeth.org, Ramnath Bhat <ram(a)voicesindia.org>, Frederick FN Noronha <fredericknoronha(a)gmail.com> Cc: "N. Ramakrishnan" <nram(a)ideosyncmedia.org>, Seema Nair <s.nair(a)unesco.org> Dear Abhijit, Ram, Fred, Along with the CR Technical Manual, we'd like to provide community radio groups with free audio software. In his presentation at Pondicherry, Abhijit had mentioned Audacity but of course there's lots more available as free downloads. I have drawn up a rough list (see below) of audio software, but Ram of Ideosync points out that some of them are not very user-friendly. Could we test some of these (and others like Ubuntu Studio that Ideosync Ram has mentioned) pick out the best for our CR people? It would be a very useful resource that we could club with the Technical Manual and offer to CR groups. Let me know what you think. warm regards, Sajan > > > Audacity: Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ > > ZaraRadio: ZaraRadio is a free radio automation system (a 'playout' system). It operates on Windows (but not on Vista). It's not stated whether it works on Mac OS or Linux. http://www.zararadio.com/index.php?centro=main.php&lang=en > > Campcaster: Campcaster is a free and open source radio management software. It has been designed for a Linux environment, but could possibly be used on other platforms in future. http://www.campware.org/en/camp/campcaster_news/605/ > > Ardour: Ardour is an open source digital audio workstation and can be used to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. http://ardour.org/ > > Sweep: Sweep is an audio editor and live playback tool for GNU/Linux, BSD and compatible systems. http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/index.html > > ReSound: ReZound is an open source and graphical audio file editor primarily for but not limited to the Linux operating system. http://rezound.sourceforge.net/ > > Rivendell: It is a complete radio broadcast automation solution, with facilities for the acquisition, management, scheduling and playout of audio content for GNU/Linux operating system. http://www.rivendellaudio.org/ > > Jokosher: Jokosher is a simple yet powerful multi-track studio which can be used to create and record music, podcasts etc. http://www.jokosher.org/ > > NGO-in-a-Box: Offers a variety of FOSS audio software. http://audiovideo.ngoinabox.org/?q=taxonomy/term/142 > > > Pro Tools: Pro Tools Free is a free version of Pro Tools for Mac. It is a digital audio workstation used for music production, post production etc. http://www.download.com/Pro-Tools-Free/3000-2182_4-3296394.html -- Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org Ph 0091-832-2409490 List of Indian e-lists http://wikiwikiweb.de/MailingListsInIndia

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[X-POSTED] First GPL violation filed in USA
by Raj Mathur 25 Sep '07

25 Sep '07

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The first lawsuit for GPL violation in the USA has been filed yesterday against Monsoon Multimedia, who were distributing busybox without making the source code available. This appears to be primarily a precedent-setting action, since MM had already acknowledged that they were using GPL source code in their product(s). If SFLC (the complainant) wins an injunction, it would be a big step for GPL compliance in the US, and hopefully could also be used to get a precedent in India and other countries. Story at: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070920153227686 Regards, - -- Raju - -- Raj Mathur raju(a)kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ Freedom in Technology & Software || September 2007 || http://freed.in/ GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F PsyTrance & Chill: http://schizoid.in/ || It is the mind that moves -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFG80u8yWjQ78xo0X8RAiJDAJ9O+06SfLhKvub6fwfX+kkS0AzLdgCfVs6o JG5GrsMhuiTlPQCkWYr/ezY= =ivLc -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Globalisation Institute calls for Unbundling Microsoft Windows
by Anivar Aravind 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

Globalisation Institute Brussels, calls for Unbundling Pre Installed Windows Computers in the European Union should be sold without a bundled operating system, according to this submission to the European Commission. It says that the bundling of Microsoft Windows with computers is not in the public interest, and prevents meaningful competition in the operating system market. Operating systems, it says, are not a natural monopoly, requiring just one supplier. Instead, in a competitive market, there would be a broad compatibility between different supplier’s products. “Competition would encourage open standards and interoperability as vendors would, for competitive reasons, want their products to interact with other vendors’ products,” the submission says. Full Report is here http://www.globalisation.eu/publications/unbundlingmicrosoftwindows.pdf -- Anivar Aravind moving Republic Peringavu.P.O Thrissur-18 Kerala http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/about

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Gigabyte Mainboards and Bios
by Mani A 24 Sep '07

24 Sep '07

The more recent mainboards from Gigabyte require the M$ Windows for Bios update, even the MS DOG bios update utility is not offered. Boards in the GA-Mxxx series for example have this feature, notwithstanding the few words on Linux drivers on the relevant page. The right thing for Gigabyte to do is to make a minimal FreeDOS / Linux standalone utility for the purpose. I am telling them a few things. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc

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GNOME vs KDE
by CK Raju, Thrissur 21 Sep '07

21 Sep '07

"The GNOME community announced a new release today after six months of development. GNOME is a desktop environment primarily used on Linux and other open-source platforms. GNOME 2.20 includes numerous improvements and new features that benefit users, administrators, and developers...." News at http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070919-gnome-2-20-officially-release… "Second Beta Release of KDE 4.0 available. On 6th September 2007 the KDE Community released the second Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the feature freeze and the stabilization of the current codebase. Simultaneously the KOffice developers have released their third Alpha release, marking significant improvements in this innovative office suite. ..." Info at www.kde.org CK Raju

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Attacking Multi-core CPUs
by Mani A 17 Sep '07

17 Sep '07

There is an interesting interview of Robert Watson on his paper: http://www.watson.org/~robert/2007woot/2007usenixwoot-exploitingconcurrency…, at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/14/system_call_sploits/page2.html Best A. Mani -- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc

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Fwd: [Ilug-cal-discuss] [Phoronix] AMD Releases 900+ Pages Of GPU Specs
by Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray 17 Sep '07

17 Sep '07

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay <sankarshan.mukhopadhyay(a)gmail.com> Date: 17 Sep 2007 16:50 Subject: [Ilug-cal-discuss] [Phoronix] AMD Releases 900+ Pages Of GPU Specs To: ILUG-Cal's principal mailing list <ilug-cal-discuss(a)list.ilug-cal.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjA1Mw Ending off the X Developer Summit this year, Matthew Tippett handed off ATI's GPU specifications to David Airlie on a CD (as reported by Daniel Stone). However, the specifications are also now available on the Internet! At http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/ is the location of the documentation where you can freely download the files. Right now there is the RV630 Register Reference Guide and M56 Register Reference Guide. The RV630 Reference Guide is 434 pages long while the M56 Guide is 460 pages. Expect more documentation (and 3D specifications) to arrive shortly. The new open-source R500/600 driver will be released early next week. - -- You see things; and you say 'Why?'; But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw www.linkedin.com/in/sankarshan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFG7mL/XQZpNTcrCzMRAstrAJ0ey7Qr/cv7G7MvY1wOVhIMBsy/JgCdGjIC 5UCCpQrgAn+ZZpoHl4Z68qw= =Ds2S -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Ilug-cal-discuss mailing list Ilug-cal-discuss(a)list.ilug-cal.org http://list.ilug-cal.org/mailman/listinfo/ilug-cal-discuss -- GPG key ID: 63D4A5A7 Key server: pgp.mit.edu

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Software Freedom day event was a grand success
by Anivar Aravind 16 Sep '07

16 Sep '07

http://anivar.movingrepublic.org/2007/smc-sfd07-wide-news-coverage-in-malay… Swathanthra Malayalam Computing(SMC) got widespread support from malayalam mainstream print media for the 2 day (14th & 15th september) software freedom day celebration & the release of 7 software packages developed during last year. It is the time to look at our history. SMC is reactivated from a dead state, as a result of personal discussions with praveen, hiran & vimaljoseph in the sidelines of GPLv3 Conference in bangalore. The new team is setup at last year SFD celebrations in Thrissur. Suresh, Baiju(the founder of SMC), Hussain KH (rachana), Anwar, Students in GEC etc also joined in the team at that time. Now we have more than 30 developers+localizers. The astounding progress within the short span of time is described below * December 2006: Debian Installer is Fully Translated into Malayalam ( The Work of Debian malayalam, a sub team of Swathanthra malayalam computing) * January 2007: Santhosh Thottingal of SMC done a complete architectural rewrite of Dhvani, the Indian language text to speech system by Ramesh hariharan & added Malayalam support to It. * March 2007 : participated & Conducted workshops in FOSS Meet@NITC, Kozhikkode * March 2007: Swathanthra Malayalam Computing selected as a participating Organisation ( and only Indian Organisation) in Google Summer of Code Project. 5 projects were allotted. * April 2007: GNU aspell supported Malayalam (major issues are resolved) * May 2007: Swanalekha: a Phonetic Input scheme for malayalam using SCIM * June 2007: Lalitha, Bolnagiri based xkb keyboard for malayalam by Jinesh * July 2007: Added pango support to Tuxtype by Mobin M as part of GSoC work. Now Tuxtype is usable for all Indian languages * July 2007:Debian package (Debconf )Translations. Malayalam is the Most translated indian language with 27% translation of configuration strings * August 2007: Malayalam Matrix screen saver Release, & First Public Release of Aspell- malayalam spellchecker with More than 137000 words list (It is the largest Indian Language Aspell wordlist. Second is hindi with 25000 words). * September 2007: Gnome Officially supports malayalam in Gnome 2.20 with More than 80% translations * September 2007: Sarika : The first Free Indian language speech recognition engine is developed by Shyam K (as a part of GsoC). It Currently identifies more than 50 malayalam words * September 2007: Tuxtype malayalam is Released by Mobin.M & friends (Vimal, Shreyas, Sreeranj, Prince) * Meera , a Malayalam Traditional opentype font with more than 900 glyphs is released under GNU GPL by Hussain K.H and Suresh P . It is developed for Suruma renderering scheme (not compatible with Uniscribe scheme for windows) . Authors are working on a Uniscribe compatible (windows) version now Pramode Sir wrote: A society and a culture is identified by its language - once the language is dead, the society starts losing its identity. A good way to keep a language alive is to take it to the digital world - the world of the PC/Communication devices and the Internet. This is one context in which developing regional language computing environments and popularising them has great significance. The theme for the 2 day event was "Swathantra Software and Malayalam computing" . Free software is touching the lives of common man now !! Digg It: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Wide_spread_coverage_for_Software_Freedom_Day_in… FSDaily: http://www.fsdaily.com/Community/Wide_spread_coverage_for_Software_Freedom_…

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Fsf-friends September 2007