Fsf-friends September 2008

fsf-friends@gnu.org.in

26 participants
58 discussions

Ban Closed Source Software and Hardware
by Mani A 27 Sep '08

27 Sep '08

Research on brain tapping and variants are usually conducted in secrecy by different military agencies and almost certainly by large corporates. The former includes the CIA, FBI, certain units of the Indian military and many others. In the US, a few judicial cases relating to such activities have actually gone against the state. Such research and the equipments developed are never reported to the public and academic bodies. Exceptions include relatively lighter CIA games like the MK-ULTRA (1952-62 : officially) that was disclosed in 1975. Apart from these the few disclosures that have happened have been subjected to much counter propaganda and counter actions. With the severe advancement in the management of vague and imprecise information since the seventies, the increase in computing power, AI, neurobiology and advances in 'brain tapping' technologies, we have a lot of reasons to feel all the more insecure. This insecurity has more to do with the essential nature of closed source software and hardware than anything else. It is too difficult even for skilled reverse engineers to pronounce completely on what they seem to see. Already we have good many applications available. It is so EASY to misuse them. Some links are: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/03/the_us_military.html http://faculty.uca.edu/~ronmc/INFO3321/Spring_2006/Presentations/ET1/Group 5/BrainGate.doc http://www.ladlass.com/intel/archives/cat_cia.html Some interesting open source stuff too: http://openeeg.sourceforge.net http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-computer_interface http://science.howstuffworks.com/brainport.htm http://www.bariumblues.com/ Some controversial stuff: http://barbarahartwell.blogspot.com/2006/12/ken-adachi-educate-yourself-pro… Interesting things about the CIA here: http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/mindnet/mn195.htm http://www.whale.to/b/nsa7.html http://www.thehiddenevil.com Who knows what the CIA and other agencies have hidden in the M$Windows to start with? When a group of wild buffaloes is charging at you, then you must not wait for the stampede! These are important reasons for a total ban on closed source software and hardware. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc

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"Avoiding Ruinous Compromises" by Richard Stallman
by Anivar Aravind 26 Sep '08

26 Sep '08

<quote> If you want to help the community stay on the road to freedom, one important way is to publicly uphold citizen values. When people are discussing what is good or bad, or what to do, cite the values of freedom and community and argue from them. It's no use going faster by taking the wrong road. Compromise is essential to achieve a large goal, but beware of compromises that lead away from the goal. </quote> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html rms writes: "Twenty-five years ago on September 27, 1983, I announced a plan to create a completely free operating system called GNU -- for 'GNU is not Unix'. As part of the 25th anniversary of the GNU system, I have written this article on how our community can avoid ruinous compromises."

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Microsoft wants to liberate Panchayati Raj System
by Indranil Das Gupta 26 Sep '08

26 Sep '08

Hi, > Here's the key person that IT secretary informs has the details. > Subhra Chakraborty Mob:09331042119 E-mail: subhrackh at gmail Thanks to Arun for attracting my attention to this thread. I must say that I find Raju's posting is interesting. I happen to have met with Mr. Subhra Chakraborty a couple of times due to professional engagements. Its true that Mr. Chakraborty *is* indeed the key person in the CSC (common services centers - NeGP G2C kiosks) program which are among the principal consumers of the GPMS and the IFMAS software. The fact is Mr. Chakraborty is a Project Co-ordinator / IT Officer with the Panchayat & Rural Development (P&RD) Dept, Govt of WB. He in turn reports to Mr. Maity who is the Deputy Secy (iirc) and finally at the top of the P&RD admin hierarchy is Mr. M N Roy. IAS (Principal Secy, P&RD) So, has Mr. Chakraborty been empowered as spokesperson from P&RD? Its interesting that the IT Secy Mr. Siddharth would be giving Mr. Chakraborty's name as the contact person. just wondering -indra

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Swatantra Free Culture Showcase
by Vikram Vincent 26 Sep '08

26 Sep '08

Swatantra Free Culture Showcase This idea has been inspired by the UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase> Our team wants to address various social, cultural, political and technologically relevant issues and we want to shake things up a little bit. At the heart of Swatantra's ethos is a belief in showcasing free software<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html>and free culture <http://freeculture.org/>, and we think it would be an excellent opportunity to show off some free culture artists by utilising their media in various global campaigns. Although the time restrictions are tight, we think this is too good an opportunity to miss. So, we present the Swatantra Free Culture Showcase. http://swatantra.org/wiki/index.php?title=SwatantraFreeCultureShowcase How it works is pretty simple: Your submission must be no larger than 1Minute for the audio and 3Minutes for the video. Upload your submission somewhere online (there are lots of free hosting solutions available such as archive.org). Do not email any of the organisers or judges with your submissions. When the deadline for submissions closes, our panel of judges(*Mrs. Shobana Mathews, Mr. Sunil Chandy, Mr. Anil Pinto*) will pick a shortlist, and will then pick the final winners from the shortlist. The deadline for submissions is *20th November 2008* -- Vikram Vincent +919448810822 http://swatantra.org/

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IT sector
by Mani A 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Here is an interesting estimate: http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2516/stories/20080815251604100 But OSS related estimates are not included... and moreover the bodies like NASSCOM that provide data are basically agencies of foreign capital and have little to do with Open source. Best A. Mani -- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc

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[Fwd: [bytesforall_readers] China takes lead in [GNU] Linux education]
by V. Sasi Kumar 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Sorry for cross posting. Sasi -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Frederick "FN" Noronha <fredericknoronha(a)gmail.com> Reply-To: bytesforall_readers(a)yahoogroups.com To: bytesforall_readers(a)yahoogroups.com Subject: [bytesforall_readers] China takes lead in [GNU] Linux education Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:39:45 +0530 China takes lead in Linux education Since the Chinese government began supporting domestic open source communities in 2005, hundreds of thousands of young people in the world's most populous country have become a part of the open source world. With the help of the government-supported Leadership of Open Source University Promotion Alliance (LUPA), Zhejiang Technology Institute of Economy (ZJTIE) founded its Linux Training and Examination Centre in 2006. The centre started out offering a simple 48-hour course; upon completion, students received a Linux operator certificate or a Linux network administrator certificate or both. According to ZJTIE, 1,500 students in the last two years have passed the examination. However, those students who wanted to learn more had to learn by themselves. Now, however, LUPA offers nine Linux certificates, including certificates for software engineers, 'C' programming language engineers, and LAMP system engineers. In response to a requirement from China's Ministry of Education, LUPA published 11 new Linux textbooks in July. The ministry hopes that these textbooks will help Chinese students learn more advanced Linux technologies. Some Chinese schools believe that Linux education has helped students gain employment. According to ZJTIE, 90 per cent of the students in its Economic Information Department received the LUPA certificates in 2006; as a result, employment rose to the highest the school has seen. This may be a result of the booming open source market in China. According to CCID Consulting, the sale of Chinese open source software increased 17.1 per cent, while sales of Linux increased 20.2 per cent in 2007. As Linux accounts for 66.5 per cent of China's open source market (according to a 2007 survey from CCID Consulting), open source education has been focused mostly on Linux. However, its success has encouraged ZJTIE to expand its teaching and certification. In March 2008, ZJTIE worked with LUPA to expand its education system from Linux to the whole open source industry. According to LUPA, more than 300 Chinese universities and colleges have joined its system. Open source technology has become a required course in many of these schools. Although the total number of students who have been trained for open source technologies is not available yet, Zhang Jianhua, chairman of LUPA, estimates that LUPA will train 100,000 students in Linux per year. Besides developing open source courses, government-supported communities also regularly hold activities such as open source conferences, speeches, contests, festivals, and campus marches to attract students to learn more about the culture, history, ideas, and technologies of the open source industry. At the same time, open source communities without government support have brought many young Chinese to the open source world by offering free open source information, translation of open source articles from other countries, and forums for open source technologies communication. Thanks in part to promotion by these communities, open source has become a powerful idea among Chinese programmers. In a survey by PHPChina in June 2007, 32.6 per cent of PHP professionals said that they chose PHP mostly because it's open source, and 64.8 per cent of interviewees who would start to learn PHP believed that "open source is the strong point of PHP." The same survey also showed that more than three quarters of Chinese PHP professionals learned something from or received information through domestic PHP communities. The rapid growth of China's open source expertise has yet to result in a significant contribution to the development of the global open source industry. This may be because young Chinese people are still novices in the open source industry, or it may be due to the fact that they have to work more than 60 hours a week to fight for their new jobs and have no time to work on open source projects for the time being. However, as the open source education system improves and as more young people become open source veterans, the global open source community will benefit from China's presence. Author: Chen Nanyang Originally published at www.linux.com; reprinted with the author's permission. -- FN * Independent Journalist http://fn.goa-india.org Blog: http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com Tech links from South Asia: http://twitter.com/fn M: +91-9822122436 P: +91-832-2409490 __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages Yahoo! Groups Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 17 New Members Visit Your Group Yahoo! Finance It's Now Personal Guides, news, advice & more. Need traffic? Drive customers With search ads on Yahoo! All-Bran 10 Day Challenge Join the club and feel the benefits. . __,_._,___ -- V. Sasi Kumar Free Software Foundation of India http://swatantryam.blogspot.com

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TOI believes - Flickr is for flicking
by shirish 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Hi all, Its an interesting blog post. http://blog.twilightfairy.in/2008/09/01/toi-believes-flickr-is-for-flicking/ It would be nice if the ALF or some other forum would like to take this fight :) -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal This email is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17

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Firefox 3 branding in Ubuntu 8.10
by shirish 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Hi all, An interesting development I would say. I don't know whether its just the Ubuntu community who's responsible for this or are other distributions also taking note of that. There has been a new package included which is called firefox-3.0-branding. I've been running Ubuntu 8.10 for few months now (right from after the tool-chain got put up on the server) A very interesting conversation on the bug-report first . https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/269656 Then few mockups on the same http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/09/17/mock-ups-available-for-notices-pr… Then finally the firefox-3.0-branding package http://packages.ubuntu.com/intrepid/firefox-3.0-branding What this does is basically the first time you fire up the browser after you have installed the branding package it gives a short link (like one for addons or updates just below the tab bar) with saying "Know your rights" Linking on that takes you to about:rights which gives you the following info. :- About: Your Rights Mozilla Firefox is free and open source software, built by a community of thousands from all over the world. There are a few things you should know: * Firefox is made available to you under the terms of the Mozilla Public License. This means you may use, copy and distribute Firefox to others. You are also welcome to modify the source code of Firefox as you want to meet your needs. The Mozilla Public License also gives you the right to distribute your modified versions. * Mozilla does not grant you any rights to the Mozilla and Firefox trademarks or logos. Additional information on Trademarks may be found here. * Mozilla's privacy policy for Firefox may be found here. * Firefox also uses web site information services, such as the SafeBrowsing service; however, we cannot guarantee they are 100% accurate or error-free. More details, including information on how to disable the services, can be found in the service terms. Mozilla Firefox Web Site Services (this one is usually hidden) Mozilla Firefox uses web site information services ("Services"), such as the SafeBrowsing service, that are available for your use with this binary version of Firefox as described below. If you do not want to use the Services or the terms below are unacceptable, you may disable the SafeBrowsing service by clicking Edit -> Preferences -> Security and uncheck the options for "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected attack site" and "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected forgery." 1. Mozilla and its contributors, licensors and partners work to provide the most accurate and up-to-date phishing and malware information. However, they cannot guarantee that this information is comprehensive and error-free: some risky sites may not be identified and some safe sites may be identified in error 2. Mozilla may discontinue or change the Services at its discretion. 3. You are welcome to use these Services with the accompanying version of Firefox, and you have all the rights necessary to do so. Mozilla and its licensors reserve all other rights in the Services. These terms are not intended to limit any rights granted under open source licenses applicable to Firefox and to corresponding source code versions of Firefox. 4. The Services are provided "as-is." Mozilla, its contributors, licensors, and distributors, disclaim all warranties, whether express or implied, including without limitation, warranties that the Services are merchantable and fit for your particular purposes. You bear the entire risk as to selecting the Services for your purposes and as to the quality and performance of the Services. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of implied warranties, so this disclaimer may not apply to you. 5. Except as required by law, Mozilla, its contributors, licensors, and distributors will not be liable for any indirect, special, incidental, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages arising out of or in any way relating to the use of Firefox and the Services. The collective liability under these terms will not exceed $500 (five hundred dollars). Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so this exclusion and limitation may not apply to you. 6. Mozilla may update these terms as necessary from time to time. These terms may not be modified or cancelled without Mozilla's written agreement. 7. These terms are governed by the laws of the state of California, U.S.A., excluding its conflict of law provisions. If any portion of these terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining portions will remain in full force and effect. In the event of a conflict between a translated version of these terms and the English language version, the English language version shall control. While I'm no great lover or hater of FF I think this is a nice way of doing stuff without being obnoxious and obtrusive. One more thing the 4th and 5th point were in BOLD . It would be interesting to have some discussion on what people think of the same. -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal This email is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17

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Ten easy ways to attract women to your free software project
by Praveen A 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

Very interesting article. We should try to follow most of the tips in our communities. "The gender inequality among developers and supporters of free software is stunning. Less than 2% of us are women, according to studies conducted for the European Commission. Why? The evidence says we're driving them away. There are even some pretty good published guidelines on how not to drive them away. What's missing is a practical implementation strategy: here I present ten relatively simple changes in how you run your project, to make it more attractive to would-be contributors—especially women." http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/ten_easy_ways_attract_women_you… Cheers Praveen -- പ്രവീണ്‍ അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്‍ <GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call! <DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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Fwd: [Advocate Play Ogg] Ogg is on the Rise!
by Praveen A 25 Sep '08

25 Sep '08

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Joshua Gay <jgay(a)fsf.org> Date: 2008/9/24 Subject: [Advocate Play Ogg] Ogg is on the Rise! To: advocate(a)playogg.org #Ogg is on the Rise Take action: * Digg this story <http://digg.com/linux_unix/PlayOgg_org_Ogg_is_on_the_rise> * Email campaigns(a)fsf.org with *new* items for our Ogg Friendly list <http://www.fsf.org/resources/formats/ogg_data/oggsites> * Read our latest blog post, "Ogg is on the Rise!" <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/OggOnTheRise> More and more sites are streaming in free media formats such as Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora -- from Wikimedia projects to national radio stations. The PlayOgg.org campaign brings you an update and asks for your help in building its growing list of Ogg friendly sites. Read our latest update on our blog, <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/OggOnTheRise>. Then, email campaigns(a)fsf.org letting us know your favorite Ogg friendly sites that are not yet on our list, <http://www.fsf.org/resources/formats/ogg_data/oggsites>. Lastly forward this email on to your friends. Encourage them to visit <http://playogg.org> and learn more about free media formats and to take four steps to get started with Ogg and helping the PlayOgg campaign. Thank you for your help and support, Josh, John, Matt, and Peter The PlayOgg Team _______________________________________________ Advocate mailing list Advocate(a)playogg.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/advocate -- പ്രവീണ്‍ അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില്‍ <GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call! <DRM> What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak? (as seen on /.) Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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Fsf-friends September 2008