A document that explains position of Microsoft vis-a-vis Panchayati
Raj in India where it wants to liberate the system.
For a fine print reading, download
http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/b/c/3bc064b6-4dcc-476b-8ee9-e6ca9c…
"SWARAJ to liberate Panchayati Raj System"
List of Microsoft e-Governance Awardees 2007
Name of the Project Cate gory of Awa rd
1 Meghdoot, Department IT for Service Delivery
of Posts
2 DGS&D's e-Tender IT for Efficiency
Management System
3 SMS Based Farmer Facilitation Innovation with IT
System – Haryana
(Directorate of Agriculture)
4 Control Office Automation IT for Functions of National
–CRIS Importance
5 Information Kerala Mission IT for Local Self Governance
– Kerala
6 Nemmadi–Karnataka IT for Rural Development
=====================
Should we have an IKM entry at the International Conference on Free
Software at Thiruvananthapuram ?
The project is so alive and kicking...
CK Raju
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jaijit Bhattacharya <Jaijit.Bhattacharya(a)sun.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 2:57 PM
Dear All,
ODF Olympiad 2008 is open for submissions from Sep 20, 2008 (Software
Freedom Day). Your children and their schools can win many prizes and
also contribute to reducing the digital divide. For more information,
visit www.odfolympiad.org.
Please forward this mail to all relevant people and organizations.
Thanks and regards
Jaijit
--
Jaijit Bhattacharya, PhD
Director, Government Strategy
India and Asia South
Sun Microsystems India Pvt. Ltd.
The Capital Court, Olof Palme Marg,
5th Floor, R Wing, Munirka
New Delhi - 110 067
Direct: (91) 11 4219 1089
Board Number: (91) 11 4219 1100
Fax: (91) 11 2616 0928
Email: jaijit.bhattacharya(a)sun.com
Open Document Format is an important standard for ensuring computer
literacy and is fundamental to enabling computer education globally.
ODF is easy to learn and anyone who has used any presentation software
can immediately start using ODF software such as OpenOffice.org,
StarOffice, IBM Symphony etc.
We, along with IIT Delhi, Knowledge Commons, IOTA (Government of West
Bengal), MAMPU (Government of Malaysia), JNU, IIM Ahmedabad and other
organizations are conducting the ODF Olympiad 2008.
ODF Olympiad tests the proficiency of school students in their usage
of basic computers. The students are required to submit presentations
using ISO complaint ODF format on specific topics which will be
evaluated by an eminent jury based on specific parameters. Participate
in the ODF Olympiad' 2008- an open standard inter-city contest to win
:
Participation Certificate for All
Attractive prizes for 3 winners in each category
Silver Plaque for school of the winner in each Category
Prestigious ODF Olympiad Trophy for the winning School
Software Freedom Trophy for inter-country winning School
ODF Olympiad is open to students from all countries. Submissions for
ODF Olympiad will be open from September 20th which is the Software
Freedom Day.
I would request you to encourage your children and their schools to
participate in ODF Olympiad 2008
For details & submissions log on to: www.odfolympiad.org
My mail is not appearing in the list archive
Posting it again
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anivar Aravind <anivar.aravind(a)gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:02 PM
Subject: A CPIM Hijack of Free Software Foundation?
To: Principal Support List of FSF-India <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in>
Cc: rms(a)gnu.org, "Nagarjuna G." <nagarjun(a)gnowledge.org>, "Nagarjuna
G." <nagarjunag(a)gmail.com>
Today I came to know about an event called freedom and software
happening in Chennai on 21st September through a blog.
The event website is a google site
http://sites.google.com/site/freedomandsoftware/ Most of the friends
participating are our friends. But this mail is for some
clarifications
The invitation text says following
<quote>
M. Subramanian - The Mayor, N. Ram - Editor, The Hindu, Debesh Das -
Minister of Information Technology, West Bengal, Kiran Chandra -
Director, Free Software Foundation India & Prabir Purkayastha -
Secretary, Delhi Science Forum, have been confirmed to be the panel of
speakers.
The objective of the event will be the launch of the project for the
development of a Tamil Version of the GNU/ Linux operating system. The
launch will be made by the Mayor, M.Subramanian. The project will be
developed by engineering students with able technical support from the
IT professionals & professors, and infrastructural support by the
entrepreneurs.
The logo and caption for the Free Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu will
be launched by Mr. N. Ram.
The event will be attended by the IT professionals, Entrepreneurs,
Researchers and professors of reputed colleges, from all over the
country and the registration will be open to all, so you can bring all
your friends as well. There will be no entry fee for the same.
</quote>
My questions are Following
1.Is this event anyway related with Free Software Foundation?
2. This news is not announced in any Free Software Mailing lists,
like FSF-Friends, FSF-Tn(http://mm.gnu.org.in//pipermail/fsf-tn/) ILUG
Chennai etc . It is not announced yet in gnu.org.in also. Why This
much secrecy around this?
3.. The above invitation text says "logo and caption for the Free
Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu will be launched" in the function. Is
FSF India decided to start regional FSFs? If yes why this is
organising in a a secret maner?
3. The Invitation text says "The objective of the event will be the
launch of the project for the development of a Tamil Version of the
GNU/ Linux operating system", why there is a need of another
distribution when tamil is well supported in most of the upstream
distributions? . Let it be the work of Tamil Localisation groups.
4. The contacts provided in the website contact page is not at all
familiar in Free Software Community. And There is no information on
who is organising this event.
On a quick checkup with friends in Chennai, they says it is an event
Organised by Communist Party of India (Marxist) . Thats why the
secrecy. I don't have a problem in a political party supporting free
software cause. But If it is the case i am very suspicious on
following points
1. The exclusion of the Free Software Movement in Chennai in Organising it,
2. Creating a body with power structure before Contributing anything .
I dont think a free software Foundation is not needed for releasing a
Localised GNU/Linux Distribution
3. Secrecy in whole process of a Public event
I am expecting a reply from FSF India on this
Anivar
Posting this reply to list . mailman seems to be behaving strangely.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nagarjuna G. <nagarjun(a)gnowledge.org>
Date: Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: A CPIM Hijack of Free Software Foundation?
To: Anivar Aravind <anivar.aravind(a)gmail.com>
Cc: Principal Support List of FSF-India <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in>, rms(a)gnu.org
we have asked for a clarification from the organizers. FSF India is
not informed by the organizers themselves.
Nagarjuna
On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:02 PM, Anivar Aravind
<anivar.aravind(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Today I came to know about an event called freedom and software
> happening in Chennai on 21st September through a blog.
> The event website is a google site
> http://sites.google.com/site/freedomandsoftware/ Most of the friends
> participating are our friends. But this mail is for some
> clarifications
>
> The invitation text says following
>
> <quote>
> M. Subramanian - The Mayor, N. Ram - Editor, The Hindu, Debesh Das -
> Minister of Information Technology, West Bengal, Kiran Chandra -
> Director, Free Software Foundation India & Prabir Purkayastha -
> Secretary, Delhi Science Forum, have been confirmed to be the panel of
> speakers.
>
> The objective of the event will be the launch of the project for the
> development of a Tamil Version of the GNU/ Linux operating system. The
> launch will be made by the Mayor, M.Subramanian. The project will be
> developed by engineering students with able technical support from the
> IT professionals & professors, and infrastructural support by the
> entrepreneurs.
>
> The logo and caption for the Free Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu will
> be launched by Mr. N. Ram.
>
> The event will be attended by the IT professionals, Entrepreneurs,
> Researchers and professors of reputed colleges, from all over the
> country and the registration will be open to all, so you can bring all
> your friends as well. There will be no entry fee for the same.
> </quote>
>
> My questions are Following
>
> 1.Is this event anyway related with Free Software Foundation?
>
> 2. This news is not announced in any Free Software Mailing lists,
> like FSF-Friends, FSF-Tn(http://mm.gnu.org.in//pipermail/fsf-tn/) ILUG
> Chennai etc . It is not announced yet in gnu.org.in also. Why This
> much secrecy around this?
>
> 3.. The above invitation text says "logo and caption for the Free
> Software Foundation, Tamil Nadu will be launched" in the function. Is
> FSF India decided to start regional FSFs? If yes why this is
> organising in a a secret maner?
>
> 3. The Invitation text says "The objective of the event will be the
> launch of the project for the development of a Tamil Version of the
> GNU/ Linux operating system", why there is a need of another
> distribution when tamil is well supported in most of the upstream
> distributions? . Let it be the work of Tamil Localisation groups.
>
> 4. The contacts provided in the website contact page is not at all
> familiar in Free Software Community. And There is no information on
> who is organising this event.
>
> On a quick checkup with friends in Chennai, they says it is an event
> Organised by Communist Party of India (Marxist) . Thats why the
> secrecy. I don't have a problem in a political party supporting free
> software cause. But If it is the case i am very suspicious on
> following points
> 1. The exclusion of the Free Software Movement in Chennai in Organising it,
> 2. Creating a body with power structure before Contributing anything .
> I dont think a free software Foundation is not needed for releasing a
> Localised GNU/Linux Distribution
> 3. Secrecy in whole process of a Public event
>
> I am expecting a reply from FSF India on this
>
> Anivar
>
--
Nagarjuna G.
http://www.gnowledge.org/
Can anyone help complete Bengali translations. About 50 strings only
need to be completed for it to be available of lenny installer.
Thanks
Praveen
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Christian Perrier <bubulle(a)debian.org>
Date: 2008/9/18
Subject: 3 days left: 10 languages in danger in D-I (D-I string freeze status)
To: debian-i18n(a)lists.debian.org, debian-boot(a)lists.debian.org
3 days left before the end of the string freeze
NEW for today: Slovenian completed for sublevels 1-3
Ukrainian completed for sublevels 1-3
Catalan back to full 100%
Big progress for Macedonian
Languages meeting the release criteria: 50
------------------------------------------
Already activated and complete for level 1: 44
Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, German, Dzongkha, Greek,
Esperanto, Spanish, Basque, Finnish, French, Galician, Gujarati,
Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese,
Georgian, Khmer, Korean, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian
Bokmål, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian Nynorsk, Polish, Portuguese,
Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Tamil,
Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese
Already activated and complete for sublevels 1 and 2: 6
Belarusian, Irish, Kurdish, Punjabi, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Wolof
Not yet activated languages complete for sublevels 1 and 2: 0
Languages failing to meet the release criteria: 23
--------------------------------------------------
Activated languages: 10
Amharic, Bengali, Bosnian, Danish, Estonian, Latvian,
Macedonian, Northern Sami, Albanian, Tagalog
Not yet activated languages: 13
Afrikaans, Welsh, Persian, Armenian, Icelandic, Kazakh, Kannada,
Malagasy, Malay, Serbian, Telugu, Urdu, Xhosa
(chances to get these in lenny are quite low)
If your language is listed in "failing to meet the release criteria",
please do not scream out. For many of these languages, only very few
translated strings are missing and the needed update is very
small. But, still, do your best for this to happen.
The D-I i18n documentation is available at
http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/doc/i18n/
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--
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
GNU/Linux has long been branded as an operating system used by geeks. The
freedom the free software comes with is also arguably more apparent to geeky
users than the normal computer users.
But on Sunday, 21st September, 2008, geeks, non-geeks, users and fans of
GNU/Linux are getting together at the auditorium of Physics Department,
Mysore University to share with you information on this wonderful world of
Free Software (Free as in Freedom) and GNU/Linux. They will explain you what
the freedom in software is about and will introduce you to GNU/Linux.
We invite computer users to take part in the festivities celebrating
GNU/Linux and free software (free as in freedom) where volunteers would not
only show you the applications you could use to do your day to day computing
on GNU/Linux, but also help you install GNU/Linux on your laptop if you
bring one. Free software is not essentially free as in "Free Beer", but
gives you the freedom to change the software that you received or paid for.
If you are frustrated with Viruses on your computer running a proprietary
software, here's your chance to break free from it. GNU/Linux Habba was
started in Bangalore with its first edition in April this year by volunteers
of Sampada Community (http://sampada.net) to not only spread the word about
free software, but also to introduce GNU/Linux to the non-technical computer
users. The first edition organized at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
received tremendous response with more than 377 registrations running up to
the
event. Many participants installed GNU/Linux on their Desktops/Laptops and
learnt how to use Kannada on it. From NGOs to Public sector officials keen
to learn more about GNU/Linux - many people participated in the event.
Following the success of the first edition, the group of volunteers behind
the event decided to extend the festival to other cities in Karnataka,
starting with Mysore. The second edition of GNU/Linux Habba (http://habba.in)
will be on 21st September, 2008 at Physics Department, University of Mysore.
*GNU/Linux* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux
*Free Software* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
*GNU/Linux Habba* – http://habba.in
*Sampada Community* – http://sampada.net
--
--
"A well-directed imagination is the source of great deeds"
--
With Best Regards,
Omshivaprakash.H.L | ಓಂ ಶಿವಪ್ರಕಾಶ್ ಎಚ್. ಎಲ್ | ॐ शिवप्रकाश् एच्. एल्
Website : http://www.techfiz.info
Blog : http://platonic.techfiz.info
Phone: 91- 9902026518
AIM : fizworks
ICQ : 265216744
IRC : #techfiz server: irc.freenode.net channel: #linux-india #ubuntu-in
#gnu-india #kannada
Part I
====
"With the support of MORD and MIT , Govt of India, the P&RD Dept, Govt
of West Bengal computerised 18 ZPs,92 Panchayat Samities and 382 Gram
Panchayats as on 30/04/2007 With the support from UNDP under ICTD
project the WBSRDA in P&RD Dept has a plan to cover 20 Panchayat
Samities and 50 Gram Panchayats of Burdwan district by 2005-06 where
Integrated Fund Monitoring and Accounting Systems will be installed at
PS and Gram Panchayat Management System will be installed. Moreover
34GPs in 4 Panchayat Samities( AusgramI, Galsi I, Galsi II and
BurdwanII) of Burdwan dist will generate their GIS maps for decision
support system in plnning and monitoring of various development
programmes. So far in Burdwan district 106GPs and 31 Panchayat Samitis
could be computerised. The DRISTI pilot project has been awarded the
Microsoft e-Governance Award 2006 on 28th September for the Excellent
activities in promotion of Local Self Government..."
Details at http://wbprd.gov.in/html/asp/news_show.asp?newsnum=001
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part II
====
"...The project involved expansion of existing PC infrastructure to
ensure that software such as the Gram Panchayat Management System
(GPMS), Integrated Fund Monitoring and Accounting System (IFMAS) and
Rural Household Survey (RHS) could be installed and accessed quickly
and efficiently by all Panchayati Raj institutions. A key mandate for
this undertaking was to ensure that the planned infrastructure should
not be impacted by rural environment conditions such as dust and power
irregularities..." Details at
http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/08/09/15/West-Bengal-govt-and-AMD-compl…
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This should be the era of a neo-liberal Buddha.
Cheers,
CK Raju
Kharagpur
Great Work Madhu !!! We are proud of you for the hard work you have
done !!! It was such an important task and you have stood up to the
challenge and delivered.
And you truly deserve this special mention. I'm sure this would be a
great motivations to many students.
Keep up the good work.
Happy Hacking
Praveen
PS: We should plan to give a special gift to Madhu on SFD to celebrate this.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Banck <mbanck(a)debian.org>
Date: 2008/9/15
Subject: Bits from the Debian GNU/Hurd porters
To: debian-devel-announce(a)lists.debian.org
Hello,
it has been more than three years since the last "Bits from the Debian
GNU/Hurd porters"[1], high time for an update on the port.
* Snapshot releases
Three new snapshot releases have been done by Philip Charles, K14, K15
(which was only done as an updated mini CD-ISO, not a full snapshot),
and K16. K16 has been released[2] on December 18th, 2007 featuring four
CDs or two DVDs. Additionally, it also features a ready-to-go
qemu-image[3] for the first time. K16 was also the first snapshot which
included TLS (Thread Local Storage), a requirement for modern glibcs.
New ported packages include Qt3, Qt4, SDL and Emacs22.
* Base and toolchain status
Currently, most base packages are current, with the notable exception of
util-linux, which has been a big problem over the last years. However,
Samuel Thibault got all outstanding issues of util-linux applied
upstream so the version in experimental is mostly working. The
toolchain is in pretty good shape as well since TLS support got
implemented; we are using the current glibc, binutils and gcc Debian
packages unmodified.
* Xen support
Besides qemu, which can be very slow to run, a Xen DomU port for GNU
Mach has been made available by Samuel Thibault. It requires a non-PAE
hypervisor and some minor manual tweaking, but is otherwise quite
functional and stable already, see its wiki page[4] for further
information. This will make people running the Hurd less dependent on
specific hardware, as a lot of newer computers do not work with the
underlying GNU Mach kernel anymore.
* Autobuilder availability and archive coverage improved
The percentage of packages built for Debian GNU/Hurd has improved from
40% to now nearly 60%[5] since the last Bits from the porters. Further,
the backlog of outdated packages has been greatly reduced. This is due
to the addition of two[6][7] Xen autobuilders earlier this year, which
made the hurd-i386 autobuilders far more robust and fault-tolerant as
they not need local admin attention anymore in case of problems with the
GNU/Hurd guests.
The remaining 40% of packages are either waiting for other packages to
become available (see [8] for a (big) graph of those relationships) or
are failing for some reason[9]; a complete list of build failures can be
found at [10].
* Developer machine
We are currently working on getting a general DD-accessible porter box
setup. In the meantime, interested people can contact
hurd-shell-account(a)gnu.org to get an account on one of the publically
accessible (Debian) GNU/Hurd developer machines. For further details,
see [11].
* Summer of Code 2008
This year, the GNU Hurd participated as its own organization at Google's
Summer of Code, thanks to the coordination done by Olaf Buddenhagen[12].
All of the 5 projects were carried out quite successfully. The most
practically relevant project for Debian GNU/Hurd was the implementation
of a procfs translator[13] by Madhusudan C.S., which provides a
traditional Unix-style /proc file system and the subsequent porting of
the procps package, so utilities like pgrep etc. will be available after
lenny, and procps Build-Depends no longer need to be special-cased on
hurd-i386.
Other GSoC projects were lisp bindings by Flavio Cruz, better system
debugging and tracing by Andrei Barbu, namespace-based translator
selection by Sergiu Ivanov and network virtualization by Zheng Da. More
information on the details and outcome of those projects can be found on
the wiki[14].
* Still no debian-installer
Unfortunately, the Debian GNU/Hurd port still lacks d-i support. On the
other hand, debootstrap now mostly works, even to cross-debootstrap a
hurd-i386 installation from GNU/Linux, if one works around bug #498731.
A relatively easy solution could be to use the GNU/Linux d-i to
cross-install and setup a Debian GNU/Hurd system. People who have
experience in d-i and possibly Debian GNU/Hurd are more than welcome to
contact us at debian-hurd(a)lists.debian.org.
for the Debian GNU/Hurd porters,
Michael Banck
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/07/msg00006.html
[2] http://kerneltrap.org/node/15770
[3] http://ftp.debian-ports.org/debian-cd/K16/debian-hurd-k16-qemu.img.tar.gz
[4] http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/microkernel/mach/gnumach/ports/xen/
[5] http://buildd.debian-ports.org/stats/
[6] http://buildd.net/cgi/hostpackages.cgi?unstable_arch=hurd-i386&searchtype=b…
[7] http://buildd.net/cgi/hostpackages.cgi?unstable_arch=hurd-i386&searchtype=m…
[8] http://dept-info.labri.fr/~thibault/tmp/graph-radial.pdf
[9] http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/unsorted/PortingIssues/
[10] http://unstable.buildd.net/buildd/hurd-i386_Failed.html
[11] http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/public_hurd_boxen/
[12] http://code.google.com/soc/2008/hurd/about.html
[13] http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/hurd/news/20080903T160206Z.html
[14] http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/community/gsoc/
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--
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
Hi,
The Dept. of Comp. Science at Christ University is observing Software
Freedom day on the 20th of September with the following events:
1. Install fest for those interested in all the Depts. of the University.
2. Creation of 3 minute videos on socially relevant issues and the best of
which will be used in various global campaigns.
3. There will also be class-to-class campaigns as well which will be lead by
the students of Computer Science.
Plus,
MC Vineeth Vincent will be the event MC.
"All the fat children and one malnourished child" and other music teams will
be entertaining the participants of SFD.
We welcome students from other colleges and activists of the Free Software
Movement to be a part of our celebrations and perhaps make this a joint
event too.
Perhaps if anyone can create and distribute laptop stickers, banners, etc..
on "Free Software, Free Society" or "SFD" or anything relevant that will be
really cool.
--
Vikram Vincent
+919448810822
http://swatantra.org/
