Fsf-friends March 2010

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Internet, tech skills growing quietly in Goa...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 02 Sep '24

02 Sep '24

INTERNET, TECH SKILLS GROWING QUIETLY IN GOA PANJIM, April 30: Goa's BSNL internet service provider is already providing some 3000 broadband connections in the state, and roughly another 24,000 people dial-up to get access the Net using this central government-run service. These figures emerged during an informal discussion at the monthly meeting of the India Linux Users Group (Goa), a network promoting Free Software and Open Source in the state. ILUG-Goa, which holds its meetings usually on the fourth Saturday of each month at the Goa Science Centre at Miramar, sees a range of tech issues -- usually directly related to Free Software and Open Source in Goa. During it's meet on April 29, a range of issues came up for discussion, from how to partition your hard-disk (to install GNU/Linux side-by-side with Windows), to software tools to ehance productivity, and various internet and broadband options available to users in diverse parts of Goa. For instance, there are some useful Free Software tools to monitor your bandwidth usage on BSNL's broadband. One such tool is available for free download at http://tinyurl.com/qgu9p Called the Data One Broadband Statistics, this is a screen-scraper written using Perl to download usage statistics of BSNL's Data One (www.bsnl.co.in/service/dataone.htm) broadband service and total it. Generally, BSNL (www.bsnl.co.in) allows only the Microsoft-based IE and has no monthly total. But trust Indian software talent to find a work-around. This solution comes from the Free Software/Open Source network in Chennai. Meanwhile, the Goa free software network stays connected and announces its event via http://iluggoaannounce.notlong.com There are no fees for joining, all are welcome, and encouraged to form parallel user-groups in diverse parts of the state. Meanwhile, the Fedora Core 5 Free Software distribution has just become available on DVD in Goa. Number of foreign magazines are also available. Members of ILUG-Goa such as engineer Bijon Shaha and software pro Arvind Yadav gave diverse views on techies-only distros like 'Gentoo'. Debopriyo 'DP' Sarkar pointed to a 'mindmap' of various Free Software distributions or 'distros' available, which was illustrated at linuxhelp.blogspot.com Earlier, there was a brief presentation on FreeMind. FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. It has the potential of playing the role of a high productivity tool. Operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster because of one-click "fold/unfold" and "follow link" operations. Other members raised a range of issues -- from how to get started in GNU/Linux, to playing around with tools like StumbleUpon, and how to encourage Free Software usage in schools and educational institutions. Remy Furtado of Rosary College, Navelim expressed an interest in working on the Free Software tool Moodle, ideal for distance education, as the Goa University moves to a pattern of semisterisation. Goa Engineering College's Prof George Easaw has done work on this platform, as have others. Reacting unofficially, BSNL officials said Goa now had six STMS 155 MBps connectivity, which was resulting in a speedy expansion of broadband to many parts of the state. But for broadband facilities to become available in village areas, at least 60 subscribers were needed to make operations viable. So far, broadband from BSNL is available in a growing number of areas in Goa: Panjim, Vasco (except Cortalim, but including Sada, Mangor, Bogmalo, Sancoale and other areas), Ponda, Bambolim, Merces, Dona Paula, Porvorim, Mapusa town, Calangute-Candolim, and Saligao, among others. Equipment has already been installed in Aldona exchange, and broadband facilities are expected to go functional -- ------------------------------------------------------------- | India Linux Users' Group, Goa | | Join the friendly user group | | Mail list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa/join | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/teach-yourself-linux | | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa-announce | | http://www.iosn.net/country/india/organizations/ilug-goa/ | ------------------------------------------------------------- , , / \ .-. * SOFTWARE ((__-^^-,-^^-__)) (. .) * FREEDOM `-_---' `---_-' / V \ * SHARING `--|o` 'o|--' // \\ \ ` / /( )\ KNOWLEDGE IS POWER ): :( '.^^_^^.' SHARE IT EQUITABLY :o_o: \_/ \_/ "-"

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Careers in FLOSS... (Dec 2003 issue of LFY)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 06 Jun '24

06 Jun '24

=========================================== LINUXForYou * Dec 2003 (Vol 1 No 10) In India Rs 50 (with CD) http://www.linuxforu.com Pages 102 * US$7.95 0 74470584957 =========================================== THIS ISSUE has probably reached your city. Saw it in Bangalore, and also got a complimentary copy from the LFY team at LinuxBangalore2003. But when I reached back to Goa on Dec 4, it wasn't in as yet. So it might take time to reach 'small town' India... FN REVIEWED: Mandrake 9.2 * PhProjekt * StarOffice 7.0 COMPUTERS AT TIS HAZARI, the session courts for the city of New Delhi, are being shifted over to Linux, courtesy the National Informatics Centre. - Rahul Chopra in this month's editorial. LINUX LEARNING CENTRE at Bangalore is offering courses in administration, security, development (internals and programming essentials, programming with Qt, device driver programming, MySQL & PHP), RHCE and Red Hat rapid track certification. www.linuxlearningcentre.com DotGNU RELEASES CD: It can now be used to implement application programs and Web services in C# and C applications under multiple operating systems, including GNU/Linux, FreeBSC, MacOS, MS Windows. The 219 MB release 0.1 CD is available as a free download at http://download.freedom.biz/dotgnu/dotgnu-0.1-cdrom.iso.gz.torrent e-Bridge calls itself "the new state-of-art training facility from eSpark Infotech is now open in the heart of Bangalore". It's offering embedded Linux courses (Linux fundamentals, programming Linux, embedded C & Linux, realtime C & Linux, Linux internals, device drivers, networking) and DSP courses (DSP fundamentals, TI/analog dev programming, audio/video, image processing, bio-medical systems). www.ebridgesolutions.net Linux.net provides a free e-mail service to those who want an e-mail address that ends in '@linux.net' MAJOR UPDATES and releases: OpenNA Linux 1.0, Gibraltar Firewall 1.0, Xandros Desktop 2.0, Onebase Linux 2.0, CUPS 1.120rc6. CAN YOU MAKE money with open source? Registration entails a "nominal fee" of Rs 5000 for a three-day conference. http://www.linuxasia2004.com/attendees/ February 11-13, 2004, New Delhi. SEND IN YOUR favourite slogans for a tee-shirt, and win five free copies of the shirt... LFYedit at efyindia.com MONEY CAN't buy respect, says Robert Adkins. Some of us might have met this guy at LB2003 in Bangalore. He's the CTO of Technetra Corp, and an advocate and implementer of FLOSS solutions for government. He can be contacted at radkins at technetra.com CAREERS WITH FLOSS: The number of students opting for courses in Open Source is growing steadily, even as industry experts predict a growing need for trained professionals in this expanding field. EXIT RED HAT, ENTER FEDORA: It's official now; the free (of cost) version of Red Hat Linux will not be available anymore. This has created a lot of FUD in an already unstable environment, thanks to the SCO episode. But is Red Hat closed for good? WEB-BASED COLLABORATION SOFTWARE: PHProjekt is an easy-to-install collaboration suite, which runs on the open source platform and databases. As the design of the system is developer-friendly, adding new features and components is a piece of cake. STAROFFICE: The latest version of Sun's office suite, StarOffice 7, may just be the right solution for the cost-conscious user. It loads faster than the earlier version, and sports some noticeable improvements. IN THE LFY CD THIS MONTH: Slackware (the "oldest Linux distro") and a range of GNU software for Windows users. FALLING BACK on backup systems. MAKING ADOPTION OF Linux in the enterprise easy. www.linux4e.com Business partners required: http://wwww.linux4e.com/partners ooWRITER HELPS YOU create your own templates and styles so that you can work with documents easily. Open Source is key to IBM's vision of computing. User empowerment is key to Microsoft's, writes Alolita Sharma USING DATABASE functions in Calc, a tutorial. (Wish there were more how-tos for the user in this mag! --FN) HALDIA DOCKS: it has a uniquely designed Linux installation with an active-active cluster set up, which is considered the best of its kind. This has ensured efficiency and cost-effectiveness. BASIC UNIX commands and concepts: an extract from *Running Linux* (Shroff Publishers, Pp 674 only Rs 425 in India). VxWorks and LynxOS are definitely the biggest embedded operating systems in use today. But slowly they are acknowledging the power of GNU/Linux and how it can help them maximise deployments. HELP LINUX GO INDIAN: By using various translation tools, you can join Language translation groups working across India to help translate GNU/Linux into your language. EXPERT INTRODUCTION: Multi-threaded programming under Linux. KICKSTART YOUR Linux installation (Part I): Installing Red Hat Linux on multiple machines one after another can be quite tedious. To avoid answering the same question over and over again, try the KickStart method, as it does not need any user intervention. WRITE CHEQUES. NOT JUST BOOKS: Niyam Bhushan on how anybody can turn thoughts into words, and words into wealth. NFS CLIENTS for Windows. OpenSSL PACKAGE offers a vast crypto library of algorithms WAIT QUEUES in Linux device drivers UNDERSTANDING recursive sub-routines INDIA-RELATED NEWS: HP launches GNU/Linux laptop Mandrake's latest distribution Oracle announces 10g for GNU/Linux Delixus offers India Linux CxProtect anti-virus mailing solution for mail-servers Trade management system from Network Programs Netweb Technologies unveils Tyrone MRO-Tek rolls out Network Management Systems Review of FLOSS at BangaloreIT.com =========================================== DISCLOSURE: This journalist (FN) writes a monthly column for LFY and gets paid for it. Promoting awareness about the content of LFY however is not part of the job, and is carried on with the intention spreading awareness about FLOSS among different GNU/Linux user groups in India. -- Frederick Noronha : http://www.fredericknoronha.net : When we speak of free Freelance Journalist : http://www.bytesforall.org : software we refer to Ph 0091.832.2409490 : Cell 0 9822 122436 : freedom, not price.

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Re: [Fsf-friends] GFDL book published by Calicut University
by Maxin John 04 Apr '10

04 Apr '10

Hi Vivek, >Is there a URL from where I can download the entire book ? Please try this link: http://radiantbytes.com/books/pdfs/pylatex.pdf Best Regards, Maxin B. John www.maxinbjohn.info

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Fwd: [FSF] Why I'm rejecting your email attachment: for freedom and the good of the web!
by Nagarjuna G 31 Mar '10

31 Mar '10

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Peter Brown <info(a)fsf.org> Date: Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 7:00 AM Subject: [FSF] Why I'm rejecting your email attachment: for freedom and the good of the web! To: info-fsf(a)gnu.org Why I'm rejecting your email attachment: for freedom and the good of the web! http://www.fsf.org/news/why-im-rejecting-your-email-attachment BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Wednesday, March 31, 2010 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today launched a campaign calling on all computer users to start politely rejecting email attachments sent in secret and proprietary formats: for freedom and the good of the web! The campaign is in support of Document Freedom Day and the OpenDocument format. OpenDocument is an ISO standard that allows anyone to create software that supports it, without fear of patent claims or licensing issues. Documents, spreadsheets and presentations sent in Microsoft Word or Excel native formats, or documents created in Apple's iWorks, are proprietary and incompatible with freedom and an accessible web. "If we are serious about gaining freedom and accessibility for all users of technology and the web, we must demand an end to proprietary document formats. The best way to get started is for each of us to take responsibility and begin rejecting their use. OpenDocument is available now, as is free software such as OpenOffice.org that allows anyone to create OpenDocument files at no cost. If we can convince the 300 Million users who have already downloaded OpenOffice.org, to reject proprietary formats we could quickly secure a victory. Let's do this for freedom and the good of the web," said FSF executive director Peter Brown. The campaign highlights ways in which emails that include attachments in secret or proprietary formats can be politely rejected, and the issue explained to the sender. Users can respond individually, or email administrators can configure their systems to automatically reject such messages. FSF campaigns manager Matt Lee added, "For governments, businesses, archivists and others, it's critical that documents be stored in a way that guarantees they can be read for years to come. This hasn't been a problem for printed matter, but proprietary digital file formats are secretive by nature and get changed every few years, putting at risk future access to needed documents. We must ensure that documents we store on our computers and that are made available on the web are accessible regardless of what computer you use." The FSF is providing graphics that supporters can use to promote the campaign at http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument/spread. Reject proprietary formats and use OpenDocument: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument/reject Learn about OpenDocument: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/opendocument Learn about Document Freedom Day: http://documentfreedom.org/ About the Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA. Media Contacts Peter Brown Executive Director Free Software Foundation +1 (617) 319-5832 campaigns(a)fsf.org info-fsf mailing list info-fsf(a)gnu.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-fsf

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GFDL book published by Calicut University
by Pramode C.E. 30 Mar '10

30 Mar '10

Please check out: http://pramode.net/2010/03/19/gfdl-pythonlatex-book/ regards, pramode ------------ The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage. http://in.yahoo.com/

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Fwd: Re - Mahiti's stance on Free and Open Source Software
by Krishnakant Mane 29 Mar '10

29 Mar '10

They call it a "open source event " and this is what they say about their stand. Mahiti is mis using terms like open source and free software, it will be clear from the mail that follows. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re - Mahiti's stance on Free and Open Source Software Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:38:37 +0530 From: Rajeev Nair <rajeev.nair(a)mahiti.org> Reply-To: digitalbridgecamp(a)googlegroups.com To: digitalbridgecamp(a)googlegroups.com Hello members, I would like to clarify a few questions/doubts raised about Mahiti by a member here on the list. Mahiti believes in taking the middle ground in this matter,so while we actively promote the use of FOSS and use it extensively in our organization, we are not opposed to using proprietary software or have anything to do with what companies like Microsoft do to promote their products.We do our work and they do theirs.Wherever possible we use FOSS ,where not we use proprietary products. As far as our workshops are concerned , its completely aimed at non-profits and is not a linux tech fest or talking too much of the idealogical aspects of FOSS, and though 95 % of sessions are using FOSS tools,we also have google apps as a session.And we talk about dual booting with other OS's so there too proprietary software is involved. Its basically a technology workshop for non-profits.And the tools taught at the workshop are FOSS tools.With some other software 'we feel' is of use to participants. But since a member used the term 'If Mahiti is doing this we ought to be careful' , i suggest to him he read about Mahiti's history and work done with the FOSS community before trying to post utterly false statements to this list. Rajeev Nair convene Co-ordinator Mahiti Infotech Pvt. Ltd. # 33-34, Hennur Cross Hennur Main Road Bangalore, India - 560043 Phone: +91 80 4148 5080/1 41150580/1 Mobile: +91 96113 44374 http://www.mahiti.org http://convene.mahiti.org -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Digital Bridge Camp" group. To post to this group, send email to digitalbridgecamp(a)googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to digitalbridgecamp+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/digitalbridgecamp?hl=en.

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National Conference on Free Software, 2010 - Report
by Nidhin Sasi 25 Mar '10

25 Mar '10

Hi All, Here are the brief reports of the National Conference on Free Software, 2010 conducted at Bangalore University, Central College Campus, Bangalore - http://www.nc2010.fsmk.org/content/national-conference-free-software-2010-d… http://ideasareimmortal.blogspot.com/2010/03/nc2010-day-2-and-free-software… http://www.deccanherald.com/content/59304/making-sense-unjust-world.html The National Conference on Free Software recently held in Bangalore at Bangalore University and organised by FSMK (Free Software Movement Karnataka) has given rise to Free Software Movement at a National level - http://www.nc2010.fsmk.org/content/free-software-movement-has-arrived-natio… . The Conference was a huge success with a particpation of more than 1200 students, lecturers, IT professionals and civil society. In the Delegates Session of the Conference (which included Around 300 Delegates represneting over 10 different Free Software Organisations from different parts of the Country) came up with a decision of formation of a All India body to co-oridnate the Free Software activities across the country - FREE SOFTWARE MOVEMENT OF INDIA , which will be a network of organisations like FSMK - http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/22/stories/2010032263622000.htm. More reports of the conference and its run up events below : http://www.nc2010.fsmk.org/content/ac3-run-event-sunday-14th-march-2010 http://beta.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article245413.ece http://www.nc2010.fsmk.org/content/freedom-walks-free-software-movement-kar… http://www.deccanherald.com/content/58966/free-software-movement-gaining-gr… http://www.thehindu.com/2010/03/19/stories/2010031961140300.htm http://www.thehindu.com/2010/03/20/stories/2010032064330300.htm http://www.thehindu.com/2010/03/21/stories/2010032154350500.htm We hope FSMI will take more strides in making Free Software being implemented by Govt in all sectors, thus saving crores of rupees which could be spent on Education, Food, Creating jobs, and relief for poor & also in spreading the Free Software ideas to all the sections of the Society. Thanks & Regards Nidhin

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Microsoft’s (desperate) open source love affair
by Arvind Kumar Chinniah 24 Mar '10

24 Mar '10

http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/03/12/microsoft-open-source-love-affair/

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Fwd: Release Candidate of GNOWSYS and gnowsys-mode
by Nagarjuna G 20 Mar '10

20 Mar '10

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nagarjuna G <nagarjun(a)gnowledge.org> Date: Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 8:00 AM Subject: Release Candidate of GNOWSYS and gnowsys-mode To: info-gnu(a)gnu.org Gnowledge lab team is happy to announce the release of GNOWSYS and gnowsys-mode. This is the first major release of GNOWSYS and gnowsys-mode (An Emacs major mode as an UI for GNOWSYS) as a release candidate 1. If no more bugs are reported/fixed in the coming two months, v 1.0 will be released in May 2010. The release can be downloaded from here: http://mirror.lihnidos.org/GNU/savannah/gnowsys/gnowsysApp_rc1.tar.bz2 http://mirror.lihnidos.org/GNU/savannah/gnowsys/gnowsys-mode_rc1.tar.bz2 Release Notes: This release is a major overhaul of the last stable release 0.62 (June 2006). After this GNOWSYS has been completely rewritten. The major changes are summarized below: + The storage uses postgresql and not ZOPE object database (ZODB). + Full version control of data and metadata is implemented making it a multiuser collaboration through the web, as well as through an Emacs client. (A major mode of GNU Emacs called gnowsys-mode has been developed as a client to work collaboratively through Internet without using an Internet browser.) + It is scalable and faster than all the earlier versions. + It is standardized for use as a triple (RDF) store. (In the next release Ontologies can be published and managed collaboratively.) + Graphs are drawn automatically for each node in SVG with hyperlinks. + RDF export in N3 notation is implemented. + Basic ontology editing is possible through the Emacs client: gnowsys-mode. * A brief Introduction about GNOWSYS GNOWSYS (Gnowledge Networking and Organizing System) is a triple store (RDF) for representing knowledge networks and its dynamics. ** The Structure of the Network Memory The network construction uses the following principles: 1. The memory in GNOWSYS is a set of nodes with all nodes with a unique NID (Node ID). The NID with the address locator gives rise to a unique URI in the cyberspace. 2. Every node links with the neighborhood nodes through two kinds of mediating nodes: attributes and relations. Thus every node can be represented as a frame. 3. Every node is described by neighborhood. 4. The network can be obtained as a graph by merging the neighborhood of all the nodes. 5. The set of all attributes and relations is the full set of knowledge represented in the network. 6. Each attribute or relation constitutes one RDF triple. 7. Search and query operations give the list of SSID (SnapShot ID) whose neighborhood contains the searched value. 8. The value space is linked to the nodes via named links making most results of queries meaningful. 9. The representation of network memory can be completely encoded in any of the RDF languages. ** The Dynamics (change management) of the Network Memory 1. Insertion of new nodes changes the neighborhood of the nodes concerned, and such changes can be tracked by holding the snapshots of the node's neighborhood at each instance of change. 2. Being a collaborative space, the system records who did what change and at what time. 3. Delinking is the preferred way of removing data elements from the network, and no node can be removed without prior removal of the links the node may have with others. 4. Each Node's neighborhood at a given time becomes the state space of the node. 5. Changing state of nodes can be recorded persistently as process nodes that record the prior-state and post-state of the nodes invovled. For more details, please follow http://www.gnu.org/software/gnowsys/ and http://lab.gnowledge.org site. For video documentation please see: http://lab.gnowledge.org/download/gnowsys-mode-screencasts -- Nagarjuna

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Making of the National Conference on Free Software-2010
by Raghavendra S 19 Mar '10

19 Mar '10

Hi everyone, A brief reminiscence of the progress we've made, to make the Conference happen tomorrow http://ideasareimmortal.blogspot.com/2010/03/making-of-national-conference-… Thanks for your support :) -- Raghavendra S http://ideasareimmortal.blogspot.com/ http://fsmk.org/

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Fsf-friends March 2010