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LinuxForYou... what's in issue # 1
by FN 12 Feb '03

12 Feb '03

India's first GNU/Linux magazine made it to the newsstands recently. The first, inaugural February 2003 issue contains: ON THE CD------------------------------------------------- * Knoppix with bundled software (Open Office, KOffice, Mozilla Navigator, Mozilla Mail, Konqueror, GIMP, Ksnapshot (screen capture), XFig (geomatrical figure editor), QCAD (CAD software), XMMS (autio tool), games, KGeo and KStars (educational), KDevelop (the "Linux cousin of VC++) NEWS REPORTS---------------------------------------------- * Axis (Mass., US) launches Linux system-on-a-chip * Hyper-threading can speed up Linux by 51 per cent HT makes a single processor behave like two logical ones. * Hong Kong trio unveils Chinese GNU/Linux OS for mobile devices * Red Hat presepares GNU/Linux for technical workstations * Ark -- another distribution for the desktop "for the masses" * Linux ver 2.6 (kernel) by first half of 2003 * Sony, Matsushita plan GNU/Linux audio-video software * Red Hat shifts to carrier-grade * New IP videophone features embedded GNU/Linux OS * Cellphone makers may go the GNU/Linux way too INDIA NEWS------------------------------------------------ * Font contest winners spurn Microsoft, go LGPL * GNU/Linux-based handhelds -- Simputer and Kaii from B'lore * Let's make an 'apnalinux' -- creating one's own distro using Anaconda, and tweaking a RedHat distribution (how-to guide) * VIA C3 800 MHz, 20GB HDD, 64MB Hynix RAM, Asus motherboard, Aztec modem, FDD and headphones e-pc for Rs 11,990 and above without monitor. * Cygsoft Inc's ManageIP -- network management solution Free trial online at www.cygsoft.com * Intrusion detection software from nSecure www.nsecure.net * LG's GNU/Linux-based MY PC Rs 33,900 for basic model and Rs 36,500 for the multimedia model (P4, 128MBRam, 40GB, LG 15" monitor, LG 52XCDRom, optical mouse, keyboard, speakers) * LX50 server from Sun Microsystem * Mithi Software, Pune offers Connect Server for GNU/Linux. * Kalculate -- an Indian accounting package for GNU/Linux * TechnoInfosys brings GNU/Linux-based net management system Check www.technoinfosys.com This comes from Navi Mumbai. * Storage strategy software for GNU/Linux from Veritas, Delhi * Website (Kerala) offers Dodobase, instant web catalog publishing product. www.websight-tech.com * Star Office 6.0, Sun Microsystem's affordable software... * Bicnet offers eBiz integrated solution (pre-sales management, sales catalogue, shopping cart, auction floor, general ledger and financial accounting, inventory, e-recruitment, customer relationship mgt) www.bicserve.com * Rolta's security and messaging products for Indian corporate networks www.rolta.com * Octopus (Mumbai) offers complete enterprise mgt solution * E-mail manager from Data Impex (Delhi) * RTLinux gains support in India * Indian govt's move to "let in [GNU]Linux" FEATURES-------------------------------------------------- * GNU/Linux@Home -- it can coexist with Windows * KDE's KOffice -- an office suite that delivers * GNU/Linux certification -- The right choice? * Introducing RedHat 8.0 * SCO Linux 4.0 * Websites that offer more info on GNU/Linux (www.tldp.org The Linux Documentation Project, www.linuxlinks.com, www.linux.org, www.redhat.com, www.linux-india.org) * What's Knoppix? * Knoppix -- software bounty * Guide to running Knoppix * Shape and trim your Linux kernel * Red Hat's installation blues * Ten tips to make your life easier * What is a diskless PC? * Developer's basics: A world of shells... * Penguin programmer (developers basics) * Overview of GNU/Linux for the embedded appln developer * "Govt must declare [GNU]Linux the official OF of India," Sudhir Gandotra, CEO Indserve InfoTech * Is [GNU]Linux good for government? * Linux TCO -- a bitter harvest? * Penguin soup is the soul of IS managers * GNUCorner: Open Source -- a brief journey through its times (Err... could someone explain what GNU has to do with Open Source? Wasn't one trying to get away from the other?FN) MISCELLANEOUS--------------------------------------------- * CERTIFICATION: Linux-based products, tested and tried by LFY Lab, will earn the 'Linux Friendly' certification. Other common IT products that work without any hassles to get a 'Tested OK' mark. * EDITORIAL: Initial discussions about LINUX For You raised a few eyebrows, accompanied by soul-searching questions... Key question -- why a magazine on [GNU]Linux? (Many times accompanied by -- are you going anti-Microsoft?) Pay Rs 50 (that's the cost, including the CD) and see if you like it. Don't forget to send in your suggestions to efylinux1(a)electronicsforu.com -- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783 Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference

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NEWS: Canadian campaigner for open knowledge access in India
by FN 11 Feb '03

11 Feb '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Canadian campaigner for open knowledge access in India By Papri Sri Raman, Indo-Asian News Service Chennai, Feb 10 (IANS) John Willinsky teaches Shakespeare in Canada but he's here promoting a world "where knowledge is free". Willinsky, pacific professor of literature and technology at the University of British Columbia and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is now on a tour of India, campaigning for open access to knowledge. As the science of information technology advances, "people's access to knowledge is actually decreasing instead of increasing", he says. For example, he recalls that the library of the Agriculture University in Bangalore subscribed to 1,000 journals in 1956. Today it can afford just 600 such academic publications. "The reason more and more libraries are finding it difficult to provide printed or online copies of journals is because big publishers have increased their costs manifold. There are online journals that cost at least $3 to just access once, and are made available for just a few hours at a time. "Only a limited number of academic papers are available online free of cost for an interested reader to access." Researchers in developing countries are devoid of a large volume of literature available on a subject. High costs and copyright rules prevent access. "Although new technology has made access possible, fewer academic journals are available to the reader," Willinsky says. He has been lobbying this week at the Indian Institute of Science and the National Centre for Scientific Information in Bangalore and at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai for online publication of academic journals under a public-funded Canadian project called the Public Knowledge Project. In Bangalore and Chennai he has also been demonstrating the software he and his graduate and undergraduate students developed last year for anyone who wants to put an academic journal online. For both the reader and the host, the access is free and response is automated, he told his audience at a lecture organised by the Computer Society of India and the Madras Library Association this weekend. Explaining how he got interested in the issue of "open access and an open source system", Willinsky said copyright laws of big publishing houses like Reed Elsevier, which publishes more than 60 percent of the academic journals in America and Europe, bothered him. In a year, they can hold the copyright to academic articles published in 2,000 academic journals, the professor said. All universities in the West require faculty members to publish their research papers, thesis and other academic work in journals. "Their promotions, recognition and continuation of jobs depend on the number of publications in a time frame of five to seven years," the professor explains. This forces scholars to give away their intellectual property rights, Willinsky told his Indian audience. Big publishing houses like Elsevier earned annual revenues up to $5.5 billon a decade ago. The work was obtained free from the scholars. According to the present rules of the intellectual property rights act, anything developed by a worker hired for a company belongs to the company because it conceives the project and provides facilities. However, the copyright belongs to the creator of the project or thesis and to the public if it is supported by public funds, especially in universities. The study for public benefit is sold to the publisher unless it is 70 or 100 years after the death of the academic. This got Willinsky thinking of how much it costs to publish an academic journal online. His first search took him to a publisher who said it could be done free. At the end of his search list was the Cornell University that said it costs as much as $2.7 million to publish an academic journal online. With such varied result, the professor got nine computer students to develop a software that enabled people to put academic journals online free in a secure and formatted manner. The process cost about $65,000 but once the software was developed, it was made available free of cost. The Public Knowledge Project is funded by a global security and sustainability grant for knowledge exchange and technology research capabilities of developing nations from the MacArthur Foundation. It explores how technology can be used to improve the professional and public value of scholarly research. "By bringing together researchers and librarians, it is investigating the social, economic, and technical issues entailed in the use of online infrastructure and public accessibility," said Willinsky. The project also seeks to integrate emerging standards for digital library access and document preservation, such as Open Archives and InterPARES, as well as for topic maps and doctoral dissertations, and helps develop knowledge management website prototypes. --Indo-Asian News Service

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[bytesforall_readers] News: Free Software rated high (fwd)
by FN 11 Feb '03

11 Feb '03

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Re: Invitation to join FSF
by CK Raju 10 Feb '03

10 Feb '03

Dear Shri Kamal Kumar Pal, Thanks for the reciprocation. You should have received intimation from FSF by now. Waiting to hear from you on FSF forum. Rgds, CK Raju On Friday 07 February 2003 04:15 am, Kamal Kumar Pal wrote: > Dear Mr. Raju, > Thank you very much for your mail. > I would love to do that. > Best regards, > Kamal Kumar Pal > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "CK Raju" <ckraju(a)zyberway.com> > To: <kamalpal(a)vsnl.com> > Cc: <fsf-friends(a)gnu.org.in> > Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 7:30 AM > Subject: Invitation to join FSF > > > Dear Kamal Pal, > I request you to join the Free Software Foundation - India, for sharing > your views and experiences. > > Would you be gracious enough to throw light on your achievements, and your > interactions with corporates, so that we could be enlightened. > > Regards, > CK Raju, > KILA, Thrissur

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Invitation to join FSF
by CK Raju 09 Feb '03

09 Feb '03

Dear Kamal Pal, I request you to join the Free Software Foundation - India, for sharing your views and experiences. Would you be gracious enough to throw light on your achievements, and your interactions with corporates, so that we could be enlightened. Regards, CK Raju, KILA, Thrissur

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Bribing to be a Business Partner
by CK Raju 09 Feb '03

09 Feb '03

Going by the statements from Kamal Pal ( kamalpal(a)vsnl.com) of West Bengal, who has designed a GIS application on his own, the just revealed trend of corporates to sneak into the Government machinery with offers of a 'business partner' if Mr Kamal Pal withheld the development of the application, and its release to the Govt of India, appears to be quite disturbing. Requesting our journalists to get in touch with Shri Kamal Pal to dig out further details. If corroborated by Kamal Pal in public, this news can turn out to have huge ramifications elsewhere. CK Raju Thrissur

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PUNE: Symbiosis plans a GNU/Linux fest in mid-Feb
by FN 08 Feb '03

08 Feb '03

GNUnify! The All India Free Software Festival 16-February-2003 Venue: Symbiosis Vishwa Bhawan, Senapati Bapat Road, Ganesh Khind, Pune - 4. Time Themes Symbiosis Vishwa Bhawan 09:30-10:30 Welcome and Opening Ceremony Dr. S.B. Mujumdar (Chancellor SIEC Deemed University) 10:30-11:00 Morning Tea Break 11:00-11:40 IT Industry and GNU/Linux Mr. Atul Chitnis (CTO - Exocore Consulting) "Linux/OpenSource on Corporate Desktop" 11:40-12:20 Free Software in Education Dr. G. Sivakumar (Head of Computer Center - IIT Mumbai) "IIT Bombay's Network and Systems setup and the crtical role of GNU/Linux in it". 12:20-1:00 Prof. Jitendra Shah (Senior Lecturer - VJTI, Mumbai) "Free Software with Localisation in Education" 01:00-02:00 Lunch Break 02:00-02:40 Future Tech Mr. M Sasikumar (Senior Research Scientist - NCST) "A.I. Demystified" 02:40-03:20 * * * Made In India o Mr. Venky Hariharan (MediaLabs) and Mr. Guntupalli Karunakar (IndLinux) "GNU/Linux localisation and its usage, esp its relevance to our country." p Mr. Naba Kumar (Software Engineer - Belzabar Software Development India Pvt Ltd.) "Anjuta IDE for C,C++ on GNU/Linux" 03:20-04:00 Mr. Samyeer Metrani (Group Manager Embedded Systems - Encore Software Limited) "Simputer" 04:00-04:30 Tea Break 04:30-05:10 Government and GNU/Linux Dr. S.Ramakrishnan (Senior Director - Department of Information Technology - Government of India) 05:10-05:30 Introduction and Felicitation of Guru Dr. Nagarjuna (TIFR) Introduction to RMS Dr. T.M. Kanvinde (Director - SICSR) Felicitation 05:30-07:00 The Guru Speaks Mr. Richard Stallman (President and Founder of FSF) "The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System" 7:10-07:30 Free Software Song and Vote Of Thanks Students SICSR -- _____ _ _ _ | ___| __ ___ __| | ___ _ __(_) ___| | __ Freelance Journo, Goa India | |_ | '__/ _ \/ _` |/ _ \ '__| |/ __| |/ / http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | _|| | | __/ (_| | __/ | | | (__| < http://www.bytesforall.org |_| |_| \___|\__,_|\___|_| |_|\___|_|\_\ http://opennews.indianissues.org -- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783 Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference

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LINK: Chennai meet on open access to information
by FN 06 Feb '03

06 Feb '03

---------- Forwarded message ----------

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Re: Re: [Fsf-friends] [Off Topic] NEWS: [GNU]Linux-based desktops fail to excite the market
by The GNU/Linuxer 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

Dear Kanti, Well, may be we are not against any company or entity, you but can't really call MS *any company*. It's *the* company which is trying hardest to bog the Free Software Movement down. It has been for years intimidating small companies to include use & spread proprietary software. So in a way, we can say that MS has been leading the whole movement of proprietary software. Even though I am personally not against any company, but when it comes to MS, I think the signature was well justified especially since most Indians don't know to look outside the ``Windows'' & think about any software that's not endorsed by MS. In any case, if it hurts you or the philosophy of the FSF in any way, I am removing the signature. Regards, B.Ghose =========================================== GNU/Linux is like living in a Teepee. No Gates, no Windows, only the Apache inside. =========================================== --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

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World Information Summit... or Sellout Summit?
by FN 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

This looks like an absolute sellout. In the name of ensuring information to those dying from the lack of it, the dominant powers of our times seem keen to sell more products, push their priorities on the rest of the globe, rake up non-issues and place them center-stage, and push ahead their pet peeves of the moment (e.g. fighting 'terrorism' without thinking about justice). Can someone convince me otherwise? FN PS: "Vital role for intellectual property in innovation"? What about the vital role for sharing -- whether it is of software or knowledge -- in solving this world's problems? http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/01/15/030115hnwsisos_1.html WSIS delegates fail to agree on open-source 'support' Draft was changed after objections by U.S. By [19]Martyn Williams January 15, 2003 TOKYO -- A three-day meeting that brought together Asian governments, organizations, companies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ended Wednesday morning with the approval of a declaration that, among other things, calls for encouraging the development of open-source software. A draft of the declaration had called for open source to be "supported" but was changed after objections from the U.S. government delegation late Tuesday night. The U.S. opposition was largely perceived to be support for its domestic software companies and in particular Microsoft, said officials from other governments on the sidelines of the conference on Wednesday. After a short debate with a number of countries, including Pakistan, that wanted the original language to remain, all sides finally reached agreement and the declaration was changed to read: "Development and deployment of open-source software should be encouraged, as appropriate, as should open standards for ICT (information and communications technology) networking." The change was one of a number made during a late-night session at the end of the second day of the Asian Regional Conference. The event is one of a number of conferences being held around the world to solicit regional input for the World Summit on the Information Society, a government-leader level U.N. summit that will take place in December this year in Geneva, Switzerland, and in Tunis in 2005. At the meeting, representatives of 48 countries, 21 international organizations, 53 private sector entities and 116 NGOs discussed a number of issues related to the information society and debated over the content of the final output of the meeting, a document called the Tokyo Declaration. The declaration will go forward to a meeting in Geneva next month and bring together participants from around the world as part of the large planning process that must precede the December summit. The declaration touched on a wide range of issues related to the information society and included a call for greater information security, a balance between content owners and users in the area of intellectual property rights, and more work on the digital divide. The lack of awareness of the need for information security was recognized as a weakness for the Asia-Pacific region. The declaration touched upon the need for greater awareness of cybercrime and cyberterrorism while recognizing that equal and fair access to information technology is also important. "Special attention should be paid to the fact that ICTs can potentially be used for purposes that are inconsistent with the objectives of maintaining international stability and security, and may adversely affect the integrity of the infrastructure within states, to the detriment of their security in both civil and military fields," it said. In the area of copyright, the declaration recognized the "vital role" that intellectual property rights play in innovation in software, e-commerce and related areas, but also noted the need to strike a fair balance between such rights and the interests of users. The same two areas were identified by a Japanese government official as possible areas of which participants to WSIS in December will agree require the creation of a legal and policy framework that spans international borders. Agreement on the need to create a global legal and policy framework for the information society is one of several goals already identified for the summit. "I think the big issues that need to be tackled are intellectual property rights and information security," said Yoshio Tsukio, vice minister for policy coordination and Japan's Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (MPHPT). The conference heard more pledges to bridge the digital divide and several points in the declaration focused on extending the benefits of the information society to the poor and otherwise disadvantaged. "The digital divide unfortunately is widening," said Kim Hak Su, the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for the Asia-Pacific and the U.N.'s highest ranking official in Asia. "It is not only between the countries but within the countries and between generations and the able-bodied and disabled. The international community is trying to help to assist those countries who do not have a national strategy and a national political commitment is also essential. Also, the Government of Japan is offering a substantial ODA (overseas development aid) package to developing member countries," he told IDG News Service. "This digital divide will be with us for some years to come and we have to work very hard. There is no magic formula but we should work hard," he said. Kim admitted that promises to help have been made before and the problem often comes down to paying for things. "We need the private sector to do many things. Governments cannot do everything anymore." "We need more money and more discussion but Tokyo has set the direction," he said. "The direction is right and WSIS could be important because political commitment is also important." Speaking after the event, a number of NGOs that had taken part in the summit said they were broadly satisfied with the outcome but had hoped for greater commitment in a number of areas such as a social justice. They were satisfied with the inclusion of a reference to human rights in the declaration, despite some attempts to change it, they said. The groups also repeated protests over the deregistration of NGOs from Taiwan on Tuesday as the result of repeated protests by the Chinese government delegation. "There is discrimination against the principles of WSIS for a comprehensive inclusion of all stakeholders in the information society including civil society, which includes Taiwanese NGOs as well," said Chuang Chiting, the international affairs director of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights. "As Taiwan is a very powerful ICT country and it provides major input to the information society, we do hope our voices can be heard and be constructive towards a better future in the international community," she said. The representatives were allowed to stay at the meeting under the affiliation of a Japanese NGO. [23]Martyn Williams is a Tokyo correspondent for the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate. -- Frederick Noronha : http://www.bytesforall.org : When we speak of free Freelance Journalist : Goa India 403511 : software we refer to Ph 0091.832.409490 : Cell 0 9822 122436 : freedom, not price.

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