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NEWS: Kerala lauds Microsoft for Malayalam software
by Frederick Noronha 12 Nov '02

12 Nov '02

Kerala lauds Microsoft for Malayalam software By Raghu Menon, Indo-Asian News Service New Delhi, Nov 12 (IANS) Kerala's has lauded the move by Microsoft to enable its next version of Windows software to support the Malayalam language. "This is the commencement of a long term relationship," Kerala Minister for IT P.K. Kunhalikutty said after a meeting with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates here Tuesday. Kunhalikutty described the move as a "major step forward for the state, which has been lagging behind the other southern Indian states in IT initiatives". This is the first time a team from Kerala met Gates. This, the minister claimed, will give the state's "IT for the masses" project the necessary impetus. Microsoft has also promised technical expertise in two flagship projects in the state, Kunhalikutty said. These include Information Kerala Mission, a grassroots level e-governance programme, and "Akshaya," an initiative to bridge the digital divide in the state. While the mission is in its nascent stages, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam will soon launch "Askhaya". "We could not have afforded to miss the bus this time," remarked the minister. "The very fact that he (Gates) agreed to meet a Kerala delegation ahead of the other states illustrates Microsoft's desire to work with us", he added. Microsoft's Indian team and the Kerala government will now draw up a roadmap in the next 60 days. "He has agreed to accord Kerala a special focus, which is tantamount to considering us as a referral point in Microsoft's Indian initiatives. This includes investment in our state", Kunhalikutty maintained. "This focus would be at par with the programmes Microsoft runs in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka", he added. Under the proposal, Microsoft would also help Kerala in its drive to enhance computer literacy at the school level. Also in the offing are specific competency centres for Microsoft tools. Infrastructure, technical proficiency of the people and broad policy framework, according to Kunhalikutty, were the most important requirements sought by the Microsoft team. The minister was confident of delivering on all fronts. "Our adeptness in the IT sector has amplified manifold", he claimed. "We are at par with Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka in this respect." --Indo-Asian News Service

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Free Software: What does freedom really mean... to whom?
by Frederick Noronha 12 Nov '02

12 Nov '02

In Goa we already have one. See http://www.freenewsgoa.net If someone could support us on the technical side (PostNuke setups, webspace), we could surely think of doing this at a wider/national level. FN On 11 Nov 2002, V. Sasi Kumar wrote: > On Sun, 2002-11-10 at 15:26, Frederick Noronha wrote: > > > On another issue, I think that the ideals of Free Software need to be > > extended to other fields too (including journalism, where the money has > > become good in recent years in countries like India but increasingly > > journalists are feeling choked by their inability to express themselves > > freely). > > Do you think we could plan a web site where journalists could freely > express themselves? Or does some such thing already exist? Perhaps we > could also give regular daily news, if there are enough journalists > willing to support it. > > V. Sasi Kumar >

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LINK: GNU/Linux in China...
by Frederick Noronha 12 Nov '02

12 Nov '02

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

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[Fwd: [fsug-calicut] MS and LTSP in Namibia]
by Baiju M 12 Nov '02

12 Nov '02

Forwarding... -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [fsug-calicut] MS and LTSP in Namibia From: Ajith Kumar <ajith(a)nsc.ernet.in> Date: Tue, November 12, 2002 1:25 pm To: fsug-calicut(a)freelists.org, fsf-friends(a)gnu.org.in A link worth visiting. At least for our blind policy makers. http://www.schoolnet.na/pr/msftrelease.html ajith

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Comments from the GII mailing list (RMS/Gates)
by Frederick Noronha 11 Nov '02

11 Nov '02

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Send india-gii mailing list submissions to india-gii(a)lists.cpsr.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/india-gii To: India Gii <india-gii(a)cpsr.org> From: Udhay Shankar N <udhay(a)pobox.com> Subject: Re: [india-gii] Free software guru's book At 02:22 AM 11/11/02 +0530, Frederick Noronha wrote: >Incidentally both Bill Gates and >Stallman are visiting India at the same time. Sounds like a recipe for a matter-antimatter explosion. :) -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) --__--__-- Message: 5 Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 11:04:00 +0530 To: Udhay Shankar N <udhay(a)pobox.com>, India Gii <india-gii(a)cpsr.org> From: Vickram Crishna <vvcrishna(a)softhome.net> Subject: Re: [india-gii] Free software guru's book At 8:44 AM +0530 11/11/2002, Udhay Shankar N wrote: >At 02:22 AM 11/11/02 +0530, Frederick Noronha wrote: > >>Incidentally both Bill Gates and >>Stallman are visiting India at the same time. > >Sounds like a recipe for a matter-antimatter explosion. :) Absolutely... with BG here for work on AIDS thru technology, and RS here for work on aid thru technology, there is definitely scope for fun and games. What a pity (for me!) they will not be in Mumbai.... -- Vickram --__--__--

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Groups like this need support...
by Frederick Noronha 11 Nov '02

11 Nov '02

This is about the work of Sunil Abraham in Bangalore... PS: At the risk of sounding vain, I could say that in a small way, our own efforts were successful in getting Sunil to look at Free/Libre and Open Source solutions for NGOs. Today, he has grown vastly in the field, and is amazingly competent. Maybe Free Software Foundation could help (I don't mean financial) groups like this. FN PPS: To be honest, this mail is extracted from one sent out in another context. But I think it's important enough for all of us to know what's going on elsewhere... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Sunil Abraham <sunil(a)indiacares.org> says: "In our own small way we are promoting FLOSS in Bangalore. A short note about us is attached to this mail." CONTACTS... ===== Sunil Abraham [MAHITI] 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 5352003. Pager: 9624 279519 sunil(a)mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org ________________________________________________________________________ MAHITI Profile MAHITI aims to provide affordable and appropriate Information Technology services to the Indian voluntary sector. We specialize in the areas of web / intranet / kiosk / multimedia applications, consultancy and training. We design and execute projects in the areas of resource mobilization, collaboration, advocacy, e-governance and knowledge sharing. We specialize in the use of Open Source and Free Software. SOFTWARE SERVICES:- Over the last 3 years we have serviced more than 75 VSOs directly. And around 1000 VSOs indirectly. Our clients include Ashoka.org, Indian Foundation for the Arts, Institute for Bio-Informatics and National Law School of India. We also have commercial clients such as I2 Technologies, Datacons, Datamations and Aztec. MANAGEMENT SERVICES:- MAHITI is also institutional CTO for Tarahaat.com [Rural ICT Project], ICICIcommunities.org [Donation Portal for the Indian voluntary sector funded by ICICI Bank] and Explocity.com [City Centric Portal funded by NewsCorp]. As institutional CTO we play a wide range of roles from envisioning the technological road map right through to design, development, deployment and withdrawal. DESIGN SERVICES:- MAHITI provides user interface, information architecture and multimedia design and production services. For example a reporting system for I2 Technologies, a study of application servers for Datamations, an automobile dealers MIS for Datacons and a grant recipients portal for the World Bank. PRODUCTS:- MAHITI is working on two products. One, Knowledge Manager an Indianized version of Zope Application Server. This is a joint project with Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. This was a finalist for Erica 2000 - an award instituted by Ericsson for technical innovation in the non-profit sector. This software will conform to the standards prescribed by the Indic Computing consortia. This is an unfunded project. It is our belief that this tool would increase equity on the Internet. Just like Mozilla is free tool for consuming information on the Internet. Knowledge Manager will be a free tool to produce information on the Internet. Two, a fund raising software to be developed in collaboration with MCAS and supported by Ford Foundation. This is only meant for small and medium organization as it can handle on 10,000 addresses. It is very similar to a customer management system. With features such as profiling, case handling and mass personalized email. Both these products will be licensed under General Public License. NETWORKS:- MAHITI is also a founder member of Bangalore Cares - an on-line and print directory of over 570 voluntary organizations in Karnataka. In addition to being a core group member of the Credibility Alliance a consortium of voluntary sector networks that represent over 15,000 organizations in India. The Credibility Alliance is working towards enhancing the credibility of the sector by evolving and establishing standards and encouraging public disclosure of information. MAHITI is also founder member technical forums such as the Indian Zope and Python User Group and Indic Computing. PARTNERS:- MAHITI has many partners both non-profit and for-profit for different types of collaborative projects. Murray Culshaw Advisory Services [fundraising-india.org] for communication and fundraising consultancy. Together we constantly update and maintain a database of 7,500 voluntary agencies. Mithi Technologies [Mithi.com] for multilingual technologies. Deep Root Linux [Deeproot.co.in] for advanced server appliances. VXL Instruments [Vxl.co.in] for thin clients and disk-less nodes. Vishwa Infotech for rural information and communication technology strategies. Pantoto for community platforms. Alternative Law Forum for legal and intellectual property issues. TEAM:- MAHITI has a 22 member team located in Bangalore, South India. Consisting of 10 staff members, 8 corporate pro bono staff and 4 volunteers. MAHITI is headed by Sunil Abraham, an Ashoka Fellow. Most members on the team are programmers. We have two user interface designers who focus on aesthetics, coherence and usability. We follow a participatory design approach wherein the developers directly interact with the end users and solicit their feedback throughout the development cycle. Most team members have cross disciplinary skills and super specialization is discouraged. TECHNOLOGY We use the following servers - Apache, TomCat, JRun, MS-IIS, Zope, MySQL, PostGres SQL, MS-SQL, Qmail, SendMail and Mithi Application Server. Graphical and multimedia tools such as Adobe Suite, Macromedia Suite and Gimp. Languages such as HTML, XML, WML, ASP, Basic, VB Script, Java Script, JSP, Java, Python, C++ and C. We are familiar with the Object Oriented Design and Unified Modelling Language. The MAHITI team has held trainings on these topics for various for-profit and non-profit technical teams. We have conducted over 50 trainings independently or in collaboration with MCAS, Public Affairs Centre, Indev.org and OneWorld.net.

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[OFFTOPIC]: Gates' foundation pledges $100 m for India AIDS campaign
by Frederick Noronha 11 Nov '02

11 Nov '02

Gates' foundation pledges $100 m for India AIDS campaign >From Indo-Asian News Service New Delhi, Nov 11 (IANS) Microsoft chief Bill Gates Monday announced $100 million from his foundation to battle HIV/AIDS in India, asserting the row over the number of victims should not detract from the enormity of the challenge. "We do not really know the number of HIV/AIDS victims in India but the sooner we bring attention to the problem and greater visibility, the better we can face it," Gates told a press conference here. "There is no doubt that India faces a serious challenge." On a four-day visit to India, Gates said AIDS was a growing crisis around the world and in some countries, 25 percent of the adult population were afflicted. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed an initial support of $100 million to slow down the spread of the dreaded virus in India, he said, the largest the organisation had funded in a single country. The software czar was responding to a question about the projections by him and U.S. Ambassador Robert Blackwill about the extent of the disease in India that reportedly annoyed Indian authorities, especially Health Minister Shatrughan Sinha. New Delhi asserted that Blackwill's projection that India would have 25 million HIV victims by 2010 was exaggerated. Denying being a part of any study projecting these numbers or of trying to spread panic, Gates, who met Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the afternoon, said he hoped the numbers were not very high. "So far, in the history of AIDS, every estimate of the spread of the disease has been low. My point is that numbers should not be the focus." But toning down the loud alarm he sounded in the run-up to his four-day visit to India, Gates maintained Monday that the disease was at a "relatively lower level" and early stages. While India had launched many initiatives against AIDS, a lot still needed to be done, he observed. "India can not only address its own challenges and save millions of lives, but also help other developing countries with emerging epidemics. "India is poised to be a global leader in the development of new HIV prevention technologies." Gates said his foundation would work in collaboration with the federal government, mainly focusing on two aspects of the anti-AIDS campaign - the mobile population most prone to contracting and spreading the disease and communication and advocacy efforts to raise awareness. Truck drivers, migrant labourers, construction workers and their partners, who are said to be more vulnerable to the disease, were a special focus of the initiative, which would be steered by minister Sinha. But the Microsoft head hastened to explain that this was not to generate or spread damning stereotypes about certain sections of the population. "It is everyone's problem and no one should have the impression that only a particular section should respond to programmes against AIDS. It is important that people with the disease are not treated in a discriminatory way or stigmatised." Was it difficult convincing the government about the extent of the AIDS challenge it faced? "I think it is a problem that you almost cannot talk too much about. It is worth reminding each other about the importance of fighting AIDS all the time and we should all carry it on our minds." India has some four million AIDS patients at present, while global projections indicate 45 million new infections in the next eight years. Said Helena Gayle, the chief of the Gates' foundation's AIDS and TB programme: "An estimated 28 million of the new infections can be prevented if existing HIV prevention strategies are scaled up and new prevention technologies are created. "That precisely is the focus of our effort in India." Gates, known as the world's richest man, is visiting India for the third time as he discusses health and IT programmes. He will visit Bangalore, a Microsoft development centre in Hyderabad and address businessmen in Mumbai. Microsoft has had a presence in India since 1987, with offices in five Indian cities including Bangalore. --Indo-Asian News Service

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[IMPORTANT] Volunteers required for textbook preperation
by Baiju M 11 Nov '02

11 Nov '02

Hi all, We have required volunteers for textbook preperation in kerala (9th std.) please see this mail: http://mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/fsf-edu/2002-November/000091.html Its very urgent, please come forward to volunteer. Regards, Baiju M

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gates and rms in delhi at same time!
by akr!linux-delhi.org＠linux-delhi.org 11 Nov '02

11 Nov '02

isn't a sweet moment in indian IT history, that bill gates and richard stallman are in delhi at the same time? i haven't seen this much highlighted (perhaps i missed some media coverage). but today's new york times makes reference to india' emerging enthusiasm to embrace open source and free software officially. (remember the economic times front page headline last month which said that the ministry of IT was endorsing linux?. here's the full text of the NYT article. the link is http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/technology/11GATE.html November 11, 2002 Bill Gates to Tour India Amid Global Software Debate By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India, Nov. 11 Taking the case for Windows software to a crucial audience, Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, is set to begin a four-day tour of India today. This country has an estimated half-million individual software developers, many of them writing programs for some of the world's largest corporations. Mr. Gates's visit, his third to India, comes as programmers around the world are being lured to join the so-called open-source computing movement, which favors the Linux operating system available free or in low-cost software packages over proprietary systems like Microsoft Windows. "India is a big bet for Microsoft," Rajiv Kaul, Microsoft's managing director in India, said last month in announcing Mr. Gates's visit. "India's unbeatable developer strength has ensured that we are in the top slot for Microsoft globally." Software developers are the people who write applications that work with a given operating system. And their support is crucial to Microsoft. "Microsoft is a marketing machine," said Satyen H. Parikh, "hooking developers by offering them hundreds of shrink-wrapped packages off the shelf, ready to be deployed, along with a variety of goodies." Mr. Parikh is managing director of the Indian unit of Borland, a provider of software tools for developing applications across platforms that can span Microsoft and Linux. Among other recent measures, Microsoft recruited perhaps India's best-known software executive, N. R. Narayana Murthy, the chairman of a leading software exporter, Infosys Technologies, to endorse Microsoft's technologies in large newspaper ads. The headline on one quoted Mr. Murthy as saying: "When I saw Windows XP in action, I was amazed. How did Microsoft get hold of my wish list?" Mr. Gates is scheduled to visit New Delhi, Bangalore, Bombay and Hyderabad. If previous visits are indicative, his trip will attract a fawning group of state chief ministers and federal political leaders lining up outside his hotel suites, waiting for a chance to meet with the world's richest man. Recent actions by the government, however, have been less than adulatory. Just weeks before Mr. Gates's impending arrival, officials in India's Department of Information Technology in New Delhi leaked details of an effort called the Linux India Initiative. It is meant to promote Linux as a viable alternative to proprietary- based software for use in government departments, state governments and corporations. But recently, Pramod Mahajan, the information technology minister, has declined to discuss the initiative. "I don't want to comment on Linux so close to Mr. Gates's visit," Mr. Mahajan said last week in a telephone interview from New Delhi. Mr. Mahajan, whose office displays a large framed photograph of himself with Mr. Gates, a founder of Microsoft, on a previous visit, added: "Bill Gates is Bill Gates. He is a brand name. And I won't say anything controversial now." Linux, a descendant of the Unix operating system that is distributed free and written and debugged by volunteer programmers, is capturing the imagination of the techie community. But unlike in neighboring China, where the government actively promotes open-source software, in India the democracy makes it difficult for the government to decree a blanket software policy. So far in India, Linux is used on fewer than 10 percent of the country's personal computers and server computers. But the potential market for any operating system is huge: although the country is a leading global software exporter, there are only an estimated four million PC's in use here among the nation's billion people. "India and China are the world's fastest-growing markets, making them attractive to multinational computer corporations," said S. Ramakrishnan, head of the software division of the Department of Information Technology. Compared with the Western industrialized world, where the open-source campaign is nearly as much a philosophical issue as a monetary one, the appeal of Linux in a developing country like India could be mainly economic. "India needs millions of copies of software," Professor Swami Manohar said. He added that if that number was multiplied by 5,000 rupees ($104), the price of a proprietary operating system, "the costs could run into billions compare this to a low-cost alternative and the choice is obvious." Professor Manohar teaches in the department of computer science and automation at the Indian Institute of Science, which is located in Bangalore and is India's premier school for pure sciences and engineering. But Microsoft's concerns could go beyond bargain-basement software. The earliest adoption of open-source software here, beginning more than a decade ago, was at India's military installations and sensitive research sites. India's National Stock Exchange now uses Linux for critical applications. And Hindustan Lever Ltd., India's largest consumer products company and a subsidiary of the British-Dutch conglomerate Unilever, is considering using Linux to build applications for data warehousing, inventory management and e-commerce. Across the border in Pakistan, Linux is starting to be used for a host of projects in schools and government offices. "A few months ago, we asked all offices to move the servers to Linux," said Salman Ansari, an adviser to Pakistan's minister of science and technology in Islamabad. "Those who wanted to use other, more expensive software were permitted to do so only if they could justify it." Microsoft has offered a few million dollars a year to the Pakistani government over a three-year period for all applications in government and education. The government is studying the offer. While in India, Mr. Gates is widely expected to pledge a large donation to public health projects through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But Microsoft India's executives hasten to note that the foundation's activities are distinct from those of the corporation. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .

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Keltron to promote free software center
by Baiju M 11 Nov '02

11 Nov '02

Todays The Hindu reported a news with title : "Keltron to promote free software center" Its available only in thiruvanathapuram local edition. -- Baiju M

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