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Mumbai Free Map Workshop, 13-14 January
by Shekhar Krishnan 03 Jan '07

03 Jan '07

Dear All: We plan to organise an intensive two-day workshop on the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and geospatial web applications based on Free and Open Source software (FOSS). This public workshop will be held on SATURDAY 13 JANUARY and SUNDAY 14 JANUARY 2007 at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) in Mumbai. The objective will be to teach and guide participants through all the steps of producing an interactive spatial database and web map using the OSGeo Toolkit. Through the workshop, participants will build their own Free Map using a combination of open source software, copyleft maps, and community information. The workshop is based on the Mumbai Free Map project collaboration, and is co-organised by the Gnowledge Lab at HBCSE, CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), the Free Map Collective and MetaCarta Labs. For more detailed information about the workshop and any updates to the programme, please visit http://wiki.freemap.in/moin.cgi/HbcseWorkshop and to browse the Mumbai Free Map please visit http://mumbai.freemap.in REGISTRATION The workshop is free and open to the public. Ideally, participants should be familiar with the open source software and the Linux operating system, web client-server architecture, basic database management, and basic terminal commands -- we hope to cater to different skill sets and backgrounds. Participants should also have an interest in the use of OSGeo for their own work and projects. To register for the workshop, please send an e-mail to freemapworkshop(a)crit.org.in with your name, address, and contact information including phone numbers, and a brief description of your background and your interest in the workshop. Registration will remain open until WEDNESDAY 10 JANUARY, but please contact us ASAP if you would like to participate. For more information, please call Shekhar Krishnan on +91.98200.45529. ORGANISERS Gnowledge Lab http://www.gnowledge.org Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) http://www.crit.org.in Freemap Collective http://www.freemap.in MetaCarta Labs http://labs.metacarta.com -- Shekhar Krishnan 9, Supriya, 2nd Floor Plot 709, Parsee Colony Road no.4 Dadar, Mumbai 400014 India http://www.mit.edu/~shekhar http://www.heptanesia.net http://www.crit.org.in/members/shekhar

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Exaile
by Debarshi Ray 01 Jan '07

01 Jan '07

>> I just happened to come across Exaile. It is a GTK+ based media player >> very similar in functionality to Amarok. I could not find any RPMs for >> it though there is a package for Edgy Eft. > if there are no RPM's and people are demanding them, you could use alien > and make one then put it up online :-) There is a package in Fedora Extras for Fedora Core 6, but is not the latest version. It is 0.2.6 instead of 0.2.7. Regards, Debarshi -- After the game the king and the pawn go into the same box. -- Italian proverb

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Exaile
by Vihan Pandey 31 Dec '06

31 Dec '06

> I just happened to come across Exaile. It is a GTK+ based media player > very similar in functionality to Amarok. I could not find any RPMs for > it though there is a package for Edgy Eft. if there are no RPM's and people are demanding them, you could use alien and make one then put it up online :-) Regards, - vihan

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Asian Development Bank's intervention in Kerala
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 30 Dec '06

30 Dec '06

Aniwar's report on ADB activity in Kerala reveals something very strange about future of e-governance *software projects* in Kerala. Its shows that ADB clauses will force urban bodies to accept suggestions on software projects to be implemented here, based on the recommendations from the consultants whom ADB approves for the purpose. This evidently appears to be an attempt to subvert the declared policy of the elected government that Kerala will be transformed into a destination for Free Software. Strange are the ways in which the Secretary to LSGIs in Kerala, SM Vijayanand IAS is helping things get around. Our self-declared *champion of IT*, PV Unnikrishnan's role here needs to be suspected and followed up much more closely vis-a-vis his known links with Micro$oft. CK Raju Thrissur

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Exaile
by Debarshi Ray 30 Dec '06

30 Dec '06

http://www.exaile.org/trac I just happened to come across Exaile. It is a GTK+ based media player very similar in functionality to Amarok. I could not find any RPMs for it though there is a package for Edgy Eft. Installation from the tarball is nothing but 'make install', but one can easily run into dependency hell since there is no configure script to tell you what you need. Make sure you have: a. python-gstreamer b. notification-daemon c. notify-python d. python-sqlite2 e. python-mutagen You might need some more, but these are what I noticed. It is still not as polished as Amarok, but is surely nice if you can manage to install it. Cheers, Debarshihttp://www.exaile.org/trac I just happened to come across Exaile. It is a GTK+ based media player very similar in functionality to Amarok. I could not find any RPMs for it though there is a package for Edgy Eft. Installation from the tarball is nothing but 'make install', but one can easily run into dependency hell since there is no configure script to tell you what you need. Make sure you have: a. python-gstreamer b. notification-daemon c. notify-python d. python-sqlite2 e. python-mutagen You might need some more, but these are what I noticed. It is still not as polished as Amarok, but is surely nice if you can manage to install it. Cheers, Debarshi -- After the game the king and the pawn go into the same box. -- Italian proverb

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OpenDNS
by Debarshi Ray 30 Dec '06

30 Dec '06

http://www.opendns.com/ http://wahjava.wordpress.com/2006/11/23/opendns-for-faster-domain-name-reso… OpenDNS claims to be a safer, faster and smarter DNS service. Regards, Debarshi -- Universities are places of knowledge. The freshman each bring a little in with them, and the seniors take none away, so knowledge accumulates.

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RMS ... on Microsoft "allows licensing of Open XML document format 'for free'"
by Frederick Noronha 25 Dec '06

25 Dec '06

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Richard Stallman <rms(a)gnu.org> To: letters(a)globe.com Subject: Letter column Your article on Dec 7 said that Microsoft allows licensing of the Open XML document format "for free", and that this is similar to the situation with PDF format. However, the two situations are not similar. The normally used parts of PDF format can be freely implemented by programmers, and place no restriction on the licenses of their programs. Many free/libre software packages implement PDF. The patent license that Microsoft offers for Open XML does not demand a license fee, but it places a strict requirement on the license of any program that implements Open XML. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/microsoft-new-monopoly.html.) Free/libre software is not allowed to implement Open XML at all. Users should follow the State of Massachusetts' plan: keep away from the Open XML trap, and insist on such as ODF whose implementation is unrestricted. Sincerely, Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation Cambridge, Massachusetts 77 Mass Ave rm 32-381 Cambridge, MA 02139 617-253-8830 (but currently away thru tomorrow eve) -- FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please) http://fn.goa-india.org http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com http://www.goa-india.org http://feeds.goa-india.org/index.php

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A New Year Gift: festival_mr and festival_hi
by priti patil 22 Dec '06

22 Dec '06

Hi all, On this upcoming special occassion of new year I am very happy to announce a new year gift on behalf of janabhaaratii team :) festival_mr (Marathi Text-To-Speech engine) and festival_hi (Hindi Text-To-Speech engine) are in their alpha state. Working crudely for both Marathi and Hindi, now under refinement process for it's next version. Will be available for testing on an eve of new year (most probably) !!! After testing, please do revert back to us since your valuable inputs can make it BETTER. Acknowledgments to Dr. Alka Irani (Chief Investigator, janabhaaratii), Sunil Mohan and Chaitanya Kamisetty (telugu l10n team), DONLab, Dept. of CS&E, IIT Madras, our team, karunakar (indlinux) and many.... Warm Regards Priti Patil janabhaaratii Language Computing Group C-DAC, Mumbai __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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The battle for wireless network drivers
by പ്രവീണ്‍‌|Praveen 22 Dec '06

22 Dec '06

The battle for wireless network drivers Written by Jem Matzan Dec 20, 2006 at 08:52 PM "BSD and Linux programmers have had a lot of success in creating drivers for new computer hardware in a timely manner, but much of their effort has been without the support of major hardware manufacturers. Intel, Marvell, Texas Instruments and Broadcom, though separate and competing entities, seem by one consent to prevent non-Microsoft operating systems from working properly with some of their most widely-used network chips." Read the full story http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/293 It is a bit long but really worth it. The author has interviewed many of the wireless chip manufactures and gives an insight into the issues surrounding wireless card drivers for Free and Open Source Operating Systems. He suggests the main issue is the lack of communication between the developers and the manufacturers. Take this into account when you buy a new wireless network card and support the companies which provides specifications and documentation to the Free and Open Source Operating Systems developers. Cheers Praveen PS: Sorry for cross-posting -- "Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn." -- Richard Stallman Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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HP-Microsoft tie-up
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 21 Dec '06

21 Dec '06

"..Seattle, December 14: Microsoft Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co have agreed to invest jointly at least USD300 million over three years and work more closely together to win over large business customers. The two companies, the world's largest makers of software and personal computers, respectively, said on Wednesday they plan to work together to develop, test, validate or ensure that products conform to standards and deploy new products, while also collaborating on sales and marketing..." Story at http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=78167 -------- Does it mean that HP printers will start misbehaving with Free Software ? CK Raju

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*Treachery* in its elements, in its finest form ...
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 21 Dec '06

21 Dec '06

1. The Bush administration in US has formulated an offensive cyber attack strategy declared through its National Security Presidential Directive 16. Details on this at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/ 2. Major news agencies across the world carried the details. Clippings from The Hindu. "...The U.S. President, George W. Bush, has signed a secret directive ordering his administration to develop a national-level guidance for determining when and how America should launch cyber attacks against `enemy' computer networks, officials said... ...military planners imagine soldiers at computer terminals silently invading foreign networks to shut down radars, disable electrical facilities and disrupt phone services..." News from PTI at http://www.hinduonnet.com/2003/02/08/stories/2003020801891400.htm 3. Against this backdrop, Kerala State Electricity Board is going ahead with its Microsoft-platform based implementation and Local Self Govt Dept in Kerala is wedded to Microsoft-based package from Information Kerala Mission. What are these middlemen upto ? Working for US security ? Masking as a recruiting agency for IT professionals ? Let's watch them a little more closely.... CK Raju, Thrissur --------------- Communication will no longer be a means for any revolution, they may the means for an colonial offensive. ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using NWebmail, BSNL's Webmail Program

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Re: Condolense
by Vihan Pandey 20 Dec '06

20 Dec '06

> Dear All > Appropriate Technology Promotion Society (ATPS) which was he main source > of > venture fund for OSS in its previous meeting has taken an administrative > decision to start an endowment in the name of Rajendran Chettan. > Every year we propose to launch a project in the Free software domain and > the students can work on this project, Are you aimed specifically at launching new projects or will you be giving students work on currently active projects as well? Also, are you looking at GNU's ``high priority" project list? Especially the one on writing free video drivers. We will evaluate the work and present > the award to the best contributor. Great initiative :-) Let me know if there is any way i can help. Regards, - vihan

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Fwd: [OSSICS] Re: Fwd: FW: [OSSICS] Re: Condolense
by Anilkumar K V 20 Dec '06

20 Dec '06

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Krishna Das <dasatps(a)gmail.com> Date: 19-Dec-2006 21:23 Subject: Re: Condolense To: ATPS(a)googlegroups.com Dear All Appropriate Technology Promotion Society (ATPS) which was he main source of venture fund for OSS in its previous meeting has taken an administrative decision to start an endowment in the name of Rajendran Chettan. Every year we propose to launch a project in the Free software domain and the students can work on this project, We will evaluate the work and present the award to the best contributor. Please give your suggestions. Regards and lots of love DAS

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Re: Fwd: I require your suggestion on the matter - Kalpesh Sharma, Information Security Expert, India
by Vihan Pandey 18 Dec '06

18 Dec '06

> This may be of interest to the group members--a spat between Ankit > Fadia and another self-proclaimed security expert...I wonder if we, as > a community, should respond to this. i guess the only real way to respond is cheer and support those who are really fighting for freedom. Those who want to ``bother us with politics" are best ignored. At the end of the day the people who are actually contributing to Free Software, even in the smallest possible way are the ones who are going to change the world. Those who want to just have public spats and quote big names, are free to do that. At the end of the day it really achieves nothing except a waste of time and energy. If someone has violated GPL, or even plagiarised someone's genuine copyrite of a GPL'd program then it is a matter of concern and something must be done. Though i personally doubt this case qualifies as one. The only thing we can so is continue spreading awareness amoung the people around us, and beyond of what Free Software is all about and why it's important. Regards, - vihan

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Fwd: I require your suggestion on the matter - Kalpesh Sharma, Information Security Expert, India.
by Satish Babu 17 Dec '06

17 Dec '06

This may be of interest to the group members--a spat between Ankit Fadia and another self-proclaimed security expert...I wonder if we, as a community, should respond to this. satish ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sudhakar Jaani <mhm_777(a)dataone.in> Date: Dec 17, 2006 12:46 PM Subject: I require your suggestion on the matter - Kalpesh Sharma, Information Security Expert, India. To: sbabu(a)ieee.org Respected Sir, I am an Information Security Expert with more then 6 years experience in the field of Information Security. Before proceeding further, I would like to introduce myself and about my achievements. Recently, I proved LIVE ON-AIR on a reputed news channel of India, that India's all internet banking, internet shopping and internet trading websites of India have vulnerabilities. I proved this LIVE (on camera) right in front of 'IT' Minister Mr. Shakeel Ahmed, Technical and Legal Experts, Director of Indiabulls Securities LTD. (Share broking firm) and India's star editor and chairman of IndiaTV news namely Mr. Rajat Sharma. You may confirm about my expertise level by checking on (+91)9350593505(INDIA TV). In this LIVE and Exclusive Breaking news continuously till 24 hours I challenged and proved right in front of camera LIVE by hacking all bank websites, shopping, websites, trading websites of INDIA. This is the world's biggest ever Hacking proved challenge in legal way to help the Nation and with an intention to work for National Interest. I proved that as concerned to India's Information Security field not one or two or three but all internet banking websites, all internet trading and all internet shopping websites within India can be hacked. This was proved to be possible during my LIVE telecast on 3rd August 2006 recently. To know more about me, go through the below mentioned reference sources. Now, coming to point I am in touch with you for a matter of Ankit Fadia. I need your valuable support and co-operation in this, so that we can save the citizens of our nation and other nations also, media peoples, publishers, government and non-government sectors as well as inform CBI, CIA and FBI that how this person is misusing your Honorable names by false comparisons and attachments with them. And the biggest exclusive and breaking news is that world's biggest encyclopedia wikipedia's two india administrators are behaving as if they are ankit fadia's relatives or near - dear ones. A very hot comment going between a wikipedia administrator and me on wikipedia articles mentioned on below pages. These nominated india administrators of wikipedia are also equally responsible for spoiling wikipedia reputation. Whereas I am trying to save the wikipedia which is world's biggest online encyclopedia. He has spoiled prestigious names by falsely misguiding them. Some of them are: 1) Stanford University 2) President of India 3) Amazon 4) Wikipedia 5) Rediff.com 6) Similarly many others. In short, you are a part of public and I am trying to do something for you. So Kindly please follow as much as you can from the below links below and give your suggestion and opinion on them: http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976861802 http://www.gather.com/viewArticles.jsp?memberId=121822&nav=Namespace http://www.gather.com/viewArticles.jsp?memberId=155782&nav=Namespace Thanking you with hope of early reply, Sincerely Kalpesh Sharma Information Security Expert. Ahmedabad, India. Website: http://www.esnips.com/web/shriganesh33sBusinessFiles Blogsite: http://kalpeshsharma.wordpress.com and http://kalpeshsharma.blogspot.com Join ME: http://kalpeshsharma.gather.com (My Groupsite) My Reference Sources: 1. http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Internet_Vs._Traditional_Banks-106678-1.html 2. http://knowyourbroker.blogspot.com/2006/08/online-trading-safety-debate-hea… 3. http://www.nabble.com/An-Important-Information---Please-go-through-it.-t270… 4. http://www.gather.com/viewArticles.jsp?memberId=121822&nav=Namespace 5. http://www.gather.com/viewArticles.jsp?memberId=155782&nav=Namespace 6. http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-33274.html 7. http://www.indymedia.org/content/2006/11/849890.shtml 8. http://www.shvoong.com/science/423737-fullstop-e-system 9. http://www.antionline.com/showthread.php?threadid=272872 10. http://www.mail-archive.com/misc@openbsd.org/msg33681.html 11. http://www.traderji.com/general-chit-chat/7564-kalpesh-indiatv.html 12. http://forum.janmat.tv/viewtopic.php?p=177&sid=20b608a3ea76ae9b25f2b80e5570… 13. http://www.chiragmehta.info/chirag/2006/08/03/a-challenge-a-fullstop-on-e-s… 14. http://parasthetux.gather.com/ 15. http://groups.google.com/group/lug-indore/browse_frm/thread/abb5e98a751e6193 16. http://digg.com/security/Ankit_Fadia_Ethical_Hacker_A_Zero_byte_character 17. http://eggheadcafe.com/tutorials/aspnet/72eabce4-d74c-4abf-b8a0-6f7ae4f476e… 18. http://econpapers.repec.org/RAS/defaultotherS.htm

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BadVista.org: FSF launches campaign against Microsoft Windows Vista
by Anivar Aravind 16 Dec '06

16 Dec '06

Boston, MA—December 15, 2006—The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today launched BadVista.org, a campaign with a twofold mission of exposing the harms inflicted on computer users by the new Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free software alternatives that respect users' security and privacy rights. "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care", said FSF program administrator John Sullivan. The campaign will organize supporters into effective and unusual actions drawing attention to this daylight theft of computer users' rights, aggregate news stories cutting through the Vista marketing propaganda, and provide a user-friendly gateway to the adoption of free software operating systems like gNewSense (http://www.gnewsense.org). Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF said, "Whilst Microsoft embarks upon its largest ever product launch, its marketing dollars will be spent in an effort to fool the media and user community about the goals of Vista. Our campaign will ask the important questions. Can you set yourself or your company free? Can you ever be free from Microsoft? As with our campaign against Digital Restrictions Management, we aim to demonstrate that technologists can be social activists, because we know the harm that Vista will cause". Among other harms, BadVista.org will focus on the danger posed by Treacherous Computing in Vista. Commonly called Trusted Computing in the industry, it is an attempt to turn computers from machines controlled by their user into machines that monitor their user and refuse to operate in ways that manufacturers don't authorize. Supporters can sign up to receive more information and participate in the campaign at http://badvista.org. ------------------------------ 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. Their Web site, located at www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support their work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA. Press Contact: For more information about this announcement or to schedule an interview, please contact Peter Brown or John Sullivan at +1-617-542-5942 or <pr(a)fsf.org> <pr(a)fsf.org>.

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Re: [Fsf-friends] A National Shame
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 16 Dec '06

16 Dec '06

M$ is known to bribe politicians secretly and announce concessions to public institutions openly. What is disturbing here is that all left-front ruled governments in India figure in their list as do the Government at the centre, where the left-front is the principal supporter for its policies. Is Bill Gates' anti-theological stand (made public in 1996 when e-governance was taking roots in Kerala), such a strong and convincing reason for this covert friendship. Will they do this to all capitalists who renounce existence of God ? I think this is a terrible shame and more shameful is the fact that they had already entered into strategic partnership and alliance with State Governments involved for e-governance efforts, when news were spread that Microsoft became a technology choice after due deliberations with expert committees. Microsoft, at least, is not lying here. Its the middlemen, those proxies, who are playing the treacherous game with the citizens of the nation. CK Raju Thrissur ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using NWebmail, BSNL's Webmail Program

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Re: [Fsf-friends] A National Shame
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 15 Dec '06

15 Dec '06

I suggest we should stop whining and do something. Inplace of accusing M$ of being hatching a conspiracy with GoI departments (this will anyway continue, even if we complain). Sometimes it is and can be partnership. Why, the reasons should be obvious, 1) for a GoI officer/ babu, it looks cool if their name is associated with M$ (which no doubt is a big name), and is also a status symbol for them. 2) They can always claim that M$ will do this and that and will provide them with some immediate short term benefits that is tangible in terms of money. 3) They can relate to M$, from the one and only OS known/ taught to them into which they can _click_into_. 4) Don't forget the banquets/ dinners/ free passes to conferences. 5) And sometimes actual genuine help too, though usually inspired from future benefits M$ will/ can have. ... .. and many more... Free Software still has to go a long way in terms of acceptance, and our best bet is and should be the coming next generation, if they can be introduced to the concept of FLOSS and made to realise the benefits of FLOSS, especially the younger technocrats, who are shaping the future of Indian Computing Industry. And if possible, provide solutions to the GoI people. BTW don't expect too much from babus. PS: If any one of you is familiar with DICE (A Windows based software developed by NIC for use in sarv sikhya abhiyan), I am working on a free, web based and generic version of it, still in preliminary stages, anyone interested? -- Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Dept of CSE & IT BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib Punjab, INDIA -------------------------------- http://www.bbsbec.ac.in http://www.ajaypal.com -------------------------------- ajaypal[at]bbsbec.org, ajaypal[at]acm.org

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A National Shame
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 15 Dec '06

15 Dec '06

Unfolding of the drama ============== "September 28, 2006 -- Microsoft India today announced the winners of its first “Microsoft E-governance awards”. The first of the annual awards set up to recognize the most impactful E-governance applications in the country received over 300 nominations and the winners include 20 E-governance applications implemented across the country (the names of the winners are attached in the addendum). The projects nominated include those developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), State IT Departments, and Department of Information Technology, Government of India in partnership with Microsoft..." "Mr Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Microsoft India added, “E-governance is a critical necessity for our country today. A strong E-governance infrastructure enables an efficient and transparent governance mechanism providing a thrust to the development indices of a country. We are very happy to be working with the Indian governments on creating such applications.”.." "As pioneers in the E-governance space in India, Microsoft has been working closely with various departments of the Central and State Governments and Public Sector organizations for the last 13 years. Currently Microsoft partners with 14 state governments and there are nearly 150 e-governance applications running on the Windows platform. Additionally Microsoft continues to create benchmarks in local language computing and community outreach programs that help facilitate affordable access to technology in rural areas for effective delivery of E-governance service..." Complete official document at http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/3/6/03695790-07C9-4EF2-845E-F12092… (also available as cached google page - if M$ withdraws this document) =========================== Surely this is an occasion of national shame to all of us, who work to propagate values of freedom in an information society. It should also put to shame the recommendations of Knowledge Commission of India to Govt of India - because already 14 states have already entered into partnership with Microsoft, some for the last 13 years. Its also a shame to the Right to Information Act 2005, where "preservation of confidentiality of sensitive information" has been thrown to winds - because these are now guaranteed only if US State agrees - refer Akbar Raj's case and the stunts followed by Kerala Police with Microsoft HQs and US Security Department. No longer can the Ministry of Local Self Governments in Kerala now deny that Information Kerala Mission is outside this nefarious design of this proprietary corporate. Even then which are the other 13 states ? What is NIC doing with Microsoft ? What is Min of IT, Govt of India doing with Microsoft ? Are all these happening with the consent of the citizens ? Do we have a right to know ? CK Raju Thrissur ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using NWebmail, BSNL's Webmail Program

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FSF announces support for the Free Ryzom campaign with a pledge of $60, 000.
by Anivar Aravind 14 Dec '06

14 Dec '06

Boston, December 13th 2006 - Free Software Foundation announces that it will officially support the Free Ryzom campaign (www.ryzom.org) with a pledge of $60,000. The Free Ryzom campaign was established to purchase the online game and universe known as Ryzom, property of the now bankrupt Nevrax company, and release the entire game as free software. As stated by Peter T. Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation, the FSF considers the Free Ryzom campaign "a high priority project for the free software movement". The aim of the campaign is to publish the source code to the entire game under the terms of the widely-used GPL, as well as publishing all of the artwork and other content under similar free licenses. The Free Ryzom campaign represents a unique opportunity for the free software movement and the emerging free gaming field. A fully free MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) engine and client/server architecture would allow the development of a myriad of universes, each one evolving its own philosophy and unique content - but sharing in general technical improvements. If successful, this campaign would allow any user to create their own universe and produce their own content based on the Ryzom/Nevrax architecture. Since the announcement by Nevrax of their bankruptcy, the Free Ryzom campaign has drawn together a heterogeneous community of volunteers formed by ex-employees, current players and free software sympathizers. With the support of the FSF, it is now expected that the campaign will be able to increase its bid to over 200.000€. The campaign is also seeking to create a non-profit organization to run and maintain the current game servers. Monthly fees would be spent on service costs and game development. Pledges can be submitted at the Free Ryzom campaign website (www.ryzom.org). Pledges must be made within the next few days, since the deadline for the final bid is expected sometime before Wednesday, December 19th, depending on when the judges make their decision. -- 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. Their web site, located at www.fsf.org, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux. They are headquartered in Boston, MA, USA. About The Free Ryzom Campaign The Free Ryzom Campaign is a community-based initiative formed to purchase the MMORPG game Ryzom from the now-bankrupt Nevrax. Players, former Nevrax employees, and free software sympathizers have partnered with Olivier Lejade (former CEO of Nevrax, now CEO of Mekensleep) and Valentin Lacambre (a well known personality related to the alternative Internet movement in France) to purchase the game and release the source code under the terms of the GNU GPL, and the content and artwork under similar free licenses. For more information on their campaign, or to make a donation pledge, please visit www.ryzom.org _______________________________________________ info-fsf mailing list info-fsf(a)gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-fsf

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[Commercial] Positions for the post of Project Assistant/Project Staff
by Prasanta Baruah 11 Dec '06

11 Dec '06

Hello all, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (TIFR), Mumbai hereby invites applications for 4 positions for the post of Project Assistant/Project Staff. Candidates should have any of the following qualifications: - B.E.; B. Tech.; B.C.A.; M.C.A.; B.Sc. / M.Sc. (Computer / Information Technology) Degree or equivalent with minimum 50% marks. Candidate should be aware of Object Oriented Programming (preferably in Python), familiarity with Web Engineering (XHTML, XML, JAVA Script), and databases (preferably in Zope, RDBMS). A candidate familiar with free software development methodology (GNU/LINUX, CVS, Sourceforge, Savannah and such collaborative platforms, etc.), additional experience in e-learning platforms (Moodle, Jabber, etc) and content management systems (Plone, Wikimedia, Drupal, etc.) will be preferred. Competence in Indian language computing will be useful. The position is purely temporary, for one year in the first instance and extendable by another six months. Honorarium will be paid as follows: Candidates with relevant proven experience of more than one or two years will be considered for Rs. 12,000/- per month to Rs. 15,000/- per month. Fresh candidates will be considered for Rs. 8,000/-per month to Rs. 10,000/- per month. Age: Below 25 years (relaxable in deserving cases). Application giving full details such as Name, Date of Birth, Full address with phone/mobile number and e-mail address, Educational Qualification, names and addresses of two referees (attach certificates) together with true copies of relevant certificates, testimonials duly attested & superscribing the post applied for and the Notice No. 20/06 on the envelope, should reach the Administrative Officer, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, T.I.F.R, V. N. Purav Marg, Mankhurd, Mumbai – 400 088 before December 15, 2006. Applicants in Govt. / Semi-Government / Public Sector undertakings / Autonomous body must apply through proper channel. Alternatively, one could also send an email to hbcse(a)gnowledge.org with the subject line "Application for the post of Project Assistant" with all the relevent documents attached. -- Prasanta http://assam-glug.org http://gnowledge.org/pipermail/gnowsys-dev/

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GNU/Hurd Shell Account
by പ്രവീണ്‍‌|Praveen 10 Dec '06

10 Dec '06

Hi, Get GNU/Hurd shell accounts from http://hurd.gnufans.org/bin/view/Hurd/PublicHurdBoxen Ask for an account at #hurd or You can also write email to (the freshly created) <hurd-shell-account(a)gnu.org> to get an account set-up for you. Happy Hacking, Praveen -- "Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn." -- Richard Stallman Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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[MarathiOpenSource] m17n-lib question [was]Re: जस्ट सम Observations...
by Sameer N Ingole 04 Dec '06

04 Dec '06

Hi, I am starting a new thread with relevant subject line. The message sent by someone whose name is not being displayed correctly is pasted below. Please start a new thread with relevant Subject line. --- message start --- I googled to find what is missing on my machine. My question (perhaps elementary) When I enable hindi os some indic language on my Linux (right now Manriva 2006 or 2007), should m17n-lib and related files be installed by default? Or is it standard with KDE 3.5.5? धन्य तो वाद... --- message end --- -- Best Regards, Sameer N. Ingole http://weblogic.noroot.org/gallery2/ -- Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.

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Re: Protest against Novell-Microsoft agreement
by Vihan Pandey 04 Dec '06

04 Dec '06

<snip> There are serious questions regarding how Novell intends to go on with its > business. Developers are jumping ship. The very software that you sell is > owned by parties who are now hostile to your company. The C library, > essential to run every program on your system, is the property of the Free > Software Foundation, which will surely relicense that library to LGPL 3. > The > leading developer of that library is a Red Hat employee. It's already been > announced that GPL and LGPL 3 will contain terms that make it untenable to > use while your patent agreement with Microsoft stands. > > The Samba software and hundreds of other programs will probably go a > similar > path. The Novell-Microsoft agreement has even had the power to make the > Linux kernel developers and the large companies that support them take a > fresh look at GPL 3. In the face of these changes, Novell will probably be > stuck with old versions of the software, under old licenses, with Novell > sustaining the entire cost and burden of maintaining that software. Novell > will have to maintain its customers on old versions while the community > takes GPL 3 versions of the same software into the future. </snip> Its a beautiful irony that Micro$oft's strategy to kill Freedom has only succeeded in making it stronger.... again. i guess at the end of the day every tyrannical power ends up fueling the fires that incinerate it. Great post Praveen :-) Regards, - vihan

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GNU System (aka GNU/Hurd) Hackers and Users IRC meetup
by പ്രവീണ്‍‌|Praveen 04 Dec '06

04 Dec '06

Hi, We have our first IRC meetup of hurd.in community. When: saturday (dec 9, 2006) from 5pm Where: at #hurd.in on freenode Agenda: Sustaining the hurd.in community, Mentoring student projects, K14 celebration + http://hurd.in/bin/view/Hurd/IRC09Dec2006 Cheers Praveen -- "Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn." -- Richard Stallman Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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Protest against Novell-Microsoft agreement
by പ്രവീണ്‍‌|Praveen 03 Dec '06

03 Dec '06

An Open Leter to Novell CEO Hovserpian from Bruce Perens (you can also add your comments there) "To Mr. Hovsepian, The Open Source community would find little to criticize in your agreement with Microsoft, had it remained a strictly financial and technical agreement. As the agreement stands today, it betrays the authors of the software you re-market and their users worldwide for Novell's sole commercial benefit. The covenant of the GPL is that in the face of a software patent aggressor we must all hang together, lest we each hang separately. Novell accepted that covenant when you chose to include the Linux kernel, the GNU C library, and hundreds of additional works created at no charge to Novell by individuals in the Free Software community and licensed under the GPL. It is abundantly clear that Novell and Microsoft took the time to engineer a circuitous legal path of issuing covenants to each other's customers, rather than licenses to each other, in order to circumvent Novell's earlier agreement with the community of GPL software developers. In your defense, you offer that Novell has not acknowledged that Linux infringes upon Microsoft's patents. Let's be truthful about software patents: there can be no non-trivial computer program, either proprietary or Free, that does not use methods that are claimed in software patents currently in force and unlicensed for use in that program. There are simply enough patents, on enough fundamental principles, to make this so. If all software patents were enforced fully, the software industry would grind to a halt. Of course software patents are less than fully enforced, and what we have is a sort of shake-down racket in which tremendous attorney fees and damages are routinely extorted. Open Source communities and medium-sized enterprises can be legally prevented from participating in the industry simply because they can not afford the price of justice, between three and five Million dollars to defend a case. Several years ago, attorney Daniel Ravicher, now of the Software Freedom Law Center, reported finding 283 patents with claims that could read on the Linux kernel. That kernel represents only a few percent of the overall collection of software in Novell/SuSE Linux. It is likely that there are many thousands of unlitigated potential infringements within the entire Novell system. Only a minority of those patents are owned by Microsoft, your recent agreement does nothing to defend you from the others. Most troubling are the patents owned by "patent trolls", companies that produce no products other than patents and thus can not be deterred by patent counter-threats from organizations like OIN. Microsoft has invested in at least one explicit "troll" company, which can use its patents offensively as a proxy of Microsoft without exposing Microsoft to counter-suits, anti-trust issues, or Microsoft's agreement with Novell. In the face of this threat, not only to Free Software but to the small and medium-sized proprietary software companies that make up 80% of the software economy worldwide, Novell chose to act selfishly and take the money. One-third Billion dollars is a strong inducement. Your open letter to the community mis-represents Novell's software patenting policy. At a Brussels meeting that I attended including EU Member-of-Parliament Arlene McCarthy, Novell's stance was that the company was for enforcible software patenting in the EU but against the particular bill being considered at that time. This stance does not consider that increased enforcement of software patents remains a potential complete show-stopper for Free Software, from Novell or anyone else. You, Mr. Hovsepian, reiterated Novell's support for strong software patent protection on a panel that I chaired at the AlwaysOn conference this summer. The text of your agreement with Microsoft has not been released, and perhaps not all of it is even on paper. But we know that Microsoft has bought your cooperation. No doubt we will now see Novell at Microsoft's side in political venues, representing *Linux*, asking legislators for stronger software patent protection that has the potential to harm or even end Open Source. This is unacceptable. If Novell is to benefit from the Free Software community, Novell should be working to make it safe for everyone to write and use software. There are serious questions regarding how Novell intends to go on with its business. Developers are jumping ship. The very software that you sell is owned by parties who are now hostile to your company. The C library, essential to run every program on your system, is the property of the Free Software Foundation, which will surely relicense that library to LGPL 3. The leading developer of that library is a Red Hat employee. It's already been announced that GPL and LGPL 3 will contain terms that make it untenable to use while your patent agreement with Microsoft stands. The Samba software and hundreds of other programs will probably go a similar path. The Novell-Microsoft agreement has even had the power to make the Linux kernel developers and the large companies that support them take a fresh look at GPL 3. In the face of these changes, Novell will probably be stuck with old versions of the software, under old licenses, with Novell sustaining the entire cost and burden of maintaining that software. Novell will have to maintain its customers on old versions while the community takes GPL 3 versions of the same software into the future. In short, now that Novell has chosen not to hang together with the Free Software community, we've chosen not to do so with you. There is really only one path out of this corner for Novell. Go on with your technical collaboration, and keep the money. But Novell must now direct Microsoft to refrain from granting covenants to Novell's users unless they will apply to everyone equally. Hang together with the Free Software community by changing your software patent stance from one of monopoly rights for Novell to one of support for legislation that will make it safe for all of us to create, distribute, and use software." * Bruce Perens, *creator of *Electric Fence* and *Busybox*, two programs that are important to Novell Linux and are covered by the GPL. http://techp.org/petition/show/1 Regards Praveen -- "Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn." -- Richard Stallman Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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SFLC challenges Blackboard's ridiculous patent
by Sasi Kumar 02 Dec '06

02 Dec '06

"The Software Freedom Law Center said Thursday that it has asked the U.S. Patent Office to re-examine a patent awarded to education software company Blackboard. It claims that the patent is bogus and could undermine three open-source education software projects it represents--Sakai, Moodle and ATutor." see: http://news.com.com/2100-7344-6139834.html?tag=yt -- V. Sasi Kumar Free Software Foundation of India Please see: http://swatantryam.blogspot.com/

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Yahoo! Groups: You're invited! Join MarathiOpenSource today.
by MarathiOpenSource moderator 01 Dec '06

01 Dec '06

pritisd(a)yahoo.com has invited you to join MarathiOpenSource [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarathiOpenSource/] on Yahoo! Groups, the best way to discover and share information and advice with others. All for free. A personal invitation from pritisd(a)yahoo.com: Join this group to keep yourself updated about Marathi computing on Computer See for yourself why millions of people are members of Yahoo! Groups. But hurry. This invitation expires in 30 days. Join this group: http://groups.yahoo.com/i?i=NDNFSPc-V07yDWpZ4MA2_bliGqQ&e=fsf-friends%40mm%… ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups is a free service that allows you to stay in touch with friends and family or meet new people who share your interests. Yahoo! Groups values your privacy. It is a violation of our service rules for Groups members to abuse this invitation feature. If you feel this has happened, please notify us: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/abuse/index.html You may also change your email preferences to stop receiving group invitations in the future. To do so, please go here: http://groups.yahoo.com/s?tag=jq1U0Sdf9Foh3NGKJd8h9muLooq5W9RYjoYl32bmS4f2C… Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

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Stockholm Challenge awards
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 01 Dec '06

01 Dec '06

The Stockholm Challenge award system appears to discriminate Free and Open Source Software. Earl Mardle maintains that a comparative study between proprietary systems and FLOSS systems is uncalled for, even if the evaluation is for the e-governance based public systems. That exposes the constitution of the Stockholm Challenge system to the core. No wonder then that the award screening committee shortlisted Information Kerala Mission, perhaps, the most dubious ever non-free e-governance engineering system in the country for the award, even when the Comptroller and Auditor General report levelled serious charges of abusing public resources and countered the claims of the organisation. Unless for the tireless objections (from our fsf-friends) that finally forced them to deny the organisation any space in the final list, the committee might have even considered the organisation a global-working space (which is still working on Kerala Govt's public funds, meant for the poor and marginalised). Fred should be alerting all our global FSF networks on this, and possibly even the democratic governments. Do we have any other experiences, Fred ? CK Raju Thrissur

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Re: Reliance Web World in nexus with Ankit Fadia
by Vihan Pandey 29 Nov '06

29 Nov '06

> > but sometimes such guys need to be analysed and weighed in public so that > innocent people/ students do not take them as their role models. True. ``we must be very careful when we give advice to younger people; > sometimes they follow it!'' -- Edgar Dijkstra Nice one :-) and very apt in this context. i guess Dijkstra was always the best at giving the best ``path" :-) i know i know poor joke, but i couldn't resist it :-) Regards, - vihan

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ReiserFS author to give plea on wife's murder
by Vihan Pandey 28 Nov '06

28 Nov '06

Hi all, Those of you who are slashdot regulars probably know this but those who don't : Hans Reiser the author of the ReiserFS file system is going to give his plea(guilty/not guilty/manslaughter .....) today(actually tonight as its in California) over the charge of his wife's murder. You can check the Wikipedia page for the whole story : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser i'm sorry for such a horrible post, but i guess people ought to know. By all accounts this is the most morbid and macabre post ever on this list. Never the less, people have to know. Regards, - vihan

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Re: Reliance Web World in nexus with Ankit Fadia
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 28 Nov '06

28 Nov '06

----- Prashanth Mohan <prashmohan(a)gmail.com> wrote: > ``we must be very careful when we give advice to younger people; > sometimes they follow it!'' -- Edgar Dijkstra > [Source: > http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html] > - -- Interesting, thanks for the link. Rephrase: I will request my students to apply their own mind regarding whatever I or Mr fadia has to say. -- Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Dept of CSE & IT BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib Punjab, INDIA -------------------------------- http://www.bbsbec.ac.in http://www.ajaypal.com -------------------------------- ajaypal[at]bbsbec.org, ajaypal[at]acm.org

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Re: Reliance Web World in nexus with Ankit Fadia
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 28 Nov '06

28 Nov '06

----- Vihan Pandey <vihanpandey(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Anyway, Fadia is more about network security stuff(so is portrayed) he > has > NEVER(again to the best of my knowledge) tried to tell people about > the real > ethics in using Free Software or about how its so important to build > a > society based on Freedom, or the dangers of DRM and software patents. > Why do > we even bother with such people? but sometimes such guys need to be analysed and weighed in public so that innocent people/ students do not take them as their role models. -- Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Dept of CSE & IT BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib Punjab, INDIA -------------------------------- http://www.bbsbec.ac.in http://www.ajaypal.com -------------------------------- ajaypal[at]bbsbec.org, ajaypal[at]acm.org

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Transcript of RMS on GPLv3
by Ciaran O'Riordan 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

I've recorded and transcribed Richard's talk from last week's GPLv3 conference in Tokyo: http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/tokyo-rms-transcript I also made one of my talk: http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/tokyo-ciaran-transcript -- Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3 http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org

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Re: Reliance Web World in nexus with Ankit Fadia
by Vihan Pandey 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

> Friends, > A few months after Prabhat gave us that simple news clip about A Fadia, > and > after the long round of nationwide discussions that we had, it seems that > we > are trying to communicate with someone who (a) doesn't listen and (b) is > not > interested to listen. > > Reliance Web World attempted to launch Ankit Fadia through some back door > activities at Thrissur, but it flopped. In his regular and customary > style, > Ankit arrived late, cut short questions/answers session (he usually does > it > everywhere) and this time around he even cut short his talk to just 10 > minutes. > The ill-informed Reliance Web World executive was seen accusing the > organisers > for the drop in attendance - they never could realise that students are > wiser > than Fadia and could had deliberately chosen to abstain from such > gimmicks. Typical, he pulled that one at Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology(Nerul, Navi Mumbai) a couple of years back as well. Only then he ``refused" to answer some questions on the grounds that it is unethical to reveal cracking techniques in public. Fadia shows undue haste in theorising with what would otherwise be pure > exceptions - which is a bad academic practise - an action that portrays > his > Stanford University (where Google was born in 1996) in a bad light. He > also > relies heavily on the weaknesses of proprietary systems, which, by > default, do > not have any Road Map to the various freedoms enlisted by Free Software. In all honesty, isn't entering an Ivy league school these days more about $$$, a well polished resume/SoP and hearsay recommendations and sometimes a triumph in mediocrity award by the government rather than REAL merit. i mean i've only seen one or two people till now going there with REAL expertise, via either just doing practicals properly in college and at home, and/or then contributing to a technology(again via the Free Software development methodology) and publishing a REAL paper at a REAL venue. No offence to anyone who has gone to an Ivy league school, and let me also clarify i have the highest respect for most of them ;-) Anyway, Fadia is more about network security stuff(so is portrayed) he has NEVER(again to the best of my knowledge) tried to tell people about the real ethics in using Free Software or about how its so important to build a society based on Freedom, or the dangers of DRM and software patents. Why do we even bother with such people? Regards, - vihan

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Reliance Web World in nexus with Ankit Fadia
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

Friends, A few months after Prabhat gave us that simple news clip about A Fadia, and after the long round of nationwide discussions that we had, it seems that we are trying to communicate with someone who (a) doesn't listen and (b) is not interested to listen. Reliance Web World attempted to launch Ankit Fadia through some back door activities at Thrissur, but it flopped. In his regular and customary style, Ankit arrived late, cut short questions/answers session (he usually does it everywhere) and this time around he even cut short his talk to just 10 minutes. The ill-informed Reliance Web World executive was seen accusing the organisers for the drop in attendance - they never could realise that students are wiser than Fadia and could had deliberately chosen to abstain from such gimmicks. Fadia shows undue haste in theorising with what would otherwise be pure exceptions - which is a bad academic practise - an action that portrays his Stanford University (where Google was born in 1996) in a bad light. He also relies heavily on the weaknesses of proprietary systems, which, by default, do not have any Road Map to the various freedoms enlisted by Free Software. CK Raju India ============ "The more you attribute to Non-free software, the less you retain in yourself." ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using NWebmail, BSNL's Webmail Program

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Re: MDI migrates its network servers to GNU/Linux
by Vihan Pandey 27 Nov '06

27 Nov '06

> Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, where RMS delivered a lecture > during his last visit, has migrated their network from Windows to > GNU/Linux. I am not sure whether this was a result of the talk, but I > know that their IT department had taken a serious interest in the talk > and had even arranged a lunch with RMS. Several students have had Ubuntu > GNU/Linux installed on their laptops. Sounds good. But i hope they did it for both ``social AND technical reasons" rather than ``technical" reasons alone. Incidently, if anyone has any inside information about this place, as to why they decided to switch it would be nice to hear about it. i know, there are migrations happening all the time, but its always interesting to hear the story behind them. Regards, - vihan

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A few bits on corruption
by Ramanraj K 25 Nov '06

25 Nov '06

I have been a long time fan of John Walker's http://fourmilab.ch site. When I recently checked it, a few new pages had come up: [1] The funniest thing I have read in recent times is about this source of "corruption": http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/corrupted_downloads/ [2] John Walker has released the source code for the "Home Planet" program. This program is in the public domain, and if anyone could release a suitable Gnu/Linux version of it, that would be nice. The windows binaries of Home Planet released and found at the site could be used with wine. More info at http://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet/ -Ramanraj K

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Definition of Users of Free Software
by Viswanath Durbha 22 Nov '06

22 Nov '06

Hi, I just have a fundamental question on Free Software. We define Free Software as a software that gives the four fundamental freedom to it's users. But what is the definition of "Users"? Let me explain my question better by giving an example. Let's say a school hires a bunch of programmers to write a program that restricts students to do certain tasks on the school computers. The programmers write and release the software under GPLv2. It is released only to the school administration and not available to the students or to the general public. The school goes ahead and installs it on all school computers. Of course, whoever is the administrator for the school, he will have access to the source of the program and so he/she can modify to relax/tighten the restrictions in future if needed. So essentially, this particular "User" has all the four freedoms. But are the students, who actually use that program on those computers entitled to the source? Can they also modify that program to circumvent the restrictions? Or do we not consider them as "Users" of that program and hence decide that they are not entitled to all the four freedoms? If students are also entitled to the four freedoms, then how can we use GPLv2 license to develop any kind of software that restricts the capabilities of some users? Thanks and Regards, Viswanath

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Something shocking! Microsoft Completes Acquisition of Mozilla Firefox
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 22 Nov '06

22 Nov '06

----- Anurag <anurag(a)gnuer.org> wrote: > Sometime on Tuesday 21 November 2006 19:27, Hiran Venugopalan said: > > Microsoft Completes Acquisition of Mozilla Firefox : > > > > LINK : http://www.msfirefox.com/microsoft-press-releases.html > > this is a fake site. > A little correction: it is a joke site -- Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Dept of CSE & IT BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib Punjab, INDIA -------------------------------- http://www.bbsbec.ac.in http://www.ajaypal.com -------------------------------- ajaypal[at]bbsbec.org, ajaypal[at]acm.org

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[GNU]Linux gets One Laptop Per Child desktop boost
by Frederick Noronha 21 Nov '06

21 Nov '06

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2157498/olpc-boost-linux-desktop-market Linux gets One Laptop Per Child desktop boost Third-world Linux laptop computer to kickstart Linux on the desktop Tom Sanders at Red Hat Summit in Nashville, vnunet.com 05 Jun 2006 The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project will boost the market share of Linux on the desktop to about 12 per cent, claimed the project's chairman Nicholas Negroponte. * Click the link for a video of the first working OLPC prototype "One of the side effects of the $100 laptop is that it will boost the worldwide consumption of Linux on the desktop so incredibly that it will, over a very short period of time, be at par with where it is in the world of servers," Negroponte told delegates in a keynote at the Red Hat Summit in Nashville. The most recent server market share data from analyst firm IDC put the Linux share of the server market at 12.2 per cent, with revenues growing at a rate of 17 per cent year-over-year. The One Laptop Per Child project aims to fight poverty in the developing world by providing children with a personal laptop computer. The project is supported by the United Nations and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where Negroponte heads up the Media Lab. The first working OLPC prototype was unveiled last week and the first units are expected by December. OLPC is aiming for a $100 price tag, but expects that to drop to $50 by 2010. Microsoft and Intel have publicly criticised the project, claiming that it is wrongly focusing on the cost of the hardware. Intel launched its $400 Eduwise laptop in May targeting students in developing nations. Microsoft launched its pay-as-you-go FlexGo programme late last month that allows consumers in developing nations to purchase a computer that is activated with pre-paid cards and belongs to the user over time. "If I'm annoying Intel and Microsoft, I know I'm probably doing something right," Negroponte quipped. * A video of the first working OLPC prototype is available on the Silicon Valley Sleuth blog. * * * * * http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004543.html It's cute. It's orange. It's got bunny ears -- An update on the One Laptop Per Child project Ethan Zuckerman June 7, 2006 1:30 PM laptop100.jpg Recently, I visited with my friends Walter Bender and Jim Gettys at the new headquarters of the One Laptop per Child Project. I'm writing an article for the IEEE Spectrum on the project and had asked Walter if I could come by and grill him on the technical and conceptual details of the project. But that's really just an excuse - I'm fascinated by the project, and am trying to offer what help I can to Nicholas Negroponte and his team in helping people understand what the project is and isn't, offering my perspective on how the device might best be rolled out, supported and used in developing nations. One of the most interesting phenomena surrounding the One Laptop Per Child project has been the amount of attention it's garnered, not just from the development community, but from average users around the world. Interest in the project seems to focus on a basic and very compelling idea: a laptop that costs a hundred dollars or less. After writing my earlier piece on OLPC, I now average 20 emails a week asking to purchase the laptop, or recieve one as a gift. I now have a keyboard macro that gives a stock response: I'm not officially affiliated with the project, the laptop isn't available yet, and when it is, it will be sold in lots of a million or more to governments and school systems. Most of the people who write me are interested in owning a laptop they can afford. And that, it turns out, is not the goal of the One Laptop Per Child project. Their goal is to produce a laptop designed for use by children - students in grades K-12. And that requires radically different design decisions than what one would make in simply creating a low-cost laptop. Getting across the distinction that this is a children's laptop, not just a cheap laptop, is a surprisingly difficult task. When I last wrote about the laptop on Worldchanging, a number of commenters mentioned that they'd like one of the computers as a backup or travel computer - I suspect they might feel differently after playing with one of the current prototypes. They're really small. This is a good thing - I wouldn't want a kindergarden student carrying around my 12" PowerBook - it's too heavy and too fragile. The current prototype is little, orange, and very, very cute. It has a molded plastic handle and looks remarkably like a Speak and Spell. It's got bunny ears - antenni for the 802.11s wireless radios, which are designed to self-assemble meshes with other laptops. The ears fold down to cover the USB, power and mic ports, an excellent design for the sorts of dusty environments I can imagine the device used in. The screen in the current prototype is a conventional LCD screen - the screen in the production devices will be roughly the same size, probably slightly larger than the 7.5" screen in the prototype, but will be based around a technique that doesn't require white fluorescent backlight. (Many of the questions I need to answer for the IEEE article concern the screen, as it's one of the most expensive and power-hungry components of the machine.) The keyboard is about 60% of the size of a conventional keyboard and has calculator-style keys. My favorite feature of the current prototype is the hinge that holds the machine together. Ever since Nicholas outlined the engineering challenges of building a good hinge, I've been fascinated by the different ways people attach screens to laptops. As promised, the laptop can be folded into an ebook, with the screen on top, used as a handheld game player, or have the screen turned around so the machine can be used as a video player. Walter tells me that Quanta, the company responsible for manufacturing the machine, insisted on the hinge used in the prototype because it's the only one they trusted to stand up to the wear kids will put on the machine. In other words, while I love it, I'm not trading my laptop in for one any time soon. I suspect that low-cost computers designed by AMD and others are likely more appropriate for most users than the laptop. Again, that's okay - the goal isn't to capture the bottom end of the laptop market - it's to give kids learning tools. If the laptop did become popular on the low end of the market, it becomes a target for theft -- which is one of the reasons the machine is a brilliant shade of orange. The one feature missing from the prototype I saw - the crank. It's been clear - even before Kofi Annan broke the crank off an early laptop prototype - that a power-generating crank attached to the machine, like cranks are incorporated into FreePlay radios, might not work. Jim, who has designed the motherboard of the machine and has been focused on power consumption, helped me understand why. 156906265_83642237f0.jpg Contrary to what you learned in The Matrix, human beings are lousy at generating electric power. Small children are capable of generating between five and ten watts, for short periods of time. Since conventional laptops draw about 6 to 8 watts with their screens turned on, that's a real problem for a child-powered laptop. The laptop needs to get much less power-hungry, and power generation needs to maximize the output a child is capable of. This means being ergonomically smart - use large muscle groups, and use human-generated motion efficiently. A crank attached to a laptop fails on both fronts - to crank a box, you fight the tendency of the laptop to move in the opposite direction of the crank. This means you either hold the laptop in one hand and crank with the other - and do work with both arms - or put the laptop on a table and run the good chance of it falling off a table. And cranks use small muscle groups - the triceps, hand and wrist muscles. The solution is to make power generation an external add-on. The team is working on microgenerators that produce power using really big cranks - ones you might anchor with a hole in a table, and crank using your whole upper body. (Think Oompa Loompas in Wonka's chocolate factory opening valves.) Other microgenerators use a pullcord, the sort I use to start my lawnmower, or pedal power. And other power sources, including solar panels, could plug into the input jack of the machine. The current prototype accepts voltage from -23 to +23v, which lets power hackers be very creative - and more than a little sloppy - in providing power to the device. Got a power block for a laptop? If you can make the connector fit, it will power the laptop. The prototype I saw didn't have a battery installed, but the team has decided to use nickel metal hydrid batteries rather than lithium ion. The rationale? Lithium is not very tolerant of voltage spikes - you need to regulate the power that enters the battery to prevent damage to it. Human-generated power is neccesarily spiky, so regulating that voltage means losing generated power. NiMH is less efficient than Li-Ion in terms of power transfer, but the ability to capture spiky power is worth the tradeoff-- and MnH batteries are somewhat easier to dispose of in an environmentally conscious manner than Li-Ion. The machine still needs to be miserly with power to be usable as a human-charged device. And this is where the team have worked some serious magic. When the machine is not in active use, it can act as a mesh node, helping maintain a connectivity cloud over a village or school while drawing only 0.5 watts - the wireless subsystem (a Marvell chip with 100kb of RAM) operates independently of the main processor and can forward packets with the CPU shut down. The machine draws a similar amount of power in ebook mode, using a black and white display. The display IC has a substantial frame buffer - this means it can store a black and white image and display it without any assistance from the CPU, again allowing the CPU to shut down and save power. With the processor and color screen in action, the laptop draws 2 to 2.5 watts. To get the power consumption so low, Jim and the team chose an older AMD chip - the Geode GX2 - rather than the newer chips, which burn more power. Using the GX2 chip and the version of Fedora Red Hat has been developing for the machine, many Linux packages run on the laptop with almost no porting effort. The board itself is designed to encourage hardware hacking - the 500 prototype boards currently built come with a VGA jack soldered on. But production models will leave the jack leads etched on the board, though unpopulated. Want to turn a laptop into a device that can drive an external monitor? Solder one on. Also on the board but unpopulated will be connectors for additional RAM and flash memory, as well as a mini-PCI slot. A goal for the next iteration is a board with a wider pitch, which makes it easier to repair the board or to hand-solder additional connections. The case is designed to be easy to open and access the innards - this makes it easier to make Frankenmachines from dead machines, and also makes it easier to mass produce lots of these devices quickly. The storage capacity is decidedly modest - 128MB of RAM, 512MB of flash memory instead of a hard drive. That 512MB has to hold the operating system and applications, as well as any documents. No one's going to be loading a complete copy of Wikipedia onto this any time soon. That said, Walter showed me an early prototype of another orange box - a wire/wireless interface. Basically, it's a wireless base station, designed to connect some of the laptop mesh nodes to an ethernet cable (presumably attached to a VSAT or some other device.) The box acts as a peer on the network, not a server, but has a larger storage capacity, so could serve as a document server as well as a web cacheing server. And you just might load Wikipedia -- or an edited, educational version of Wikipedia -- onto these boxes before distributing them. 156904702_b05b33b875.jpg The prototype running at the OLPC offices was running GNOME on top of Fedora, and looked very much like one expects a Linux desktop to look. This is not what most children will see when they turn on the machine, but it's important to the designers that the machine be designed in layers, like an onion. (Or a parfait. Software designers like parfait.) For expert users who want to develop on the system, the laptop will ship with gcc, gtk, and the other stuff you need to build and distribute software. In addition, the software will include three development environments: Python, Javascript and Logowiki. Logowiki, from what I've seen of it, is amazingly cool. It starts from a collection of wiki pages, like Wikipedia, and treats pages as computational objects. This means that the Wikipedia page on Logo would run Logo, letting you try out functions and move the turtle around. This opens up some amazing possibilities - wiki pages about physics that include programmable models that help you understand acceleration or momentum, for instance. And, indeed, you can come onto logowiki and play with little programs that build spirals or calculate Pi. Wikis are important to the architecture of the software for another reason - they're part of the subversive strategy behind the machine. The OLPC team won't have control over what content is loaded onto the laptop in different countries - that's the decision of individual education ministries. But by using wikis as a content management system - rather than, say, a PDF viewer - the team manages to sneak in the idea of user-generated content into schools. Perhaps most textbook pages will be protected in a wiki structure - wiki features like discussion pages will still exist, opening new possibilities for how kids interact with schoolbooks. Walter explains that the fundamental design goals for the software of the project are to give students and teachers tools that leverage their ability to learn, their ability to be expressive and their ability to be social. A simple interface - more for discussion than a rough draft of any actual interface - shows some of these ideas. It's a tabbed interface, like a web browser, which holds applications like a word processor in some of the windows. Another window holds a graphical chat program, designed to let a student type or draw messages to another student - the chat is aware of what other students are logged on and proximate to the machine. The goal is not to isolate students from one another, having them stare into their machines, but to encourage them to communicate through the machines. -- FN 9822122436 +91-832-240-9490 (phone calls after 1 pm please) [http://fn.goa-india.org] [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers]

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Something shocking! Microsoft Completes Acquisition of Mozilla Firefox
by Hiran Venugopalan 21 Nov '06

21 Nov '06

Microsoft Completes Acquisition of Mozilla Firefox : LINK : http://www.msfirefox.com/microsoft-press-releases.html -- Believing in freedom .... ഹിരണ് േവണുേഗാപാലന് | Hiran Venugopalan http://hiran.movingrepublic.org # 09846951870

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Indic language bugs in Unicode
by Ramanraj K 21 Nov '06

21 Nov '06

Recently, I started using UTF-8 enabled applications to read and write in Tamil, the local official language here. It appears indic languages have been incorrectly represented at Unicode. India had sent less than 128 chars each language to Unicode consortium in the 1990s, much less than the full complement of characters in each. For example, among Tamil characters, only 31 chars (12 vowels and 18 consonants + 1 Final (ஃ) have specific codes, and the chart misses almost 12 x 18 characters which now have to be encoded with three to nine bytes per character. To make things worse, their arrangement is not in any natural order, and so sorting is difficult. It appears it is difficult to amend the charts now, as a number of applications have started using the unicode coding charts. Almost all indic languages have the same problem. Some would like to now have a 16 bit encoded Tamil-New chart, with codes allocated for 250+ characters in the Private Use area. I am not sure if other indic language groups are aware of the issues here, and what their plans are to deal with it. Padmakumar pointed out the issues there to the fsf-friends mailing list in 2004: http://mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/fsf-friends/2004-December/002653.html along with the link to the article at : http://www.angelfire.com/empire/thamizh/2/ (sad that there was no response to it) A recent TVU conference doc on the issues there is available at: http://tamilvu.org/coresite/html/cwwhatnw.htm There are a number of things that need to be done: [1] Add any missing characters and re-arrange the Tamil Unicode characters within the range of the existing 128 so that sorting could be done [2] Examine the TVU doc and offer suggestions to those concerned regarding Tamil 16 bit encoding. [3] Almost all indic languages are in the same boat here, and therefore, the language groups ought to come up with workable plans to remove the problems. -Ramanraj K

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Datacards and GNU/Linux...
by Frederick Noronha 20 Nov '06

20 Nov '06

It would be nice if hackers in the GNU/Linux community could help to spread awareness about data-cards, laptops and GNU/Linux. As you know, data-cards are increasingly becoming a way of getting Net access via your laptop in anywhere, anytime mode. Hence they could have growing relevance. LFY carried an article in its July 2006 issue, offering detailed instructions of how an Airtel Sierra Card can be made to work with GNU/Linux. But, as things stand, many of the cards are unsupported. I tried a ZTE (made-in-China card) with Reliance on Ubuntu, and it just refused to work. Sierra cards are out of stock with Reliance here, I was told, though given alternate information earlier. Airtel says Sierra isn't available, and were offering a Vodafone datacard, which proudly says "Airtel Data card works on Windows 2000/XP/XP Tablet/XP Pro". If you know of any option (keeping in mind that I live in Goa, with limited hardware availability) please share your notes with me. I really need a datacard to get access to mobile computing, specially when travelling. FN -- FN 9822122436 +91-832-240-9490 (phone calls after 1 pm please) [http://fn.goa-india.org] [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers]

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Bill Gates says Free Software is great
by Sasi Kumar 20 Nov '06

20 Nov '06

"Free software has always been an important part of the software world, just like commercial software has been. .... So you have this incredibly wonderful thing that if free software works for people, they should use that. ....... That's his (Stallman's) world. The GPL is. The free software world is way, way bigger than that, and that will always be there. That's a noncontroversial thing that we love." Those are the words of the king of Micro$oft in an interview with Cnet. He also has a good word about Stallman: "Now (Free Software Foundation head Richard) Stallman, he is truly pure; unlike many people who sort of try to act that way, he's pure." You can read the entire interview here: http://news.com.com/Gates+on+Vista%2C+Linux+and+more+-+page+3/2008-1012_3-6…. -- V. Sasi Kumar Free Software Foundation of India Please see: http://swatantryam.blogspot.com/

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GPL has nothing to do with anti-trust
by Ramanraj K 19 Nov '06

19 Nov '06

The case filed by Wallace claiming the GPL to be a monopoly was dismissed earlier and that decision has been confirmed by an appellate court. A report on it is available at http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/302979.htm The decision also holds: "It does not help to characterize people who accept the GPL as 'conspirators'" since the GPL "does not restrain trade. It is a cooperative agreement that facilitates production of new derivative works, and agreements that yield new products that would not arise through unilateral action are lawful."

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Promoting Open Source in a big way
by Mayukh Datta Roy 17 Nov '06

17 Nov '06

Hello everybody, I am a computer science student about to graduate. The open source revolution seems to be very fine except for one thing; Most volunteers are people who work for software companies and who develop Open Source software in their spare time. We have still not addressed one question "How to make Open Source a profitable Industry" because money after all is a sad fact of life and we all need it. What kind of business model will make Open Source a money making endeavour so that people like myself do not have to work for some propriety software manufacturing firm but give our full attention to the development of open source softwares. I think that will revolutionize the world by making open source the first choice rather than an afterthought. How can we make open source software witholding all the principles of the GPL and still become a successful and profitable venture ? Any thoughts ? goodbye Mayukh ** sorry for the length of the letter, i seem to be too verbose :) __________________________________________________________ Yahoo! India Answers: Share what you know. Learn something new http://in.answers.yahoo.com/

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Re: Happy about Java becoming free software
by Vihan Pandey 15 Nov '06

15 Nov '06

> Dear friends, > happy that java will be now free software > > we welcome sun to Free Software Community > > best regards to FSF,FSFE,FSFI > > love > fjsylvester > FSF-Friends i second that :-) Regards, - vihan

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Happy about Java becoming free software
by joy syl 14 Nov '06

14 Nov '06

Dear friends, happy that java will be now free software we welcome sun to Free Software Community best regards to FSF,FSFE,FSFI love fjsylvester FSF-Friends ____________________________________________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. http://new.mail.yahoo.com

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Announcement: National Workshop on FOSS in Science
by Vimal Joseph 14 Nov '06

14 Nov '06

Dear All, FOSS in Science [www.space-kerala.org/fsc] is a national workshop being organised by the Union Christian College[http://www.uccollege.edu.in/], Aluva, Kerala State, in collaboration with the Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment (SPACE)[www.space-kerala.org] and Free Software Foundation of India (FSFI)[www.gnu.org.in]. The three-day workshop will focus on the relevance of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in science education, scientific research and scientific computing. This is the first such workshop to be conducted in India, and is aimed at introducing FOSS to college teachers, doctoral students, research workers and others. The workshop will have as speakers, eminent FOSS experts from leading institutions like IIT Bombay, TIFR, Institute of Plasma Research, Bhaskaracharya Pratishthana, Free Software Foundation of India and Geological Survey of India. Participants will also have an opportunity to get hands on experience in using some of the software that is introduced by the speakers. A CD containing the GNU/Linux operating system, along with a number of applications that can be used in scientific research, will be given to all participants. The CD may be used to install the software on any number of computers and may also be freely copied and distributed. Schedule ------------- Dates January 4 to 6, 2007 Detailed schedule available at workshop website: http://www.space-kerala.org/fsc Venue --------- Union Christian College, Alwaye, Ernakulam, Kerala Registration: ------------------ Last date: December 15, 2006 Please see the registration page (http://www.space-kerala.org/fsc) for more details FOSS in Science Mailing list ----------------------------------------- Please join the online discussion mailing list for FOSS in Science at http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/foss-in-science About Union Christian College, Alwaye -------------------------------------------------------- Union Christian College, established in 1921, is a premier educational institution in Kerala imparting quality higher education. The idyllic campus, spread out in 42 acres, is located close to the banks of River Periyar, Aluva, hardly 8 kms from the Kochi International Airport. The college has made significant contributions over several decades in providing to the society and industry talented and dedicated individuals who have strived untiringly for the national objectives of peace, freedom and prosperity. The present eminence is a function of its history, tradition, quality of academic output and contributions to public life. About SPACE --------------------- SPACE, the Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment is a registered society that has members from academia, IT industry, professional societies such as IEEE and Computer Society of India, and IT Administration of the Government of Kerala. The vision of SPACE is to promote Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in academics, governance and individual use, and supporting the use FOSS for employment generation in Kerala. About FSF India ----------------------- FSF India, Free Software Foundation of India is a non-profit organisation committed to advocating, promoting and propagating the use and development of swatantra software in India. Its goal is to ensure the long term adoption of free software, and aim for the day when all software will be free. This includes educating people about software freedom and convincing them that it is the freedom that matters. Press contact -------------------- To get more information about this Workshop, please contact Bruce Mathew at the Union Christian College (+91 9447209932) or Vimal Joseph at the SPACE (vimal (at) space-kerala.org) regards, ~vimal -- Free Software, Free Society <http://fsfs.hipatia.net>

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