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[offtopic]Free software activists/developers wanted
by Vimal Joseph 10 Nov '05

10 Nov '05

Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment is is an intiative for promotion of Free software in Kerala. We are looking for candiates with basic knowledge of GNU/Linux Operating System and philosophy and good organisational skills. Applicant must have conversational skills in Malayalam language. Programming skills in GNU/Linux Operating System is advantageous. Send your resume to contact(a)space-kerala.org -- Vimal Joseph www.space-kerala.org Free Software, Free Society <http://fsfs.hipatia.net/wiki>

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First and only magazine for the new [GNU]Linux user....
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 09 Nov '05

09 Nov '05

TUX is the "first and only magazine for the new [GNU]Linux user". See http://www.tuxmagazine.com Currently issue number 8 (November 2005) is available on "the stands". What more, it's available for a free download. I did download the issue of May 2005. Just as an illustration, here are some of the easy-to-understand articles it contains: * Can anyone use [GNU]Linux? * Viva La [GNU]Linux Desktop Revolucion * Q&A with Mango Parfait. Mango Parfait introduces herself, answers her own questions with astounding facility and invites you to ask her your own questions. Don't be shy. There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. * Home Plate: Movies and More -- Life with Xine * Suited up: The Cuts and Pastes of OpenOffice.org Productivity * Tux Explains: Linking Users with Their Data * Tux Explains: Be the Master of All You Survey: Using Konqueror for File Management and Domination. * Tux Explains: All about Screensavers, and Why you Want to Run Them * Tux Explains: Going Guru -- Michael's Top GIMP Tips * Reviews: Adding PDF Power to OpenOffice.org * Abiword * Gaim * Rhythmbox * Totem Movie Player * The light and dark side of [GNU]Linux multimedia... Did you know that all these films include computer animation rendered using GNU/Linux? The movies are: The Incredibles, Shrek, Shrek 2, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Titanic, Ice Age, Spawn, Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron, Sphere, Peter Pan, Bunny, Barbie of Swan Lake, Joe Fly & Sanchez, Los Gringos and The Night of the Headless Horsemen. -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | http://fn-at-google.notlong.com Saligao, Goa, India | fred(a)bytesforall.org Independent Journalist | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436 ----------------------------------------------------------

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How to help Free/Open Source Projects
by gaurav 06 Nov '05

06 Nov '05

How to help Free/Open Source Projects I am writing this article after I took into account if i was doing something for promoting Open/Free Source Projects . How many times has that rescue CD we use has saved Us? How many times has the free/Open source software that comes bundled with some Gnu/Linux Distro proved a lot to us or that Live Gnu/Linux Cd helped us and we have felt proud of possessing that Software/Distro? How many times we have been able to stand up against pirated software with our help high along with the Free/Open Source software that works along with other copyrighted Platforms as well ? How many times have we been helped by some expert on any forum? I hope not many of us can take into account the above in pure numeric terms . What Have we done to promote Free/Open source related projects? Very few of these projects have the support of sponsors(maybe 2%-5% of these projects)These projects do require some encouragement and some monetary encouragement also to survive with the resources required to keep them running. Good projects receive some donations in form of Money or resources such as Internet Bandwidth (Mirror for downloading software),Computer Hardware for their development or Server . I do not know about any team that has been making big profits from the donations they receive . These just suffice them to keep their projects alive and kicking. Helping these projects is necessary as they provide this premium collection of software for free .Else they will also start charging for the premium version or to sign up for some help forum.Already some Distros and Software Vendors have started following this strategy.After all they too need to upgrade themselves to survive. These projects can e helped in some way or the other some of them that i could think of Donate some Money directly to these Organizations. A good way can be through affero.net ,from where you can choose various organizations who will benefit from any money you donate.(the minimum amount you can donate is 5$) Buy the Free Cds that are available for download, directly from these Organizations ,that way also you can help them and you can get some more premium service. Many of these Organization carry ads of their sponsors, these can fetch some some money(although meagre) for the User Clicks they generate.Visiting their sponsors can also help them. Help them while offering a Download Mirror for their Software/Distro, this wil reduce the Bandwidth Cost for such Organizations.In india there is dearth of such download mirrors.Corporates/Educational Institutes can get involved here if they provide the required bandwidth for non-office hours only. There are many other ways for helping these organizations. I do not know how many of us might have helped such Organizations but i think a sum of 5$-20$ can be donated on a yearly basis to any such Organization. gaurav masand linux4all[at]gmail.com -- my site:http://www.gnulinuxclub.org my blog:http://linux4all.blogspot.com my project:http://masand.sourceforge.net

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Some Differences Between Free and Proprietorial Software (by Guido Sohne)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 05 Nov '05

05 Nov '05

An interesting article from Guido Sohne guido at sohne.net on the GKD mailing list. -FN -----Original Message----- From: On Behalf Of Guido Sohne Sent: November 4, 2005 6:26 PM To: gkd(a)milhouse.edc.org Subject: [GKD] Some Differences Between Free and Proprietary Software Dear GKD Members: I wrote this with the intent of informing decision makers who are facing a decision of 'open source' versus 'proprietary software' to understand the choice they are making by explaining the context in an approachable manner. -- G. ************************************************** Some Differences Between Free And Proprietary Software * Introduction This article is an attempt to dissect some differences between free and proprietary software in an accessible manner, free from jargon and the techno-gobbledegook dialect favored by some technical people. * Two Different Worlds Proprietary software is created by organizations that seek to maximize profit by restricting production. The usual and common objective of such organizations is to operate and maintain a continued revenue stream, for maximum profit. Restricted production and the continued revenue objective result in a dependency syndrome for users - they can't ever stop paying. Proprietary software is mainly provided by companies that use the access-restrictions of copyright laws to maintain well-defined segments across their markets as well as to maintain barriers to market entry by competitors as a means of maximizing revenue across market segments by trying to minimize the costs of dealing with competitive threats, thus helping to maximize profits. >From a modern microeconomic perspective the business secret aspect of intellectual property is only one part of a multi-faceted set ofprofit-maximization tactics firms can and do employ, in either freely competitive, oligopolized or monopolized markets. Other related tactics include marketing and support expenditures that can make market entry more expensive or that can help lock-in consumers. Firms engaged in such behaviour, often are unwilling to share their technologies, especially those beyond the development capacity of most of the market, as an additional means of restricting competition by restricting the availability of the product. Free software, on the other hand, has no profit motivations as its basis for organization. Instead, free software seeks to ensure that there are as few restrictions to software production as possible. Free software does not make a distinction between the level of access granted to the product given to its users and that given to its developers. Free software maximizes the potential for production to occur. Unfettered by the profit motive and guided by higher ideals of freedom, sharing and communal ownership of knowledge, free software is more oriented towards the product and its development and far less attuned to anti-competitive business strategies, necessitated by its goal of minimizing restriction to the software product. It is important to note here, that this sort of anti-competitive behaviour described is not limited to the software industry but rather permeates much of the status quo for business practices in industries that produce digital goods (software, music, film). The popular grassroots movement that is the basis of the increased usage and utility of free software is at the core, a rejection of this anti-competitive behaviour and this is evident in their clarion call for increased freedom. * Licensing of Software Software licenses are contracts attached to the software, either in raw or finished form, that determine the expectations, rights and obligations of the parties to the contract. As used by software producing organizations, licenses are primarily a means to either restrict, or ensure access to the product in both its raw and finished form. Restricted production licenses usually differentiate between access to the product in its raw form and in its finished form. Such licenses often only grant access to users on the basis they are the only permitted user of the finished form of the software product that has been given access to the software. Other users must also buy licenses for continued revenue and maximum profit. Free software licenses operate by removing the distinction between raw and finished form, emphasizing the raw form as the actual software product. If the software comes in finished form, the raw form of the software must be present or readily accessible. This is in line with the free software objective of ensuring that there are as few restrictions on production as possible. Free software licenses often block restriction of the software product by restricting use of the software to exclude scenarios or situations that result in restrictions being placed on the software that would have adverse effects on production. * Locked In Competition For Users Software licenses are almost always centered around the user of the software. On one hand are organizations seeking maximum profit and on the other hand are organizations seeking maximum access (unrestricted access to the software product). However, developers are those with the ability to utilize unrestricted access. In the free software world, the user can be a developer too. In the proprietary software world, other developers are often 'the enemy' because it is only other developers who can create a competing product. And in between this war between worlds of developers, stands the hapless user ... Significant resources are devoted to proprietary software in order for it to appeal and compete for the expenditure of users. Restricting users' access to the software by supplying it solely in finished form causes more effort to be placed into making the software usable by ordinary users (as opposed to developers). In this manner, proprietary software evolves to be biased heavily to the ordinary user, often at the same time making it hard or impossible for other developers (who are also users of the software) to work with the software in its raw form. The proprietary software approach of restricting production to finished form also biases the productive options available to overwhelmingly favor the organization owning the software product. In the case of companies like Microsoft, whose software comes preinstalled on the vast majority of computers being sold, the user often has no choice but to use the software. Any other route often results in more work for the user. They have to go and find some other software and get it installed. When they do so, they encounter incompatibilities, which incidentally, are in favor of Microsoft maintaining its monopoly by making it easier just to stay with Microsoft products, which of course, work well together. The resulting state of affairs is in total contradiction to the free software goal of ensuring minimal restrictions on software production and software choice for the end user or individual developer. Free software accomplishes this by predominantly taking a 'laissez-faire' approach to ordinary users as well as to its developers. The only restriction faced by developers when producing free software is in integrating their own improvements to the source code. This restriction arises from the free software goal of maximizing the efficiency of software production. If there are no restrictions on changes to the raw form of the product, it quickly becomes buggy or unstable unless the developers are of equivalent skill or are familiar with the code involved, otherwise it devolves into a hodgepodge that just doesn't work. Only well thought out and well tested changes should ideally make it into the software product, and even this is best done in a gradual, incremental manner. This necessary mechanism for restricting software production in a manner that maximizes efficiency takes the shape of the other developers of the software, who by fiat, consensus, war, politics or rewriting the affected code constitute a peer review mechanism operating around the goal of production efficiency within their common visions and objectives. Developers have the choice to do what they please and often prefer to do what pleases them at the expense of the ordinary user, who is assumed not to understand the specific benefits of the particular improvement. On the other hand, users or organizations have the opportunity to encourage developers by giving them incentives to work on improvements preferred by the user. This interplay between the two types of users (technical and non-technical) of free software evolves into a symbiotic relationship, where the developer has no reason to work if no one will use his work, and the users have no choice but to depend on a developer to do what they cannot do for them. Both benefit, each contributing to the resources needed for production. * Differences in Organization of Labor The mode in which labor (developers working to maintain or enhance the product) is organized differs between the proprietary and commercial approaches. Organizations producing proprietary software, being mostly driven by the profit motive, and restricting production need to be able to control ownership of the software and at the same time utilize developers to make changes or improvements to the software while maximizing profit. Organizations producing free software are often places where individuals interested in producing the software are employed because the organization and the individual have aligned interests for the software. This is because the free software development process is organized on the basis of individuals. Organizations are represented only by an individual, and such individuals have influence proportionate to their contribution to the software product. Free software often operates as a self organized, developer centric culture resting on individual reputation and esteem in the eyes of the rest of the team. Comparing the two methods of production, it could be concluded that proprietary software developers seek to maximize income while free software developers seek to maximize their contribution to, and influence over, the software product itself. * Mode Of Production In order to achieve this, these organizations hire developers and pay them for their contribution to the software product. Done as a work for hire, the ownership of the product, primarily exercised through copyright, remains with the organization that hired the developer. The cost of developers and the general cost of doing business translates into a total cost for production that must be recouped by sales to users. The price at which the product is sold depends on how many users choose to use the software, or how many users are compelled or coerced to use the software. With free software, the general cost of doing business is often incidental and not central to the objectives of people or organizations producing it. Maximum access to successful free software products often results in multiple organizations making changes or contributions to the software. If one of the organizations participating in the free software development process disappears or changes its objectives and abandons the software, the other organizations are not affected. At the same time, the developers working on free software are often still available to different degrees of availability even when their organization collapses, because the raw form of the software product is not restricted to the organization only. They can continue working and may even join the organizations remaining. Due to this, the free software development process results in software products that exhibit robustness even in the face of adverse economic circumstances. In such cases, the efficiency of development is even increased because the developers will have more time to work on changes to the products that they prefer, while being underemployed with respect to potential output. The ability to utilize underemployment effectively is a strong contributing factor to the efficiency of the free software development process. Additionally, free software development reduces the perceived cost of developing software by distributing the cost of development across all the participants in the process. This is in contrast to the proprietary software development process, where the cost of development is distributed across the user base and results in lower prices for the user. These lower prices are partly due to the increased supply due to the absence of restricted production. * Conclusion Proprietary and free software are different approaches to producing software products that are competing for users and resources. Proprietary software development restricts access to the software product by prohibiting copying but free software development encourages access to the software product by prohibiting restrictions on copying. Proprietary software development is most efficient at maximizing profits but free software development is most efficient at maximizing production. The choice is always up to you, the user of the software, in how to exercise your interests. ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <gkd(a)mail.edc.org> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <majordomo(a)mail.edc.org>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>

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GNU/Linux CD
by Arun M 04 Nov '05

04 Nov '05

Hi Friends, KSTA, school teachers union in Kerala is distributing custom debian CDs and installation manuals around Kerala. More and more schools moving towards free software. regards arun.

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[Fsf-friends] Lintux newsletter: Issue 51 (Nithin Kamath, Mangalore)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx LINTUX NEWSLETTER "Spreading the Spirit of GNU/Linux" xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ISSUE 51 | November 3rd 2005 http://groups-beta.google.com/group/lintux xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Linux Newbie xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------------------------------------------------------------- Everybody's Guide to OpenDocument ------------------------------------------------------------- Sorting out the facts from the errors and omissions in recent reaction to Massachusetts' announcement to use OpenDocument. A lot of misinformation about the OpenDocument digital format has started to appear in the mainstream media and interest groups. Answers to many questions on the topic already have appeared, but they are written by techies for techies. This article is different, however. You can print out this one and pass it on to everyone, regardless of their computer skill level... Read Full:- http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8616 ------------------------------------------------------------- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx General News & Views xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------------------------------------------------------------- MySQL 5.0 Ready To Download ------------------------------------------------------------- The newest version of the open-source MySQL database went final Monday, and is now available for free download, its developer' said. Swedish-based MySQL AB said that 5.0 of its namesake database boasts new stored procedures, views that will protect sensitive information from unauthorized users, and an information schema to give companies access to database metadata. Other new features include a migration manager that helps users move data from SQL Server, Microsoft Access, Oracle, and other databases; updated, high-performance editions of ODBC, Java, and .Net database drives; and a tool that lets administrators stop or start a MySQL server from a remote location... Read Full:- http://www.linuxpipeline.com/172900016?cid=rssfeed_pl_lxp ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- Sun releases Jini with open-source license ------------------------------------------------------------- Jini was originally released in 1999 as a way to link consumer devices to Sun's Java software. But companies using the Jini software have been using it mainly for corporate computing jobs such as grid computing and clustered servers, according to Sun executives. The software is specifically designed for building Java applications that rely on widely distributed components. For example, Sun uses Jini as part of its radio frequency identification software, which runs in small warehouse RFID readers... Read Full:- http://tinyurl.com/95y5t ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- Quake 4 for GNU/Linux is available now ------------------------------------------------------------- Quake 4 for GNU/Linux is available now! The installer has been uploaded to our ftp and on the bittorrent tracker. We're very pleased to announce that this it with both a dedicated server and a native client. A licensed copy of Quake 4 retail for Windows(r) is required You will copy the assets files from it and use the CD key ( a CD key is not required to run a dedicated server ) .. Read Full:- http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/ ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- America's Army 2.5.0 for Linux is out ------------------------------------------------------------- Visit: http://tinyurl.com/79yyv ------------------------------------------------------------- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Software Corner xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------------------------------------------------------------- openSUSE inspires derivative distros ------------------------------------------------------------- Just two months ago, Novell opened the development process behind SUSE Linux, creating the openSUSE project. Novell's move gave developers a chance to be involved in SUSE, which previously had been developed privately without community input. In the short time since openSUSE was unveiled, developers have begun work on several new and interesting SUSE derivatives... Read Full Details:- http://tinyurl.com/ajnsy ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- CLI Magic: GNU find ------------------------------------------------------------- Don't you just hate it when you can't find a file you need, but you know it's on your computer? Wouldn't you like an easy way to track down files anywhere on your computer? If so, I have good news for you, a command available to you at the friendly Linux CLI called find. You know what they say, the CLI is such an essential part of the operating system that running an OS without one is like traveling blind. Getting to know the GNU find command can help you better understand why that is true. Climb down out of your GUI for awhile, and let's see what we can find... Read Full Details:- http://enterprise.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/10/26/1621220 ------------------------------------------------------------- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Resources: Hands On xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ------------------------------------------------------------- Quick and Dirty Data Extraction in AWK ------------------------------------------------------------- Need to pull some data from text--maybe e-mail messages--and sort it, graph it or otherwise manipulate it? Here's an AWK script to use as a starting point. Many years ago, probably close to 20, a regular point was made on the comp Usenet newsgroups about using the minimum tool to get the job done. That is, someone would ask for a quick and dirty way to do something. The followups often included a C solution followed by an AWK solution followed by a sed solution and so on.... Read Full Article:- http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8627 ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- What to do when apt-get fails ------------------------------------------------------------- When you install an application package in a Debian-based system, sometimes prerequisite application packages are unavailable. These missing packages are known as broken dependencies. Left unresolved, they can cripple your system's ability to install new packages. They're a disaster that isn't supposed to happen in Debian, thanks to the Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and the scripts contained in Debian packages. That makes broken dependencies all the more devastating when they happen. Some users have even been known to reinstall the whole operating system, despairing of otherwise having a functioning package management system. However, depending on how the broken dependencies arose, you have several options to try before you consider reinstalling... Read Full Details:- http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=05/10/12/1952217 ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- So You'd Like To Use MySQL... ------------------------------------------------------------- n this article, Jon Stephens shares how you can obtain and install a MySQL database for your Linux system. He provides lots of beginner instructions including use of the MySQL Monitor, a tool for using and adminstering MySQL that's part of the basic distribution. The article also delves into the introduction for securing your MySQL database. Written to encourage further use of LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP), the article helps anyone apply the power of MySQL in their business... Read Full Details:- http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/basicmysql.shtml ------------------------------------------------------------- ################### Reviews & Opinions ################### ------------------------------------------------------------- Why do people switch to Linux? ------------------------------------------------------------- During the last month, we conducted a survey of readers who use Linux. We asked them why they switched to Linux and received a plethora of answers. Surprisingly, anti-Microsoft sentiment had less to do with the choice than one might imagine. Could the pundits have it all wrong? Is it possible that Linux stands on its own merits? Most Linux users would yes. Use of Linux does not represent a rebellion against Microsoft and Linux stands on its own as a user preference. In this article, we will look at excerpts from the survey and see why people have adopted Linux. You might find the reasons interesting, maybe fascinating and probably not what you thought... Read Full: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8231 ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- A Firefox Fan's Perspective of the Flock Browser ------------------------------------------------------------- If you're a Mozilla Firefox user, you will probably notice the close resemblance Flock has with Firefox. Though the browser is in fact based on Firefox, Bart Decrem, the team leader of the project, says Flock won't be forking the Firefox codebase. Still this Flock preview on the outside looks like Firefox but with a different theme. So would a Firefox user be missing anything by sticking with Firefox? Let's explore some of the features that makes Flock different from the rest... Read Full: http://tinyurl.com/d7wgd ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- Google Opens Up About Open Source ------------------------------------------------------------- Google Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. will release a Web-based StarOffice desktop suite. Google will soon announce a new operating system. The truth isn't anything as dramatic, but it does show a company that not only supports open source, but relies on it every day to keep the best-known search engine and allied businesses running... More At: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1877924,00.asp ------------------------------------------------------------- ####################### Resources ####################### ------------------------------------------------------------- Free and Open Source Software for E-learning ------------------------------------------------------------- During the discussion held from 1-25 June 2004 over 200 links were shared and proposed by the participants. More links have been identified and added as the discussion continues. This reference list of links is an outcome of your inputs and has been compiled to provide some guidance on the wealth of resources related to FOSS for e-learning on the web. An attempt has also been made to direct the attention of the more technically advanced user to specific resources. In such a case, the category is marked... More At: http://tinyurl.com/cd5or ------------------------------------------------------------- #################### India Specific #################### ------------------------------------------------------------- FLOSSAsiaIndia ------------------------------------------------------------- India, with its population of one-billion plus, has a rich tech talent, considerable interest in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and a network of some 80-plus user groups across its landmass (some active, some less). This offers wide potential. There are many links to what's happening in and around India on the FLOSS scene. Compiled and edited by Frederick Noronha (FN) More At: http://www.wikiwikiweb.de/FLOSSAsiaIndia ------------------------------------------------------------- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx AVAILABLE ON THE NET @ xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx HTML: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/lintux TEXT: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lintux/ xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subscription Information xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - To join, just send a blank email with subject as "Join linux newsletter" to: lintuxnews(a)gmail.com - To unsubscribe send a blank email with "unsubscribe linux" as subject to: lintuxnews(a)gmail.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Disclaimer xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx This newsletter may contain links to sites on the Internet which are owned and operated by third parties. I am not responsible for the availability of, and/or the content located on or through, any such third-party sites. All Content may or maynot be By their Creators xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Copyleft 2004-05 Nithin Kamath, Mangalore ========================== Visit: linux-mangalore.org and nithinkamath.info

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Re: [eGovINDIA] Public documents should be in a Open Format
by Joe Steeve 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Note: I have CCed this email to the mailing list of `Free Software Foundation`, so that you can get more inputs on the same issue. eGov INDIA <egovindia(a)yahoo.com> writes: > Can you write exactly some of the things need to be adopted by > GOI to get all documents in OPEN STANDARD DOCUMENT. Which > programs are vailable on OSS and other formats. The most commonly used open format for publishing documents is the PDF format. It was formerly proprietary but has become open. HTML is yet another format. Recently, some corporate and community initiatives have brought about the Open Document Format (ODF) standard., which aims at stardizing the document format and keeping it open across all platforms. One approach would be to use the OpenOffice.org (OO.o). OO.o is a popular 'Free/Libre Open Source' Office suite which can handle a number of open formats including the ODF (since version 2.0) onwards. The OO.o has support to convert documents written in the ODF to HTML, PDF and other supported formats. This would be as easy as typing the content in Microsoft Word and then doing a `Save As` to various types of outputs. The above approach would be suitable for a technically not-so-capable person to publish the document in a open format. A more professional (and recommended) approach would be to use the LaTeX document preparation system. This would require a person skilled in LaTeX. In this model, the document is typed using any text editor and is similar to HTML. Then the LaTeX document is processed using the 'latex' program with suitable commandline parameters to convert it to a PDF or HTML file. The LaTeX document preparation model has been standardised, and there are various implementations to process the LaTeX files., and covert them to required forms. 'MikTex' is a Free Software latex implemention on Windows. A LaTeX implementation is a vital part of every GNU/Linux distribution. The presentation for all related documents can be customised using one single 'style file'. LaTeX is basically a macro language built over the TeX typesetting system written by Donald E Knuth., and is used around the world for publications of all kinds varying from books, letters, technical documents, etc. So., what can be done is., - A style file should be created to give a common layout and look-and-feel for all the related documents. - The documents should be written using the LaTeX document preparation model. - Then using programs like 'pdflatex', 'latex' and related tools., the LaTeX documents can be converted to PDF, HTML, DVI and other such presentable formats. I would personally recommend the second approach (of using LaTeX), since it is more flexible towards the maintenance of the documents in the longer run., as all the actual source files would be just plain text. Thanks Sincerely, Joe > Joe Steeve <joe_steeve(a)gmx.net> wrote: > This is in similar note to the post by Mr.Kush Singh. The > Constitution of India (COI), is available at the > http://lawmin.nic.in/coi.htm. However, the files are available > only the Microsoft Word format. > > The COI and other related documents should be easily reachable > by all citizens of the country. The Microsoft Word Document > format is a proprietary format which is controlled by Microsoft > alone. And, Microsoft has changed the format a number of times > from MS Office 97 to the latest Office XP. Each, time it has > forced the users to move to the new format because of features > and incompatibility reasons. Microsoft office is an expensive > software. Its standard edition costs close to Rs15,000., and > another low priced student/teacher edition costs somewhere near > Rs7000. That cost is still high for many people of India even > when they can afford a computer and Internet. The pattern in > which the change of format over the various versions of > Microsoft Word clearly signals the business motive of the > company without regards to its user base. These are some of the > reasons for the recent choice of Open Document format in the > state of Massachusetts in the USA. And., I'm sure many other > governments would follow. > > When important documents such as the COI are released in a > proprietary format like the Word Document format, it becomes > inaccessible to a large scale of citizens. And., morover it is > shows a government bias towards a private body. > > Hence, it is very necessary that all government documents be > provided in Open Formats such as PDF, OpenDocument, XML, HTML, > etc. I was happy to see some recent documents > (http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/Bills_RS_Bud2005.htm), > (http://lawmin.nic.in/legislative/Bills_LS_Bud2005.htm), being > published as a PDF. But all the older documents need to be > converted to a Open Format. Also., it would be really nice if > these documents where available for online browsing in HTML > format. I know it is hard to maintain two formats., but there > are ways to do this using Free Software tools (using LaTeX, > TeXinfo, ..). > > I hope someone in the related departments would take note of > this. Thank you. -- .O. A proud GNU user ..O OOO http://www.joesteeve.org/

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Politics & Software
by balachandran c 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Interesting news: http://www.savetibet.org/news/newsitem.php?id=836 Regards, Balachandran.

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 30, Issue 24
by joy syl 03 Nov '05

03 Nov '05

Hello list Happy Diwali !!! fjsylvester > _______________________________________________ > Fsf-friends mailing list > Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in > http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends > > > End of Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 30, Issue 24 > ******************************************* > __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com

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Re: Re: [Fsf-friends] FSF Participation in FOSS.IN Expo/Projects
by Kanti Jadia 31 Oct '05

31 Oct '05

>I had posted a message on the foss.in discussions >list regarding the Phoenix project yesterday - have >you seen it? I think it's a nice project which we can >put >up as part of the FSF stall .. let me know what you >think about it. > i could not make out the license for the software part of Phoenix project.Opened the code files as well. As a project Phoenix is very exciting. I would encourage you to put it as a separate demo on its own. Note: I do not represent views of FSF-India.These are my personal views. You could engage gnu(at)gnu.org.in for details Regards Kanti ----------------------------------------- Enjoy your Freedom,use GNU/Linux. http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html -----------------------------------------

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Re: [Fsf-friends] FSF Participation in FOSS.IN Expo/Projects
by Kanti Jadia 31 Oct '05

31 Oct '05

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 Pramode C.E. wrote : >Hello, > >I would like to know who is coordinating the FSF's >participation in FOSS.IN? > Hi Pramode, We were discussing participation sometime back. At that time the format for FOSS.IN was not know. As per latest info available the format of the http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-2005/message/2612 "--- In linux-bangalore-2005(a)yahoogroups.com, Atul Chitnis <listadmin@l...> wrote: > > All: > > Project groups wishing to participate in the FOSS projects Expo (projects > could be FOSS projects or groups) should let us know ASAP, so that space > can be allocated to them. Note that we are following the IT.COM 99 format > for this expo - there are no separate stalls for each project, but the > entire pavilion is one huge stall, and all projects will demo within that. > No sales are allowed (sorry guys, but we really dont want sales tax people > raiding this place), but any free giveaways are cool. Now am not too sure what we (Volunteers of FSF-India) would have as a demo. A stall or booth would have given us space to put some posters and handouts. A GNU/Hurd demo could be done , but i do not think that adds something here as FSF-India.If any ideas are there , please add up Thanks and Regards Kanti >Thanks and Regards, >Pramode C.E >------------------- > > > >__________________________________________________________ >Enjoy this Diwali with Y! India Click here http://in.promos.yahoo.com/fabmall/index.html > >_______________________________________________ >Fsf-friends mailing list >Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in >http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends ----------------------------------------- Enjoy your Freedom,use GNU/Linux. http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html -----------------------------------------

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FSF Participation in FOSS.IN Expo/Projects
by Pramode C.E. 30 Oct '05

30 Oct '05

Hello, I would like to know who is coordinating the FSF's participation in FOSS.IN? Thanks and Regards, Pramode C.E ------------------- __________________________________________________________ Enjoy this Diwali with Y! India Click here http://in.promos.yahoo.com/fabmall/index.html

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New guidelines to beat spyware
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 29 Oct '05

29 Oct '05

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1278978,curpg-2.cms New guidelines to beat spyware [ Friday, October 28, 2005 11:15:59 pmAP ] NEW YORK: A coalition of anti-spyware vendors and consumer groups published guidelines on Thursday to help consumers assess products designed to combat unwanted programs that sneak onto computers. The Anti-Spyware Coalition released the guidelines for public comment and also updated a separate document that attempted to craft uniform definitions for "spyware" and "adware" in hopes of giving computer users more control over their machines. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Internet users have become more cautious online because of worries about spyware and adware, which can bombard users with pop-up ads and drain processing power to the point of rendering computers unusable. Nearly half of adult online Americans have stopped visiting specific websites that they fear might infect them with such unwanted programs, and a quarter have ... ceased to use file-sharing software, which often comes bundled with adware. In addition, 43% of Internet users say theyhhh’ve been hit with spyware, adware or both, with broadband users generally at greater risk. The new guidelines from the coalition assign risk levels to various practices common with spyware and adware. High-risk practices include installation without a user’s permission or knowledge, interference with competing programs, interception of e-mail and instant-messaging conversations and the display of ads without identifying the program that generated them. Changing a browser’s home page or search engine setting is deemed a medium risk, while using cookies to collect information is considered a low risk. ENDS

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FN'sEyeOnFLOSS *** Oct 28, 2005 * IOSN booklets... FLOSS and disaster... five reasons... Yash from Mauritius... BytesForAll...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 28 Oct '05

28 Oct '05

-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Frederick Noronha (FN) <fred(a)bytesforall.org> Reply-To: fred(a)bytesforall.org To: LIG <linux-india-general(a)lists.sourceforge.net> Subject: FN'sEyeOnFLOSS *** Oct 28, 2005 * IOSN booklets... FLOSS and disaster... five reasons... Yash from Mauritius... BytesForAll... Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:36:07 +0530 ................................................................ FN's Eye on FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software ........ ................................................................ [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] IOSN's BOOKLETS AVAILBLE FOR DOWNLOAD Free/Open Source Software: A General Introduction by Kenneth Wong and Phet Sayo is a 60-page booklet, part of the Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme's e-Primers series. What makes it interesting is not just that it is written in a simple and easily-accessible style, but also the fact that it is freely downloadable. (From www.iosn.net) Its preface calls the Free and Open Source (FOSS) movement one of the "new technologies and ... new opportunities... that is playing out before us today". It also calls it many things at the same time. Including, a "revolutionary development process, disruptive technology, ideological movement, new knowledge and standards, and more". This primer launched the series which is focussed on the FOSS movement. One would prefer the use of the term FLOSS, since the "libre" concept is obviously a crucial one here. But then, the power of the corporate world is such that they define concepts and one has little choice on whether it should be Linux (rather than GNU/Linux), Open Source rather than Free Software, and FOSS rather than FLOSS. That apart, this book contains some useful material. It starts off with definitions: about the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the FOSS development method (reduced duplication of effort, building upon the work of others, better quality control, and reduced maintenance costs), and a brief history of FOSS. Then we go to the meat of the issue: why FOSS? Also: Is FOSS free? How large are the savings from FOSS? What are the benefits of using FOSS (security, reliability and stability, open standards and vendor independence, reduced reliance on imports, developing local software capacity, reduced 'piracy', localization possibilities, etc)? There's the other side of the balance-sheet presented too: what are the shortcomings of FOSS? This primer admits to the lack of business applications, hassles when it comes to inter-operability with some proprietary systems, and limitations on the availability of documentation and the 'polish' with which products are presented. From there, we go to FOSS success stories. These are pointers to projects where large governments (or supra-governments like the European Union) took strongly pro-FOSS policies. There are studies from The German Bundestag servers, the city of Munich, the experiences in France, UK's policies on FOSS procurement, and the migration to FOSS in the city of Turku in Finland. >From the Americas success storiasia, es come from California, Texas and Oregon -- even if the pro-FOSS laws were still to be passed at the time of writing. Then, there's Peru, Brazil, and, in Asia, China, India, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan. Wong and Phet, who obviously have a good overview of the subject they're writing about, shift to some successful FOSS projects. These include Bind (the DNS server, without which internet addresses such as yahoo.com or even microsoft.com would not function), the Apache web server, the Sendmail email server, the secure network administration tool OpenSSH, and the Open Office productivity suite. Richard M Stallman, the father of the Free Software Movement and a guest of the International Open Source Network, would probably be happy with a section of this book(let) that explains the difference between the "Linux" buzzword, and the concepts like GNU/Linux. Newbies to this entire idea are told about where they can download GNU/Linux from -- don't try unless you have a fat pipe to the internet, it's just easier to very-legally make copies of a distro that someone else has. Issues like download time, installation and compiling time, quality assurance and learning time are also very briefly touched on. With so much packed in a small book, you might just realise that we've still only reached half-way through the title. Quite rapidly, the authors shift to more complex issues -- licensing arrangements, the GNU General Public License, BSD-style licenses, and issue like whether FOSS can be combined with proprietary software. We move on to localisation ("the process of creating or adapting a product to a specific locale, i.e. to the language, cultural context, conventions and market requirements of a specific target 'market'), methods for localizing, and a case-studies of FOSS in government and education. Having seen how some of this works on the ground, it might be risky to rely solely on the printed word to judge how things work in this field. For instance, a more thorough evaluation of the Goa Schools Computer Project (or, Goa Computers in Schools Project, as it has also been called) stills awaits being done. And it would be best done by someone who has empathy and appreciates the potential, without necessarily being a close observer-participant as this reviewer has been. Finally, we end with a glossary... much-needed for a subject as geeky as this. There's also a list of interesting URLs of different GPL compatible and incompatible software licenses. As noted above, what makes this book different is not just that yoiu are free to "copy, distribute and display" it, but also make derivative works from it and make commercial use of this work. Further, the authors are generous in crediting all the persons whose work, comments, feedback and copyedits went into creating this work. We are reminded at the end about the agendas of the two UNDP-linked institutions that brought it out (www.apdip.net and www.iosn.net). Clearly, there's no reason why this needs to be read by both those gung-ho and those skeptical about the potential of FOSS. You can't claim that the costs (there's none) or lack of access (it's just a URL away) kept you from reading it. -- Frederick Noronha, October 2005. [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] PROMINENT SPEAKERS EXPECTED FOR FOSS.IN: Atul Chitnis <listadmin(a)linux-bangalore.org> announces that the overseas speakers will include: Jonathan Corbet, co-author of "Linux Device Drivers", and editor of LWN.NET, aka "Linux Weekly News"; Andrew Cowie of Linux Australia; Harald Welte, who's chairman of the netfilter/iptables project, and the man behind GPLviolations.org; "Mr.Wizards-of-OS" Volker Grassmuck; the man behind the Apache project, COLLAB.NET's Brian Behlendorf; "Mr.PHP" Rasmus Lerdorf; the Diva of Open Source, Danese Cooper; Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny; the man behind Linux Sound and Audio Dave Phillips; and the legendary hacker Alan Cox. ---------------------------------------------------------- FOSS.IN/2005 is a major Free/Libre & Open Source Software Event Nov 29 to Dec 2, 2005 Bangalore Palace. http:// foss.in/2005 ---------------------------------------------------------- [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] FIGHTING DISASTER, THE FLOSS STYLE: Chamindra de Silva <chamindra(a)opensource.lk> informs that Sahana phase I is currently being deployed in Pakistan together with the support of NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) of Pakistan, IBM Crisis Response Team and IBM Pakistan. NADRA has a comprehensive people database as they build and maintain the central system that maintains the registration of people (identity card, passport, etc). In Pakistan, however the system is not web based and under tight security controls. Thus Sahana fills the gap of making the data accessible to the other organizations involved in the relief effort such as the NGOs. Apart from that NADRA does not have the equivalent of the request management system and organization registry which is built into phase 1. This is what the integrated system should look like this: http://www.reliefsource.org/foss/images/2/2e/NDMS.jpg The deployment model presented by us can be found at http://www.linux.lk/~chamindra/docs/Sahana-Pakistan.pdf Chamindra is keeping notes and lessons learned on this deployment at the Reliefsource wiki at http://www.reliefsource.org/foss/index.php/Use:Asian-Earthquake-OCT-2005 * * * * * * * * * * Shahzad Ahmad <shahzad.ahmad(a)isb.iucnp.org> writes: "Just sharing this news item. The Tsunami fame, [Free/Libre and] Open Source Software product SAHANA is already almost deployed by Chamindra de Silva with support from the IBM crisis response team and NADRA (National Database Registry of Pakistan). PSEB was also extending support to them I remember. The difference here... SAHANA yet has to hit the media while Microsoft is already getting coverage." > Microsoft offers technological assistance in quake-affected > areas > Representative hands over monetary assistance to PM and > MKRF By Schezee Zaidi, The News, 21/10/2005 > http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2005-daily/21-10-2005/main/main6.htm * * * * * * * * * * Irfan Khan <khania(a)super.net.pk> says: For updates on the deployment of Sahana in Pakistan, check recent entries in Sanjiva Weerawarana's Blog http://www.bloglines.com/blog/sanjiva and Geek with an attitude (Buddhika Siddhisena's Blog) http://budlite.blogspot.com/ [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] FIVE REASONS WHY: 5 reasons not to use GNU/Linux, especially when compared to Windows. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS8124627492.html [Thanks for the link to Justin Joseph <justin_joseph007(a)yahoo.com> [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] THIS ISSUE'S PROFILE: Yash <yash(a)vfemail.net> is a Systems Engineer with an entrepreneurial spirit based in Mauritius. He founded the first and only Ruby User Group locally -- Rubidius. Earlier this year he "predicted that the future of web apps will be based on Ruby on Rails." Says Yash: "My interests lie in Business, Free and Open Source Software, Optimizing Business Processes and Investments, Music and technology in general. Favourite GNU/Linux distro: Yoper. Favourite programming language: Ruby (you'd have guessed that). I started programming with an Oric Atmos using self-taught BASIC. Today I'm more interesting in the strategic management issues of I.S. and Business integration." http://www.yashlabs.com/wp [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] HELP FOR A WEBSITE, IN HINDI: Shubhranshu Choudhary <smitashu(a)gmail.com> is working on a People's Website of Chattishgarh, and he got useful for some of his technical problems from Indic computing guru G Karunakar. "Shu" has been trying to put in "as much matter in Hindi as possible". They use the Hindi Mangal Unicode as font for the www.cgnet.in site, due to go online in early November. Shu says: " I am having huge difficulty with content in various different fonts in Hindi. My friend Sudhir Gore of India Today Delhi had sent me a TBIL converter from Microsoft which is working for few fonts. I also trying to work with Parivartan which came with the CD given by Govt of India. But I have not been able to make it work yet." Karunakar responds: I assume you are trying to convert texts composed in different fonts to Unicode, so what would be first needed is which fonts are those texts in. There exist few convertors There is one here, which converts to ISCII http://ltrc.iiit.net/showfile.php?filename=downloads/FC-1.0/fc.html http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/indlinux/ scripts/iscii2utf8.py?rev=1.2&view=log ISCII can be converted to utf-8 (the encoding in which you have to keep webpages) using the attached script. There is also more convertor scripts at http://www.indictrans.org/mapping/English/legecy_to_unicode.php (I am cc'ing to the developer Swapnil Hajare - he could help with specific issues). For info on using Hindi on internet read http://www.devanaagarii.net Typically if your users are sending content in lots of fonts, maybe better to identify a small set (5-6) fonts in which you could accept contributions in. Most of the above scripts are [GNU]Linux based, I guess we need to do a simple app. which can do the conversions without users having to fiddle with scripts (will try to get someone volunteer for that). Karunakar's links: * Work: http://www.indlinux.org * Blog: http://cartoonsoft.com/blog [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] NEWS FROM BELGAUM (NORTH KARNATAKA) Nitin Bilgi <nbbbgm(a)rediffmail.com> writes from GITLUG: "Hi Fred, We have not got in touch with you since long time. I saw you article in Linux For You October 2005 issue about the LUG and about Goa lug. We at GIT, as you know started the LUG in 2002 by me with dedicated students. In 2003 we conducted a meet which you attended. In 2004, there was a lull. In 2005, we have activated again with help of dedictaed student friends. On October 22, 2005 we conducted a one-day workshop on LAMP by Dr Satish Annigeri of BVB College Hubli. It was attended by nearly 200 participants. I will send ... details about our future events." Do keep in touch, Nitin and others. Also see this network for small GLUGs/LUGs/FSUGs in India http://groups.yahoo.com/group/little_league [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] BATTLEGROUND OF IDEAS: Battleground of ideas: FLOSS debate raises tempers at BytesForAll BytesForAll's mailing list[1] recently played host to a strong, and at times polemical, debate on proprietary-versus-FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software). In this debate, there were these couple of great posts here [2] and here [3], that put things neatly in perspective -- thanks to David Geilhufe who is co-founder of the SocialSourceFoundation.org [4] and Sunil Abraham of Mahiti.org [5]. It all started with a rather critical-of-FLOSS post by University of Manchester's Dr Richard Heeks [6] offering a link to an eDevelopment Briefing titled "Free and Open Source Software: A Blind Alley for Developing Countries?" [7]. It calls the 1980s shareware "FOSS forerunner" to have had "zero" impact, says data from Africa shows only five percent of computers "in developing countries" have any Open Source software running on them, and notes that proprietorial software dominates "even in Cuba... where the US embargo should make conditions highly propitious". Besides, the briefing says that "piracy" and the "limited size of initial purchase price within total cost of software ownership" there is actually no "evidence of FOSS delivering cost savings". Says the briefing: "In particular, proprietary software may not be open source but it is certainly free for the great majority of developing country users, thanks to piracy." It points to the lack of awareness of FOSS in Africa, and the lack of international links needed to be part of an "active, global community of like-minded developers". One early response to this brief text came from BytesForAll co-founder Frederick "FN" Noronha and is here for viewing [8]. It argues, "The "5% of computer systems" overlooks the role played by FLOSS in servers, in keeping the Internet running, in giving unprecedented access to developers of the Third World to take part in a global movement, and more." This study, argues this post, overlooks the potential of FLOSS in large 'developing' countries like India, China, Brazil and South Africa. It points to another study -- from Finland -- which it says is more open to the benefits of FLOSS in the "developing" world. See http://www.maailma.kaapeli.fi/FLOSSReport1.0.html FN also adds, "By saying 'proprietorial software is free' for the bulk of the 'developing' world, the study is guilty of both tolerating/encouraging the illegally copying of software ('piracy' is a loaded term, unfortunately accepted by academia too) and missing the essence of what Free Software is all about (offering the freedom to be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed). We are not fighting just for the right to remain 'pirates'...." Richard "RMS" Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation joining in the debate with these comments. [9] There was a longish debate on benchmarking FLOSS. Javier Sola, a Spanish-Chilean working on Khmer language localisation in Cambodia, added some interesting points [10]. Javier, who works with APC member the Open Forum of Cambodia, argues: "Academics should make sure that they look at all factors when they write something like this. In this case the author has not come even close to it. He has, among others, completelly ignored the power of localisation, diminished as "techies and amateurs" some of the people that have clearer ideas of what is needed for real migration and used anectdotal data for his conclusions." Sunil Abraham argues how proprietorial software could kill -- no exaggeration, due to its delays and restrictions -- in a post-Tsunami situation. He also argues that "because Sahana (a Free/Libre and Open Source Software project to cope with disasters) is FOSS, the earthquake stricken people from Pakistan and India don't have to spend money earmarked for food on software." Then, in an almost tongue-in-cheek Sunish manner, he argues that FLOSS "increases the responsiveness of an organisation. This is important whether it is peoples lives or greater profits." [11] David Geilhufe has this very interesting response to argue that FLOSS offers "viral diffusion" (to enable its uncontrolled spread, of course in a positive way), local control and lower barriers to entry. Well put, and very well argued. Here's [12] what David argues eloquently: "There is no religious war here, but I think the staunch defenders of proprietary code get stuck on analyzing the software... this isn't the important part. One needs to analyze the innovation and use of software... that, I believe, is where the real ICT impact lies." David's Social Source Foundation [13] is here. It is "a nonproft organization that exists to create open source, mission-focused technology for the nonprofit and NGO sector." Another link is the OpenNGO.org [14] network. OpenNGO calls itself "an open source project to create a set of web-based tools designed to meet the needs of small U.S. nonprofit organizations and non-governmental organizations across the globe." Meanwhile, another strong debate continued at the Global Knowledge for Development mailing-list, visible at the archives here [15]. Some supported Heeks views, while others said academia was missing the point on FLOSS. Said Mark Davies (mark(a)busylab.com): "As an African business, and as an African software development business, I still don't get it. There's so much enthusiasm for FOSS, there's so much conference mind-share spent on this topic, and yet I don't see an illuminating discussion about the opportunities for risk/reward for people like us." [16] After facing a lot of counterpoints, Heeks responded: "You can read this message in two ways: either that FOSS will never deliver; or that the FOSS community needs to rethink its strategies. Or, of course, if you've devoted months or years to FOSS and don't like the message, you'll try to denigrate the writer, deny the data, and so forth." [17] Klaus Stoll the president of Fundacion Chasquinet [18] in Quito, Ecuador also swam against the tide. He wrote: "...yes, my organization Chasquinet Foundation works with Microsoft and yes it is the same organization that produced and published the Open Source tollbox for Telecenters in Latin America [19] and yes we have as a policy in our organization that people should have a right to choose. What counts for us here at the grassroots are real ICT tools for Development, be they open source or otherwise, what counts is if they make a real positive impact in improving peoples lives." African NGO Kaibassa argued here[20]: "We at Kabissa have a very practical orientation and don't really push Open Source in our trainings or through our services and Web site unless it's just staring in our faces as just plain better. Open Source Content Management Systems and other server-based tools and desktop applications like Firefox and Thunderbird spring straight to mind. In the meantime, I hope you and other software developers in Africa are aware of and considering attending Africa Source II." But one key perspective came from Richard "RMS" Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation [21]. He commented: "The choice between free (freedom-respecting) and proprietary (user-subjugating) software is not a technical choice. It is an ethical and political issue about people's freedom. To be neutral on issues that merely concern technology is fine. To be neutral on ethical and political issues about freedom is nothing to be proud of." [1] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers [2] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6855 [3] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6849 [4] http://www.socialsourcefoundation.org/ [5] http://www.mahiti.org/ [6] mzdid10(a)fs1.ec.man.ac.uk [7] http://www.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/dig/briefings.htm [8] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6769 [9] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6794 [10] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6775 [11] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6848 [12] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6855 [13] http://www.socialsourcefoundation.org/ [14] http://www.openngo.org/ [15] http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/2005/Oct/ [16] http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/2005/Oct/0321.html [17] http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/2005/Oct/0319.html [18] http://www.chasquinet.org [19] http://tele-centros.org/tc-toolkit2.0/ [20] http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/2005/Oct/0334.html [21] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6837 Copyleft -- verbatim copying, with credits -- allowed/encouraged. We invite you to join ILUG-Goa, the friendly GNU/Linux user group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa/join

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An interesting quote...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 27 Oct '05

27 Oct '05

Seen on a mailing list: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR200510260… The following excerpt is from the article above: "Chairman Bill Gates said on Wednesday the software giant faced growing competition from companies in China and India but, for now, the strength in those countries lies in software services. Gates, on his first visit to Israel, said Israeli companies would also confront increased competition from China and India. "There will be competitors for Microsoft and for Israeli companies coming out of those countries although today the success, particularly in India, has mostly been in the software services area, outsourcing work, doing call centers and things like that," Gates told a news conference."

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Computers Alone Can't Bridge Digital Gap (Inter Press Service)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 26 Oct '05

26 Oct '05

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=30658 Computers Alone Can't Bridge Digital Gap Marcela Valente BUENOS AIRES, Oct 17 (IPS) - "With these three computers and Internet access, it's as if we could reach up and touch the sky," exclaimed Analía Bonesso, the principal and teacher of all eight grades in a rural primary school in Argentina with no telephone, no radio, and only 14 students. Tomás Espora primary school is in Campo Durango in the province of Santa Fe, some 400 km northwest of Buenos Aires. This former dairy farming region has now been taken over by soybean plantations, and the school's students are the children of migrant farmers who travel from one source of work to another, Bonesso explained to IPS. Since 2002, the school has formed part of a network of 17 rural schools located throughout Argentina that have been provided with computer equipment and a broadband or satellite Internet hook-up though the Ministry of Education's Educ.ar Programme. The programme is also meant to encompass training and technical support, although certain shortcomings come to light during the interview with Bonesso. She said that she had learned to use the computers "partly on my own and partly with the help of friends." And while everyone at the school uses the equipment "to read the news and search for information," e-mail is used only by the staff, not the students, because "they don't have any relatives to write to," said Bonesso. "Don't they connect with children in other schools?" asked IPS. "Yes, sometimes, and I try to get them to write e-mails to the relatives that some of them have in other parts of the country," she responded. The unbridged distance between the provision of equipment and genuine assimilation of these new technologies on the part of the programme's beneficiaries is regularly stressed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to close the digital gap by familiarising the poor, excluded sectors of society with the latest information and communications tools. The problem is not limited to isolated rural schools. In the city of Buenos Aires, there are primary schools that are well equipped with computers, but the teachers do not know how to use them. "The parents decided to put up the money to hire a computer teacher who goes to the school twice a week," Silvina Márquez, the mother of a student at one of these schools, told IPS. This is what happens when the equipment "comes as manna", without the needed preliminary groundwork. "The state and private sector work hard to provide computers and Internet access, but the challenge that remains unfulfilled is for the community to feel a sense of 'ownership' of the equipment and to use it to meet their needs," Angélica Abdallah, director of the Argentine Telework Association, commented to IPS. A survey conducted by the software giant Microsoft found that almost eight million people in Argentina, a country of 37 million, regularly surf the Internet and use e-mail, a higher proportion than the majority of Latin American countries. However, the use of this technology is overwhelmingly concentrated in the country's cities. In Buenos Aires and its outskirts alone there are roughly 9,000 cybercafes with more than 52,000 computers connected to the Internet, according to the same survey, carried out in 2004. While some are privately owned and others are run by telephone companies, the affordable rates they charge have made Internet use a widespread phenomenon in urban areas. Another survey, conducted this year by the Argentine newspaper Clarín and the market research firm D'Alessio IROL, revealed that 60 percent of Internet users go online in cybercafes, 41 percent in their own homes, 14 percent at work, and a mere three percent in educational facilities at every level, including public and private universities. It is this last category that is key to expanding access in impoverished sectors of society. As part of the process leading up to the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), taking place Nov. 16-18 in Tunisia, the governments of Latin America have pledged to double the current number of schools, libraries and community centres hooked up to the Internet by the year 2007. The Argentine government of centre-left President Néstor Kirchner, who took office in May 2003, has placed heavy emphasis on the provision of the needed equipment. In addition to ensuring that schools in slum neighbourhoods are connected to the Internet, the Ministry of Education launched a National Digital Literacy Campaign this year, which will distribute 100,000 computers to 12,000 schools. Laura Serra, director of projects for the Educ.ar programme, admitted to IPS that difficulties have been detected in the schools that make up the network, and that efforts are being made to resolve them. The main focus now, she added, is on the digital literacy campaign, which will include curriculum content and training for the teachers involved. "What is needed to reduce the digital gap is to work on all aspects at the same time," stressed Serra. "It's not enough to simply hand out computers and Internet connection, without training or course content." So far, half of the computers to be provided through the programme have arrived in the schools, while the remainder will be distributed by the end of next year. To ensure the necessary training, the ministry has signed an agreement with the country's public universities, which will offer courses on classroom use of new information technologies to some 15,000 primary and secondary school teachers. The Kirchner administration also continues to sponsor another project that was enthusiastically launched in the late 1990s but has only partially survived, namely the Community Technological Centres (CTCs), which are funded by the Communications Secretariat of the Ministry of Federal Planning, Public Investment and Services. There are 1,350 CTCs throughout the country, which the state has supplied with both computer equipment and training for technical and teaching staff. The host institutions include schools, churches, libraries, fire halls, municipal authorities and NGOs. In the case of the CTCs, the state pays for Internet access with a monthly limit on connection time. But once again, the success or failure of this initiative does not depend solely on the technology implemented or the bandwidth used. "In order for the CTCs to have an impact on the community, people have to be trained to properly manage them, to ensure that they remain sustainable in the long term," said Abdallah. Serra, for her part, commented, "What is a centre good for if it can no longer acquire paper or printer cartridges?" Similar concerns are voiced by Nodo Tau, an NGO founded to train social organisations, including trade unions and schools, in the use of new information technologies like the Internet. "In order for this technology to be used, it is essential to provide training, create networks among organisations, and promote access for the most marginalised sectors as well," Nodo Tau training coordinator Carolina Fernández commented to IPS. Nodo Tau and other civil society groups have promoted the establishment of community computer facilities or "telecentres" in social organisations, and some of these have joined with the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organisation) network of free telecentres, which promote the recycling of computer equipment and work with free or open-source software. "We reach out to entrepreneurs and professionals to try to get them to use the telecentre as a tool for marketing their products and services," noted Abdallah. "We also want to generate demand in the private sector for the services that could be offered by the telecentre, in order to make it sustainable," she added. But in order for this to be viable, there is a need to "train people to manage." Abdallah stressed that instead of waiting for technology to "come from above," work should be done at the grassroots level, listening to the needs of the community and providing training for the appropriate use of technology. Nodo Tau has supported the creation of seven telecentres that offer services at an extremely low cost in social organisations. "There are users of all ages, but mainly adults who are uncomfortable with the modern aesthetics of cybercafes," said Fernández. Fernández believes that the digital gap is not isolated from the other social, cultural and economic gaps typical of a developing country. "In order to bridge this gap, the solution does not lie in the acquisition of equipment, but rather in the assimilation of this tool by the members of the community, since this is the way to ensure that its use will contribute to transforming reality," she said. (END/2005)

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Need partners to emulate success
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 26 Oct '05

26 Oct '05

Friends, After the roaring success in introducing researchers, faculty and staff to the philosophy and practise of GNU systems at School of Social Sciences, MG University (thanks to Dr V Sasi Kumar, CESS) its now the turn of the Mahatma Gandhi University. Dr Rajan Gurukkal, Director, School of Social Sciences, after holding discussions with the Vice Chancellor, is requesting help for training the staff at the University Campus to embrace Free Software. This time we need more concrete help. Dr Sasi, how do we proceed ? CK Raju, Thrissur

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 30, Issue 21
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 26 Oct '05

26 Oct '05

That's a nice idea. I think Foss.in will be calling for community participation, and we should be ready for that when it happens. ILUGGoa would like to participate too. We have picked up a lot of members from outside Goa and would like to grow by building awareness about our activities. More techies should get a chance to discuss the politics of proprietorial and Free Software. FN On Tue, 2005-10-25 at 06:03 -0400, fsf-friends-request(a)mm.gnu.org.in wrote: > I am NOT in favor of giving out free cds - mainly because the > freeloaders will have a free day. Maybe we can sell the complete > Debian > DVDs (testing/stable/unstable)

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GNU/Linux workshop, Crescent Engineering College
by Shakthi Kannan 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Greetings! I would like to thank Prof. Raja Prabhu, Prof. Bhaskar, Krishnaswamy (EEE), Prasanna (EEE) et. al. of Crescent Engineering College, Chennai for the opportunity to conduct a GNU/Linux workshop for their IEEE Chapter on Saturday, October 22, 2005 at their college premises. The workshop had two sessions: 1. Alliance VLSI CAD Tools with GNU/Linux. You can check out the simple code examples for VHDL programming from here: http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/embedded-howto/ The session was meant to get students started on VHDL and on introducing them to Alliance VLSI CAD tools. http://www-asim.lip6.fr/recherche/alliance/ 2. Embedded GNU/Linux Labs HOWTO: This presentation is on how to get started on setting up GNU/Linux labs for embedded, hardware and VLSI. The presentation is available from: http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/embedded-howto/ I'll send the link for the photos after I upload them. Regards, SK -- Shakthi Kannan, MS Software Engineer, Specsoft (Hexaware Technologies) [E]: cyborg4k(a)yahoo.com [M]: (91) 98407-87007 [W]: http://www.shakthimaan.com [L]: Chennai, India __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

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FOSS.IN invited speakers list
by प्रव ीण् ए (Praveen A) 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

All: I imagine that some of you would be interested in hearing about some of the speakers who will be coming to FOSS.IN/2005 <http://FOSS.IN/2005>, from far away shores. :) So here are a few, and over the next few days, more will be revealed. ------ Many people have an impact on their chosen field in a singular manner - typically through a specific project, or a specific direction. It is rare for someone to be known for two completely different things within the same field. Our first speaker, however, has managed to do just that. He is the co-author of what could probably be called "The Bible of Linux Development", in which he uses his keen knowledge of the Linux kernel and its design to show people how to develop device drivers. No one in India would even *think* of trying this without referring to his book, now in the third edition. He is also the editor of the world's most respected FOSS publication to be found online - the one place where *everyone* goes to read unbiased news, reviews and commentary about the FOSS world. Our first visiting speaker is Jonathan Corbet, co-author of "Linux Device Drivers", and editor of LWN.NET <http://LWN.NET>, aka "Linux Weekly News". ------ Last year, he came to LB/2004, bringing with him not only the development knowledge of FOSS projects he himself is deeply involved in, but his keen sense of direction when it comes to enterprise-wide deployment of FOSS solutions. He also brought with him an ocean of experience related to the creation of events for the community, having himself helped bring to life one of the most famous of them all. >From Linux Australia, we have Andrew Cowie. ------- Targetting the honorary position of "LB veteran", he will be in India for the THIRD consequitive time, to participate in our event. His code safeguards millions of networks across the world, and can be found in virtually every consumer router these days. And when he isn't writing code, he makes the world a safer place for the GPL, by relentlessly tracking down and exposing corporations who "don't get it" when they use GPL'd code without following the rules of the game, and provided the first precedent of the GPL standing up in court - and winning. >From Germany comes the chairman of the netfilter/iptables project, and the man behind GPLviolations.org - Harald Welte. ------- He was Linux Bangalore's first "star speaker" back in 2001. He is heavily involved in not just FOSS, but free culture as well. He is the organiser of one of Europe's most respected FOSS & Free Culture events, and when he calls, people like Larry Lessig and Eben Moglen heed his call. He speaks Japanese, German, English and a variety of other languages, but most importantly speaks Geek as well. He had a knoppix CD before people knew what that was, and can lie in the sun for hours without getting a tan or a sunburn. He is Mr.Wizards-of-OS - Volker Grassmuck. (watch out for a related announcement) ------- Everytime you go to the web to access information, you are using technology that this man has had his eager fingers in. His work is one of the first instances of a FOSS project almost completely demolishing the proprietary competition, and is used in a majority of all webservers across the Internet. He also is a shining example of how FOSS does not have to mean charity - as a successful implementor of FOSS technologies in the creation of a a successful business, he has shown the way to many who aspire to do the same in the future. The man behind the Apache project, COLLAB.NET <http://COLLAB.NET>'s Brian Behlendorf. ------- He started off writing something to make it easier to maintain his personal home pages, and ended up changing the way the world created websites. He can be blamed for the ANSI92 SQL-defying LIMIT clause in mSQL 1.x which has now, at least conceptually, crept into both MySQL and PostgreSQL. He has been to India before, and his fondest memories have been the complete lack of Internet connectivity at Linux Bangalore/2003. :) He is Mr.PHP - Rasmus Lerdorf. ------- When she speaks, people sit up and listen. She was behind the open sourcing of the project that today gives FOSS a place in every office and in every home, and is also part of the organisation that decides what's Open Source, and what is not - literally. But she is also known as a relentless fighter for the cause of FOSS, and especially for the smarter half of humanity. She is no stranger to India, having been here often enough to be treated as a native, and she is a staunch supporter of India as a future FOSS world power. The Diva of Open Source - Danese Cooper. -------- As one of the world's best known bloggers, he has played a vital role in getting his highly influential organisation to play nice with FOSS. He loves to dabble with things ranging from Linux servers, databases, to PCs, gliders and now powered aeroplanes. He has been here before, and many people treasure the T-Shirts that he autographed for them. He has the ear of both the hacker and the corporate world, and spends considerable amount of time telling each world about the other. He is Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny. -------- The world of sound and music is a fascinating one, and there has always been a deep connection between code-hacking geeks and music. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that a lot of effort goes into making FOSS platforms "music compatible" - not just in the playback department, but in the music creation and recording department. For many years now, our next speaker has been behind both the documentation and the actual creation of FOSS-based music software. As a regular columnist of Linux Journal, as well as a contributor to many aspects of the field of FOSS based Music creation and recording, many people use his work every day without even realising it. The man behind Linux Sound and Audio - Dave Phillips. ----- Oh, and one more thing.... . . . . . . . . . . He is probably one of the most recognisable faces in the FOSS world, and at the same time one of the most respected names, as well. His contributions to Linux rank with those of all the greats out there, and that includes Linus Torvalds. He has been the official kernel maintainer, and little happens in the Linux kernel today without him having some say in it. He is an outspoken critic of the DMCA, and has vowed not to set a foot on the USA as long as it exists. He is the king of his castle, and has his wife's permission to say so. Conferences and events in India have tried for the past half decade to have him come here, but FOSS.IN/2005 <http://FOSS.IN/2005> is the first one he has ever agreed to come to. He is Alan Cox. (stay tuned for more in a day or two) Read the original message<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/linux-bangalore-non-tech/message/5697> -- "GNU is the system, and Linux is the kernel." A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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FOSS.IN is here - Are you IN?
by Guntupalli Karunakar 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Hi all, Heads-up for anyone interested in Free & Open Source Software, FOSS.IN is here. FOSS.IN/2005 (the successor to the well known Linux Bangalore conferences) is from November 29th to December 2nd, at the Bangalore Palace in Bangalore, India. This is India's biggest FOSS conference. If you want to know more, check out http://foss.in/2005 Imp: Last day for speaker registration is 8th October 2005, till midnight IST! So hurry. FOSS.IN/2005 is a community-oriented event. For it to be successful, it needs to reach the people who would benefit the most from it, and help in increasing the tribe of contributors and users of Free & Open Source Software. The four day conference intends to bring together the entire cross section of players in the FOSS scenario - users from different target communities, technologists, developers, educationists, businesses as well as policy makers. The theme for this year's conference is "Conversations". On the FOSS horizon, there are several efforts that are represented or addressed across the country. In, parallel, there are various technical discussions and dialogues that have happened at the earlier conferences and meetings and are expected to happen at this conference too. At FOSS.IN/2005, the focus would be to catalyze mutually beneficial interaction between the technologists and technology implementers (FOSS developers) and the end users, policy makers, educationists and industry. This focus would be in addition to the intent of enabling technology knowledge dissemination across the community through talks and/or demonstrations. The call for participations has been out for quite some time now. You can see the Call for participation @ http://foss.in/2005/cfp/ A list of possible topics is available at http://foss.in/2005/topics/ If you would like to give a talk, tutorial, do a workshop or organize a Birds of Feather session, then register it at the earliest. Imp: Last day for speaker registration is 8th October 2005, till midnight IST! So hurry. To register as a speaker visit http://foss.in/2005/speakers/ Giving a talk for first time? Do read do's & don'ts compiled by past speaker experiences http://foss.in/2005/guides/speakers.php If you are planning to speak or attend (or even if you cant attend due to reasons beyond your control), you can help getting the word out in a variety of ways: eg. talking about it friends, colleagues, clients etc, putting it up on your blog if are planning to speak or attend, putting up posters about the event at your school/college/organization etc. See http://foss.in/2005/promote/ on ways to promote it. If you are part of a LUG/GLUG/FSUG etc post on your mailing lists about this event, especially if you stay in south. Also keep a watch on http://linux-bangalore.org/2005/wiki/index.php/Community_Issues where we would be planning for some pre-event activities where we welcome participation of all FOSS communities. Primary action items being conducting a web-survey of FOSS usage in India in academic and business environment. And also on mapping the FOSS movement in India. More on this in a future mail. So are you IN? Karunakar -- ************************************* * Work: http://www.indlinux.org * * Blog: http://cartoonsoft.com/blog * *************************************

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Fwd: [fredpook@gmail.com: electronics expert volunteer needed]
by Nagarjuna G. 23 Oct '05

23 Oct '05

Fred is looking for a hardware hacker to fix some problem for a free wireless infrastructure developement, any one can find a solution? Write to fred if you need further information, with a cc to me. Nagarjuna ----- Forwarded message from Fred Pook <fredpook(a)gmail.com> ----- > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 13:54:33 +0200 > From: Fred Pook <fredpook(a)gmail.com> > Subject: electronics expert volunteer needed > To: Arun Mehta <arunlists(a)softhome.net>, nagarjun(a)gnowledge.org > > Hi Arun and Nagarjuna, > How are you today? > Since we are allowed to use 1 Watt RF output on the 2.4 Ghz frequency in > India. And most Wi-Fi consumer products that we are using only output about > 80mW, I went on a search for a low-cost RF amplifier. I found: > http://www.fairchildsemi.com/news/2004/0407/rmpa2455.html > chosen by broadcom (the producer of the chipset used in WRT54G and Asus) as > the basis of an 2.4Ghz amplifier. So being Dutch and bold I just went on an > ordered 10 of them here: > http://www.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?KeywordSearch?Keywords=RM… > to my surprise they arrived with no problem. > Now this IC is very small 3 X 3mm with 16 tiny surface mounting contacts > and it needs some supporting capacitors etc all describe in the datasheet > here: > http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ds/RM/RMPA2455.pdf > Do you know any electronics hackers in India who can put this together for > us? And how to get these tiny little IC's to him? > To have some extra RF output will make our wireless life a lot easier since > we don't have to worry to much about cable and plug loss and it can keep the > design of the antenna much smaller and lower-cost. Now higher output doesn't > solve every problem on long range Wi-Fi connections (fresnel zone clearance > is the big one) but it did wonders for the Djursland project after they got > 1Watt 802.11a equipment. > OK, so much for now, > hope to see you soon, > Fred ----- End forwarded message -----

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[Fwd: [Fwd: Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolic]]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 23 Oct '05

23 Oct '05

-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Sunil Abraham <sunil(a)mahiti.org> Reply-To: sunil(a)mahiti.org To: asiasource-l <asiasource-l(a)lists.tacticaltech.org> Subject: [Asiasource-l] Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolicII Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:04:24 +0530 Dear Sourcers, Some exciting news from Jaromil. Thanks, Sunil http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1693674882;fp;16;fpid;0 Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolicII Dahna McConnachie 21/10/2005 08:58:34 Multimedia producers and artists will have the power to fully customise their own tailored GNU/Linux environment on a bootable CD with the release of Dyne:bolicII by the end of the year. That is the aim of core developer, Jaromil, who says the new system will give users unprecedented flexibility and control. Aimed at multimedia producers, artists, activists, and content creators, the Dyne:bolic multimedia platform on a bootable CD offers a vast range of software for multimedia production, streaming, 3-D modelling, photo editing, Web browsing and publishing, peer-to-peer file sharing, and networking. It also includes games and a world navigator. Dyne:bolic is capable of automatic clustering - joining the CPU power between any other Dyne:bolic on the local network. It can recognise a variety of hardware devices (sound, video, FireWire, and USB) and works on several types of machines from Windows through to "modded" Xbox consoles. Jaromil says the main addition to version two, currently in beta, is that it will include all the compiler tools required in order to modify it. "So far live meant demo, now live really means live, so you'll be able to adapt your own version of the live CD wherever you want," he said. "You can boot a RW CD, copy a directory on the hard disk, modify its contents and burn it back, without repartitioning anything, to have a Dyne:II system customised for your needs. You can install things from almost any available binary packages (deb, rpm, tgz), plus with new systems like Zero Install and Autopackage." Dyne:bolicII will also have additional modules that you can drop into a directory before booting, with collections of more software not included in the core. Other changes include increased security for user interaction, the ability to write modifications in the "usr", advanced thin client functionality and modular design to be easily combined with other software. "It's also faster than the previous version, taking full advantage of most recent developments in desktop technology for GNU/Linux," said Jaromil. There are many differences between Dyne:bolic and distros like Ubuntu and SuSE, according to Jaromil. "The differences exist from the ergonomic design, to the focus on providing a desktop environment, to the special dyne functionalities of docking and nesting which lets you run the system from the hard disk and have your data stored without the need to repartition anything," he said. Other differences, he said, included all scripts being rewritten from scratch, hardware recognition is not the same and there are no big frameworks like Gnome or KDE being used. "They consume too many resources for a desktop that runs on a Pentium 1 with 64MB of RAM," said Jaromil. "In fact one of the focuses I kept with dyne is keeping requirements low. I think this is an important ecological issue, by looking at the quantity of hardware waste produced nowadays and the consumerist rush that is pushing it." Other than occasional small donations, Dyne:bolic is not yet funded, but by the end of the year, Dyne.org will be registered as an official foundation valid in Europe. "[Though we are] starting with no money, we have a lot of ideas and software that works already, so we might find a good sustainable situation," said Jaromil. "But it's way better to have people liking your activity, knowing your story, than to be a billionaire donating more cash than you can spend to make a branded product out of your software." Avid Linux user Tom Russell, who has written a generic version on customising Dyne 1.4, said the new version of Dyne was "geek heaven" and definitely worth downloading. To use a stable version of Dyne:bolic go here: www.dynebolic.org. To get involved in the beta of Dyne:bolicII go here: http://dev.dynebolic.org Alternatively, for something different, going to Russell's How To page explains how to http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/14628.html customise Dyne 1.4 to run his 'SCOOL application from a bootable CD. "I had to rewrite 'SCOOL a bit to suit the squash module approach," he said. "This actually only involved changing some shell script variable assignments and changing the Runtime Revolution transcript for the same reason, as it originally resided in $HOME. Now it can support multiple users on the same system, which is a much better approach."

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Re Re: [Fsf-friends] Brand Ambassador of Microsoft Inc
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 22 Oct '05

22 Oct '05

>Would beautiful hard bound books and cool looking CD's compensate for good course contents. >I would rate the Shiksha Abhiyan by MS -10 on a scale of 1 to 10 As on date we are aware that most (80%) of the world's critical software(s) are being developed in a free and open source environment which is showing a steady upward trend. This is also a site where everyone can contribute and participate, nowhere restricted. Microsoft, however prefers to stick to the techniques deployed by the weakening 20%, often abusing the legal (through patents, restrictive copyrights) and political framework (through tie-ups with governments) to assist its functioning. This is sure a serious attempt to take the present and future technologists and their service-users to an intellectually dark stone-age. In any ethical dimension, its evident that faced with a choice, embracing the one where many can participate, would be very obvious, because of the non-antagonising face that it shows. On this account, Microsoft comes a total cropper. The existing presence of Microsoft is largely due to the unholy nexus with bureaucracy, which will soon have a natural death, because of the immense challenge that the corporate throws at the Indian school-teaching community, which is by far the best in this world. Shiksha Abhiyan, a gloomy project, thus is doomed to darkness, where the contribution of Microsoft will indeed be 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. CK Raju Thrissur

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FSFE: Early comment on new Microsoft Shared Source Licenses
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 22 Oct '05

22 Oct '05

Would you believe this? FN -------- Forwarded Message -------- To: press-release(a)fsfeurope.org Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] Early comment on new Microsoft Shared Source Licenses Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 13:44:07 -0200 [for immediate release] FSFE: Early comment on new Microsoft Shared Source Licenses "Since we so rarely have opportunity to say something positive about Microsoft, let me begin by congratulating them", says Georg Greve, president of Free Software Foundation Europe. "Microsoft finally seems to have made a step forward on their long march towards giving their users freedom: of the five licenses published, our cursory first analysis suggests that two of them indeed fulfill the Free Software Definition." According to FSFEs first glance, the "Microsoft Permissive License" (Ms-PL) and "Microsoft Community License" (Ms-CL) both appear to satisfy the four freedoms that define Free Software. In particular: The Ms-CL also appears to implement a variation of the Copyleft idea, which was first implemented by the GNU General Public License (GPL). Given previous Microsoft statements about the Copyleft approach and in particular the GNU GPL as 'viral', 'cancerous' and 'communist', seeing Microsoft now publish licenses applying the very same principles seems quite an evolution. Naturally, it is not the publication of licenses, but the publication of software under a Free Software license, that gives people freedom: It is indeed not very useful if every company, administration or author publishes their own license; so it would have been preferrable if Microsoft had made the decision to use the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Lesser General Public License (LGPL) for its Shared Source program. Far more than 50% of Free Software worldwide is published under these licenses, they are very well-known and people trust them for good reason. "Microsoft has walked a mile and is now standing mere inches from the GNU (L)GPL: We fully understand that Microsoft is first trying to get the nail of its little toe wet in the Free Software community, and we welcome that," continues Greve. "But in the course of time we would prefer to see Microsoft join the large global community of commercial GNU (L)GPL vendors." "For now it will be good if Microsoft starts relicensing its portfolio under the Ms-PL or Ms-CL; but we still have to warn people to be careful about the 'Shared Source' label and look at the specific licenses: The other three licenses of the Shared Source program are clearly proprietary and obviously do not qualify as Free Software." Greve finishes. The Free Software Foundations will need more time to study all these licenses and their interactions with other licenses in depth, so this is not a final evaluation -- and the final evaluation may as well reveal problems that were not visible at first sight. Microsoft still has a long way to go, but for now it seems they made a step in the right direction, and the Free Software Foundation Europe hopes they will keep it up. About the Free Software Foundation Europe: The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), founded 2001, is a charitable non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. The the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition - allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. Further information about FSFE's work can be found at http://fsfeurope.org, get active yourself at http://fsfeurope.org/contribute/. _______________________________________________ Press-release mailing list Press-release(a)fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release

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[Fwd: Blogging, Sri Lanka... and Pakistan]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 21 Oct '05

21 Oct '05

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/sanjiva October 16, 2005 Sahana and Pakistan By sanjiva Chamindra and Bud left a few hours ago for Pakistan - they are probably in Karachi by now. Over the weekend we worked out what was suitable to be recommended for use in Pakistan from the old Sahana project; see http://www.linux.lk/~chamindra/docs/Sahana-Pakistan.pdf for details. We're being careful not to over-promise anything. Thanks to Ajith Ranabahu, one of the folks who did a lot of work on the Java parts of Sahana I, Eran Chinthaka, and Sudheera Fernando, one of the developers of Sahana II as well as Chamindra and Bud of course, for pulling a marathon weekend effort to get it all ready to go. In the last second, we had apparently screwed something up while copying it over to the notebook that was going .. luckily Ajith (who was on his way to his hometown Kuliyapitiya to spend the now half-spent long weekend by then) managed to pull over to the side and found the problem! If they decide to use it we have to pull together a quick volunteer effort to localize it a bit more and to harden a few weak spots. I don't expect we'll have any difficulty finding folks to help! Yesterday for the first time I had a glimpse at Sahana II. Wow, that's looking really solid .. its too bad its not ready yet! However, the data can be migrated from the old version. As soon as Sahana II comes a bit more of age we'll host it on a public place for people to play with it. * Posted on: Sun, Oct 16 2005 11:56 PM October 13, 2005 Sahana and Pakistan By sanjiva Some of you may recall the disaster management system called Sahana we started building immediately after the tsunami. As I have blogged earlier taht is currently being re-done to be a totally globally reusable disaster management system. As everyone knows Pakistan is currently suffering from a disaster that is probably not second to the tsunami in terms of human impact. I cannot begin to imagine how painful it must be for those people. My heart goes out to them. We've been asked by a couple of groups in Pakistan to come over and try to help get Sahana deployed and going to assist in their response. I'm proud to say that Chamindra de Silva and Bud Siddhisena have agreed to go and see what they can do! They're heading off ASAP and hope to be back in a week or so. However, I have to note that unlike many people who tried to push imaginery software on us during the tsunami, we are not going to push very hard, even though Sahana can be really helpful to them. Hoever, if they don't want to bite we will back off! Good luck to Chamindra and Bud; safe travels! http://budlite.blogspot.com/ Pakistan meets Sahana We managed to catch an early flight at 5AM as opposed to the originally booked 7AM one and make it to the hotel early on. Though we made it to the hotel earlier, Murphy would have us wait for about another hour before we could see the rooms. Nevertheless after seeing the 60 inch plasma TV equipped with 70 odd cable channels, there weren't any hard feelings. The room at the Marriott is very nice and relaxing to be in. After a very short nap, we were escorted to the IBM office, where we met a lot of new faces. Chamindra presented the current Sahana system and I showed a working demo off one of the notebooks we brought with us. As soon as that meeting was over, we all rushed over to the Priminister's secretariat, which is a massive palace like building just a few meter's off IBM headquarters. There were several high ranked Army officers to whom we (IBM/LSF) demoed the system and offered other templates and consultancy services Our presentation was taken quite positively by the officials, and they even offered to take the two leading guys from the Emergency Crisis Team on a chopper to see the disaster area. Later in the evening, quite happy with the day's progress, Asif who is one of the IBMers, took us out to Pizza Hut to initiate eating after fasting all day. We took the special "All you can eat" offer that's happening these days due to the Ramadan season. I must say the quality of the Pizza was better when compared to what you get in Sri Lanka. The day ended with some coffee and chitchat at a prominent Minister's residence about the current situation. There seems to be a lot of expectations from everyone to get the system operational ASAP. Hopefully all the elements will come together in the coming days. posted by Bud at 11:31 PM 0 comments Blogging from Pakistan I've just arrived at the Pakistan airport in Karachi, trying to kill some time till the next flight at 7AM. Even though my search for wireless networks through kismet came up with 2 unknown essid's that seem to be unencrypted, I wasn't about to go any further with trying to hack into it just so I can get this blog out on time. My self and Chamindra are in Pakistan on our way to Islamabad to help with the disaster efforts as a result of the Earth quake strike last week. No so much so by picking up shawals or buckets but by what we know best - Free & Opensource software. I only got to know about our need for the visit on Thursday, when IBM requested us to join their Emergency Crisis Management Team. If your wondering why us, then the simple answer is, for building the Sahana system in a very short time when the Tsunami hit. Unfortunately as we built it very quickly, within a week or so, its far from perfect when it comes to implementing for a world wide disaster solution. The good news is Sahana phase 2 is in full swing, and is being built by LSF as a generic system that can be use for just about any disaster. Unfotunately the new system is about 2-3 months away from being realized. That's where I come in -- as an architect (literally) of the old system :) Our mission is to demonstrate the system as a proposition to managing the current crisis in the hope that it can ease some of the chaos and disorder usually found in such a situation. Enough said about Sahana, my trip here was quite a company. Murphy seemed to have joined us along the way, following us secretly and popping up from time to time. From the setting up of the demo till the last minute to me loosing the ticket coupons while filling the embarkation to the tatty flight that a 1 hour stop over in Mumbai after circling the sky for about 20 minutes due to traffic! If that wasn't dizzy enough, we were forced to stay in the plane, while a cleaning crew tore plane apart. Which brings us to the present, sitting and blogging in an empty airport with another 5 hours to go. Well I just bought a book -- "The beautiful Mind", and if its anything like the movie then I'd guess it would be a real treat. Things can only get better.... posted by Bud at 2:30 AM 0 comments ________________________________________________________________________

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[Fwd: [Ilugc] Adelphi Charter]
by Ramanraj K 21 Oct '05

21 Oct '05

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Ilugc] Adelphi Charter Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:57:59 +0530 From: Sivasankar Chander <siva.ilugc(a)gmail.com> To: Indian Linux Users Group - Chennai <ilugc(a)ae.iitm.ac.in> Britain's Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), http://www.rsa.org.uk/ which is a venerable 250-year old institution, has issued the Adelphi Charter, drafted by numerous eminent personalities, including a Nobel Laureate and various legal luminaries, which links IP policy to public benefit: [Adelphi Charter] http://www.ipcharter.org/ [Commission Members] http://www.ipcharter.org/group.asp [Guardian] http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,9828,1591467,00.html [Economist] http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5032375 Among other things, it recommends a ban on the issue of software patents and business and medical process patents. -Siva _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email ilugc-request(a)ae.iitm.ac.in with "unsubscribe <password> <address>" in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc

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Help abolish software patents
by Nikhil Prabhakar 21 Oct '05

21 Oct '05

Hi all, *Luminaries are calling on Worldwide Community to vote against Software Patents.Plz help in abolishing software patents by voting online for *Florian Mueller, the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign. http://www.ag-ip-news.com/GetArticle.asp?Art_ID=2254&lang=en Regards Nikhil Prabhakar "Live Life Ethically" www.gnu.org/philosophy <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy>

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Brand Ambassador of Microsoft Inc
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 20 Oct '05

20 Oct '05

Friends, The sudden discovery of an ambassador in Minister Dayanidhi Maran by Microsoft Inc is not surprising in the wake of the much touted training of teachers in Tamil Nadu (a project whose sibling met with an untimely death in Kerala, thanks to efforts of a few volunteer activists). But what is surprising is to see the Minister shamelessly sitting atop foolish advertisements of the corporate telling us *what ought to be the right way to address digital divide*. Perhaps it would do a world of good if someone from Tamilnadu retold the story of Don Quixote to the Minister (in its 400th year of celebrations). CK Raju Thrissur ---------------- http://ernakulam.sancharnet.in/doxa

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Isn't it ironical?
by Nikhil Prabhakar 18 Oct '05

18 Oct '05

Hi All, Just now going through the web I reached a site ( http://www.linux-mag.com) which is supposed to promote GNU/Linux (or at least it seems to be ).I found M$ ads there which were telling people to believe that Windoze is more powerful. This has really disturbed me. What these so called Open Source guys trying to achieve? They are doing more harm to the community. The point I'm trying to prove here is that untill and unless you believe in the philosophy behind the free software movement you will achieve no good.It's like going one step forward and two step backwards. Expecting comments and suggestions. Regards Nikhil Prabhakar "Live Life Ethically" www.gnu.org/philosophy <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy>

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[Fsf-friends] Helping free software projects... with coding, servers, etc?
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

Kapil Karekar <kk(a)libretech.com> on the FSF-India mailing list was enquiring about the availability of any list of Indian Free Software projects which would like any kind of support -- in terms of coding, servers etc. He later found it at: http://fsf.org.in/free-software-directory/dir.html Check out the list and offer any support you can. FN PS: This is an invite to Free Software enthusiasts to build links with the ITforDevelopment network, one of which is out at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers -- ------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | fred(a)bytesforall.org Co-Founder, BytesForAll.org | http://fn.swiki.net Goa, India | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436 -------------------------------------------------------------

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[Photos] GNU/Linux workshop for NGOs
by Shakthi Kannan 16 Oct '05

16 Oct '05

Greetings! ILUGC (www.chennailug.org/wiki) in collaboration with CIOSA (http://www.ciosa.org.in/) organized a GNU/Linux workshop for NGOs on Sunday, October 16, 2005 at Ma Foi Academy, Chennai. It was an introductory session on free software, openoffice, desktop applications, Internet applications, multimedia on GNU/Linux. Thanks to Prasanna (CIOSA) for taking the initiative, Asokan Pichai (Ma Foi) for providing us with the facilites at Ma Foi, Vamsee Kanakala (Ma Foi) for coordinating the events. Thanks also goes to ilugc volunteers Bharathi, Raman, Hariram, Sudharshan, Ramanathan et. al. You can check out the photos (twenty-seven) taken during the workshop from: http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/album19 Regards, SK -- Shakthi Kannan, MS Software Engineer, Specsoft (Hexaware Technologies) [E]: cyborg4k(a)yahoo.com [M]: (91) 98407-87007 [W]: http://www.shakthimaan.com [L]: Chennai, India __________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/

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[Photos] [GLV] RSS, Atom with GNU/Linux
by Shakthi Kannan 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

Greetings! Thanks to Ramkumar, CSD, IIT-M who gave a talk on "RSS, Atom with GNU/Linux" on Saturday, October 15, 2005 at Ma Foi Academy, Chennai. You can check out the photos taken during the presentation from here: http://www.shakthimaan.com/Mambo/gallery/album18 Regards, SK -- Shakthi Kannan, MS Software Engineer, Specsoft (Hexaware Technologies) [E]: cyborg4k(a)yahoo.com [M]: (91) 98407-87007 [W]: http://www.shakthimaan.com [L]: Chennai, India __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com

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debian cds
by Srijit Sreekumar 15 Oct '05

15 Oct '05

is there any place in trivandrum where i can get debian dvds of woody & sarge? -- Srijit srijit(a)gmail.com siju333(a)gmx.net Advanced Member at www.myasianet.com <http://www.myasianet.com>

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South Asia Quake Help - Asterisk Server needed
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Thanks to Irfan Khan <khania(a)super.net.pk> and Kris Dev for forwarding this... FN -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [LinuxPakistan] South Asia Quake Help - Asterisk Server needed Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 00:12:53 -0500 From: Tariq <tariq(a)linuxpakistan.net> To: general(a)linuxpakistan.net Request for help from quakehelp_AT_gmail_DOT_com. Please Help!!! Hello, As part of the South Asia Quake Help Blog (http://quakehelp.blogspot.com) & Wiki efforts, we are trying to setup a SMS2Web/Web2SMS system in Pakistan/India (affected areas). As has been in other recent disasters, SMS seems to be the only available communication means in the affected areas. This system if setup could be used by relief workers, affected people and other volunteers to exchange important information about their relief needs, situation reports etc. Major Relief Agencies have shown interest in such a system. We have been trying for the last 72 hours or so with little success. We are looking Asterisk (Open Source IP PBX) Linux Servers, some Asterisk Hardware and a few phone lines in Pakistan or India. More detailed information on what's needed is available here: http://quakehelp.blogspot.com/2005/10/urgently-needed-asterisk-linux-server… As an Asterisk/Lunx tech user in Pakistan, we thought you might be able to help us with this relief effort. We found your contact information here: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/cu-wireless-dev/2005-May/000488.h… Looking forward to hearing back from you. Thanks in advance, Bala Pitchandi & Angelo Embuldeniya -- The QuakeHelp Team http://quakehelp.blogspot.com Our Other Online Projects: http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com http://katrinahelp.blogspot.com http://ritahelp.blogspot.com http://quakehelp.asiaquake.org http://www.tsunamihelp.info http://www.katrinahelp.info http://www.ritahelp.info The World Wide Help Group http://groups.google.com/group/WorldWideHelp -- Linux Pakistan 4 - E - 1/6 Nazimabad Karachi - 74600 Phone +92-21-6622134 Email tariq(a)linuxpakistan.net Web http://www.linuxpakistan.net _______________________________________________ General mailing list General(a)linuxpakistan.net http://mail.linuxpakistan.net/mailman/listinfo/general_linuxpakistan.net BACKGROUND: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_PBX Asterisk PBX >From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Asterisk official logo. Enlarge Asterisk official logo. Asterisk is an open source software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX). Like any PBX, it allows a number of attached telephones to make calls to one another, and to connect to other telephone services including the PSTN. "Its name comes from the asterisk symbol, *, which in UNIX (including Linux) and DOS environments represents a wildcard, matching any filename." [1] Asterisk is free software, released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Mark Spencer of Digium originally created Asterisk and remains its primary maintainer; dozens of other programmers have contributed features and functionality. Originally designed for the Linux operating system, Asterisk now also runs on OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Sun Solaris, and Microsoft Windows, although as the "native" platform, Linux is the best-supported of these. The basic Asterisk software includes many features previously only available in expensive proprietary PBX systems -- voice mail, conference calling, interactive voice response (phone menus), and automatic call distribution. Users can create new functionality by writing dial plan scripts in Asterisk's own language, by adding custom modules written in C, or by writing Asterisk Gateway Interface scripts in Perl or other languages. To attach ordinary telephones to a Linux server running Asterisk, or to connect to PSTN trunk lines, the server must be fitted with special hardware. (An ordinary modem will not suffice.) Digium and a number of other firms sell PCI cards to attach telephones, telephone lines, T1 and E1 lines, and other analog and digital phone services to a server. Perhaps of more interest to many deployers today, Asterisk also supports a wide range of Voice over IP protocols, including SIP and H.323. Asterisk can interoperate with most SIP telephones, acting both as registrar and as a gateway between IP phones and the PSTN. Asterisk developers have also designed a new protocol, IAX, for efficient trunking of calls among Asterisk PBXes. By supporting a mix of traditional and VoIP telephony services, Asterisk allows deployers to build new telephone systems efficiently, or gradually migrate existing systems to new technologies. Some sites are using Asterisk servers to replace aging proprietary PBXes; others to provide additional features (such as voice mail or phone menus) or to cut costs by carrying long-distance calls over the Internet (toll bypass). VoIP Telephone Companies have begun to support Asterisk PBX's. A recent article in the Geek Gazette, explains how to configure an Asterisk system to work with BroadVoice. VoicePulse also offers support for Asterisk. [edit] External links * Asterisk home page * Asterisk Handbook, Version 2 * Asterisk Enterprise Edition * Hardware-Oasis.com VoIP Distributor (4-Port card Sirrix.PCI4S0 with Asterisk support) * Asterisk Wiki * Russian Asterisk Community * Norwegian Asterisk Community * Asterisk @ Home -- simplified Asterisk installation and administration for the home user * Hardware components for Asterisk PBX building * High Level white paper on the Asterisk PBX * Book: Building Telephony Systems with Asterisk, by Packt Publishing ISBN: 1-904811-15-9.

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On Mono
by balachandran c 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Assuming: 1) Software Patents are harmful to the society, and hence not to be supported, 2) Ideals behind FS is more important than the future of a particular product, Why are people against Mono? It is FS, so its licence is definitely not a threat. The most popular reason seems to be the fear of *possible* violation of software patents. Again, let us assume that the community is incapable of replacing infringing code with non-infringing code. If I support free speech, and I ask someone not to speak their mind because that person might be violating some law in his country, I am being a hypocrite. Similarly, if I am against software patents, I should not be castigating some project due to possible software patent violation. (How many software patents do you think linux is *possibly* violating? What is your opinion about using linux?). At best, this is a non-existent issue, and at worst it is civil disobedience, in *some* countries. Don't you think we should be consistent in our views? What do you think about the subject? Offtopic: Even after taking into account the Novell marketing, those Mono guys are doing some wonderful work. Take a look at the number of new apps based on it (f-spot, beagle, tomboy etc). I don't think anyone should be apologizing for mentioning beagle, a FS, on FSF mailing list. Cheers, Bala.

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wsfii
by Nagarjuna G. 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

I attended wsfii in London, and met several hackers who are getting together to make alternative free netowrks and free information infrastructures. New developments that are taking place in wireless, and radio communications are very opromising and becoming very economical. I was meaning to write about the event for so long, but nnot getting time. so I thought I will at least send you the links so that you will browse them. http://81.168.51.180/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page: hivenetworks this group playes with asus boxes and did wonderful things, like wireless radio stations, webcasting, servers etc. I carried one of their boxes, and a flash also, all running linux kernel. http://www.freifunk.net/ the german hackers who developed mesh netowrks in berlin, and I have seen thisin action. very impressive. I have their firmware in the linksys wireless routers which run linux kernel. the most commendable is the freenetworks.org, djursland in denmark. they have built a world largest wireless network connecting several villages. their free information infrastructure is a good example for India to follow. also met people who are leading in free map projects of london and mumbai. and also the gnoweldge.org those of you who are interested in developing free netowrks with radio and wireless, please contact me. I will keep in mind your names for the January workshop at Mumbai, where the will be coming to train, and also conduct road shows. India will be hosting thte international WSFII event in Bangalore and in five other places during november 2005. I will be out again for another ten days, and will give you more details, meanwhile send me names if you are interested in the FII. Nagarjuna

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RMS: The GNU GPL Is Here to Stay
by Anivar Aravind 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

RMS: The GNU GPL Is Here to Stay "There are some who say that a collaborative development model, taking advantage of these freedoms, tends to make software that is technically better. They may be right, and it would be nice if freedom brings such a practical bonus. However, the freedom itself is more important than the bonus, so the Free Software Movement focuses on the freedom." Read the full interview between Federico Biancuzzi and Richard Stallman at ONLamp.com. http://www.oreillynet.com/lpt/a/6222 -- Portal Administrator _______________________________________________ info-fsf mailing list info-fsf(a)gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-fsf -- __ __ gnu /noo/ n. Ox like antelope; (abbr.) /gnoo/ n. (recursive acronym) Gnu's Not Unix.

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Re: CDAC fonts with Emacs.
by Richard M. Stallman 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Thank you. The fact that the emacs-indian/m-17 site I am not familiar with this site. What is its full name? Could you tell me the names and email addresses of the people who run them? mentions the CDAC fonts, and provides them for download had me assuming that they might be available under the GPL (or some equivalent for fonts) license. I shall see if someone from CDAC can clarify. If these fonts are in fact still non-free, then it is a very bad thing for a site associated with Emacs to be offering them for download, or even to mention that they exist. We need to find out the real situation. There is no need to talk with "someone from CDAC" about it; that is not reliable, since the "someone" might try to confuse the matter--or might simply be mistaken. It could take you lots of work and time to find the right "someone" and get a straight answer. That work is unnecessary anyway. The question is: what is license on these fonts? That is a simple factual question, and you can check the answer directly. Just download them from the "emacs-indian/m-17 site" and look at what license they contain. Could you please download them, extract the license that they carry, and show it to us?

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KDE vs GNOME
by balachandran c 14 Oct '05

14 Oct '05

Objective Section: Qt4 is available with a GPL licence on *all* platforms. GTK+ is LGPL. Subjective Section: Unless we are working with some kind of "sins of the father" model, we should just stop attacking KDE based on Qt being non-free at some point in the past. This is just too tedious. The company has been very nice to the community, and the cooperation is ever increasing. You don't hear too many people attacking GTK for being LGPL. Even more Subjective: I believe that KDE was behind GNOME in terms of looks. Not anymore. If you like clearlooks in GNOME (the current default), try out QtCurve for KDE. It gives the same look and feel to the widgets. Similar color themes can also be installed. KDE is much more customizable than GNOME, and can be made to look and behave like GNOME, if you like it that way. As far as iconsets go, oxygen (shown at akademy 2005) is very beautiful! With projects like Tango, you could get similar iconsets for KDE and GNOME anyway. The best part of KDE is the technology. It feels like a well integrated set of components, each excellent at its job. Unix philosophy extended to the desktop. I just love the ioslaves, kparts, dcop, and nx technologies. Ioslaves provide features like excellent network transparency. Fish protocol is godsent. Excellent use of kparts in kontact. I can right-click on a postscript file, and select an action, which would convert it to a pdf file, and upload it to my remote server over ssh. (No, kfmclient is much more general purpose and powerful than gnome's remote folders. And ioslaves are used more consistently than gnome-vfs). Dcop makes it easy for the user to do stuff like link his superkaramba themes (like gdesklets in gnome) to his music player or chat client. It is trivial to, say, take an incoming message from kopete (chat client) and make ktts speak it out over your speakers. (Not that you want to do that, but you could, with 10 lines of code). Some other features are given here: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDE+Power+Features http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Scripts+with+a+KDE+Feel The upcoming technologies in KDE are even more exciting. Plasma is nice, and Tenor, a highly innovative project related to tracking context of data on your computer. It is far more ambitious than beagle / spotlight / winfs kind of projects. I guess my point is, KDE is an excellent and exciting project, and if you haven't tried it out recently, give it a try. The real fun starts when you customize KDE with your own cute little scripts! I was a cli / KDE user, switched to GNOME with 2.6, and now back to KDE with 3.3/3.4. I try to track the progress of both the projects. Cheers, Bala.

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Indian blogger v/s IIPM whats up?
by Thejesh GN 12 Oct '05

12 Oct '05

Here is my dissection and opinion about the issue. Comments welcome :) http://www.techmag.biz/Indian_blogger_vs_IIPM_whats_up -- Thanks, Thej http://www.techmag.biz

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Free and Open Source Software: A Blind Alley for Developing Countries? [With a comment added by FN]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 12 Oct '05

12 Oct '05

COMMENT ADDED BY FN: [A rather dismissive paper of Free/Libre and Open Source Software in the so-called 'developing countries'. Needless to say the "interest in the 'e-development' community" is often out of touch with reality, and what developers are doing at the grassroots. It's often based on hype. But that doesn't mean FLOSS is ineffective! The "5% of computer systems" overlooks the role played by FLOSS in servers, in keeping the Internet running, in giving unprecedented access to developers of the Third World to take part in a global movement, and more. By saying "proprietorial software is free" for the bulk of the 'developing' world, the study is guilty of both tolerating/encouraging the illegally copying of software ('piracy' is a loaded term, unfortunately accepted by academia too) and missing the essence of what Free Software is all about (offering the freedom to be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed). We are not fighting just for the right to remain 'pirates'... By focussing on Africa, the report probably overlooks the benefits flowing to other 'developing' countries from FLOSS. Including countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa and a whole lot of other nations located in an intermediate stage of 'development'. Whatever the latest fashion among the development network, FLOSS will probably just continue to make its impact. Significantly, it's growth till now went largely unnoticed by academia, and researchers, till the media-blitz post 1998. --FN] PS: A more detailed and realistic, in my view, study can be found at http://www.maailma.kaapeli.fi/FLOSSReport1.0.html (this poster had a role to play in part of the Maailma report).] -- _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ _/ _/ Frederick Noronha | Independent Journalist | Ph 832.2409490 _/ 784 Saligao 403511 Goa India | fred(a)bytesforall.org _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/dig/briefings.htm eDevelopment Briefing No. 1 Development Informatics Group, University of Manchester Free and Open Source Software: A Blind Alley for Developing Countries? There is considerable interest in the "e-development" community about FOSS: free and open source software. It is argued to be cheaper and more customisable than proprietary software; it is argued to be a potential kick-starter for the local IT industry; it merits a mention in the WSIS Plan of Action. So what is its likely trajectory? We can turn first to historical evidence because we have been here before. In the 1980s, "shareware" – FOSS' forerunner – was a temporary source of excitement for exactly the same reasons; even attracting the attention of the World Bank. Yet the developmental equation for shareware was "Impact = Zero". What of the evidence today? A recent survey on our eGovernment for Development Information Exchange plus survey data from Africai suggest at most 5% of computer systems in developing countries have any open source software running on them, and that is almost entirely represented by Linux. Even in Cuba, where the US embargo should make conditions highly propitious, proprietary software dominatesii. Because of piracy and the limited size of initial purchase price within total cost of software ownership, there is no clear, general evidence of FOSS delivering cost savings. Because, by and large, FOSS means Linux, the benefits of customisation and IT industry kick-start are also nebulous. The lack of strong evidence of FOSS benefits helps explain its lack of success vis-a-vis proprietary products. In particular, proprietary software may not be open source but it is certainly free for the great majority of developing country users, thanks to piracy. Other key factors uncovered include: * Lack of awareness of FOSS: the African evidence suggests most IT managers simply don't know about it. * Poor international links: to work effectively with open source code you need to be part of an active, global community of like-minded developers; links to such communities from developing countries are weak. Donors have moved in with interventions to support FOSS, as recently seen in Tanzania with the development of Jambo Office. Yet such efforts are found to make little impact. To date, they have been amateurish; focusing on the techies who write the code, and failing to introduce a business focus that would draw in needed market research, marketing, distribution and support skills. As so often, too, donor FOSS projects have been short-terms flares of interest rather than the required sustained efforts. They are no match for proprietary firms who are in for the long-haul, and who will use the carrot of low pricing and the stick of anti-piracy actions to achieve their aims. Even the potential "backfire" of anti-piracy actions, leading organisations to abandon their pirated proprietary products and adopt FOSS instead, seems exaggerated. Microsoft and the Indonesian police recently launched a crackdown on cybercafesiii. As could be predicted, many owners changed over to FOSS. However, users then stopped coming to those cybercafes because of their unfamiliarity with the software. Soon after, the pirated products were back in place. FOSS' trajectory, then, is intimately bound up to proprietary software, especially Microsoft products. At best, FOSS looks like a lever to extract concessions from Microsoft and similar vendors. In its present state, FOSS will remain a marginal activity that does not deliver on its development promise and that is no match for the enduring power and business acumen of major proprietary players. Richard Heeks, October 2005 richard.heeks(a)manchester.ac.uk www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/research/is/index.htm i Kamuzora, F. & Baruch, J. (2005) 'Contextualising the challenges of free and open source software adoption in African countries', UK DSA conference, Connecting People and Places, Open University, 7-9 Sept ii Mitra, A., Garcia, A. & Somoza, A. (2005) 'Imperatives of free and open source software in Cuban development', UK DSA conference, Connecting People and Places, Open University, 7-9 Sept iii Robinson, A. (2005) 'Square pegs for round holes?', UK DSA conference, Connecting People and Places, Open University, 7-9 Sept

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Re: CDAC fonts with Emacs.
by Frederick Noronha 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

Hi friends at FSF: Could someone help Krishnakumar please? Also copying this to RMS; maybe he could offer some pointers. Best wishes VK and thanks for writing in. FN ============================================================ From: Krishna <v.krishnakumar(a)gmail.com> Date: 2005/10/11 Tue AM 02:44:29 GMT+05:30 To: fred(a)bytesforall.org Subject: CDAC fonts with Emacs. Hi Frederick, I've read your posts on ILUG-C and from those I know that you have a long standing association with FSF-India. I was hoping you could help me out with some Emacs/CDAC licensing related issues. On http://www.m17n.org/emacs-indian/ it says : "Thanks to the C-DAC at Pune, Emacs Project Team has received the permission to use C-DAC ISFOC fonts for Emacs-Indian support in 1998." However, I'm unable to find any further licensing information either on the Emacs site or from CDAC. My vested interest in getting these fonts under the GPL is using these with our opensource/GPLed editor that is currently under development (http://imli.sf.net) . Though I know you are not directly related to either the Emacs project or CDAC I was hoping your association with FSF-India can help me get some clarity in this issue. I have turned to you for help because the Emacs-indian mailing list seems to have gone silent since 2003. Given Emacs's status as one of FSF's most visible projects I thought I would approach somebody from FSF-India for help. I know this is a demand on your time and I apologize for this but I was unable to think of any other avenues for information. I would be very grateful for any help you can provide. If you are not the right person to contact about this, can you point me in the right direction, please. Thanks and regards, -Krishna -- "The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man." - Richard Feynman ============================================================ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Frederick Noronha 784 Near Convent, Sonarbhat SALIGAO GOA India Freelance Journalist TEL: +91-832-2409490 MOBILE: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks fred at bytesforall.org http://www.bytesforall.org

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Building a Community of GNU/ Linux Sysadmins for keeping watch over each other
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

Hi This is something i feel requires a little attention. So posting here. Apologies for wasting your time, spelling mistakes, lack of knowledge, all in advance. I have been using FLOSS (GNU/ Linux) and related software on our servers for around 5 years now. Most of the servers face Internet. And as is the case with any evolving software even in GNU/ Linux(s) vulnerabilities are discovered and ofcourse patched form time to time. But alas we ppl who manage servers are sometimes lazy, or forget and do not patch servers in time. Alas we are only human. And in general act as open invitations/ sitting ducks to crackers and malicious ppl around the word. I have seen this happen to a lot of ppl around, same has happened to me as well, sometimes we are made to realize, by the crackers, that we havnt been vigil in our duties. And whatever experience I have in managing server i still cant deny this fact that this can happen to me in future. But hey we learn from mistakes and usually grow up. But what about newbies, ppl whom we GNU/ Linux fans motivate, we ask them to switch over to a better system from _you_know_what_$$_crap_they_are_using_ I still remember the old days when the number of script kiddies was much less, atleast in India. Now ever Ram and Sham has Internet access and is eager to lay its hands on some script, trying to be the super kiddie. And the poor newbie sysadmin we motivated to switch over to something better, is an easy target. They becoem the victims, kiddies exploit their servers. The machines are listed in XBL, RBL and in general cause disservice to their users and others also. And the newbie sysadmin also get the impression that GNU/ Linux is difficult/ insecure/ whatever (which is not true). Usually we blame the newbie sysadmin that he havnt been too vigil. Most of such ppl remain clue less on what happened and why their systems have misbehaved, what is happed to their servers. Some of such guys also consider moving back to _you_know_what_$$_crap_they_were_using_. And ppl like us who motivated them are back to zero, all out time spent motivating them goes down the drain. Some of the glaring mistakes newbies make are Installing whatever version of older unpacthed versions of GNU/ Linux they can lay their hands on. AAnd then not configuring firewalls, not closing unnecessary services and what not. All of this has been documented we all know that, but still happens. And all of the above is true for experienced sysadmins also. I have seen so many websites being defaced/ mail servers being used for spam. After all we are only human. Cant we as a community of good ppl/sysadmins do something about it. Is it possible to build a community where we can watch over each others back, and report any problems in time to vulnerable system/ or systemes that are already down the drain. And from community I do not mean another mailing list or user group. Is it possible to do something automated, to keep watch over servers, a distributed system. Where ppl who have subscribed to the system would have their system checked/ scanned periodically by other systems, and sysadmin can be forwarned of existing/ new problems. Something like an XBL, RBL but without the black list thing, but with a warning to sysadmins. Similar services are offered by some commercial vendors, but i believe a community effort would be a better option, due to its very distributed nature and scale. (More technicalities can be discussed later) I am trying to forge such an alliance with two other sysadmins i know, and hope something will come out of it. And we plan to make newbies, around our area, part of it, and maybe help them with their newly setup servers, so that they dont go back to _you_know_what_$$_crap_they_were_using_. Most of it would be initially manual, except periodic port scans to locate vulnerabilities, but later on more things can be automated. If there is anything similar in place, or any advice or comments, please. Please dont tell me that: * a good sysadmin dont need such a crap. * real sysadmins secure their systems like forts * real sysadmins dont make mistakes * pull out your network wire to secure your servers * RTFM * go away, you cant run a GNU/ Linux workstation, dont even think of servers * blah blah I think i have some experience, but still sometimes i need help and confirmation that my servers are ok, what is wrong in third party confirmations, if it is only a remove vulnerability scan. And why not i can do that same for others and others can do it for me. I have been doing this for 2-3 ppl already. And why cant we automate this process and in a distributed manner. What is my motivation for writing all this ========================================== Recently i had some discussion with someone who is an advocate of FLOSS and a dedicated GNU/ Linux user pasting it here without his permission (this is part of an email discussion) some parts edited/ changed --------- snip ------------- What ever you observe, that was correct. However, I am only user of ******* services. I forwarded your Email to concerned man on Friday .. and he told me today (Monday), that system was hanged on Saturday on rebooting, it fail to boot. In nutshell, there is *real problem* with server. He is trying to fix it. --------- snip ------------- another part of email, some part edited --------- snip ------------- Before we start discussing, I would like to know frank opinion, about FLOSS, is it going to help us. --------- snip ------------- Another discussion with someone else parts of a telephonic conversation (whatever i can remember) --------- snip ------------- Him: The nameserver lookup is not working Me: Have you checked the logs Him: I cant, somehow the logs aint showing anything at all Me: (Puzzled) that should mean, maybe server has been compromised Me: (after a port scan of his machine, next day) there is sshd service running on port 1422, you server is definitly compromised. Time to reinstall. --------- snip ------------- And on Internet we can find a lot of machines which are either compromised or ready to be compromised and we do nothing about them, ofcourse unless the machines are honeypots and have been left like that intentionally. Cant we help each other!! Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal (Just Another GNU Users)

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Fwd: [Commons-Law] Nalsar signs MOU with Microsoft
by Anivar Aravind 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

What we can do on it. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lawrence Liang <lawrence(a)altlawforum.org> Date: Oct 10, 2005 5:42 PM Subject: [Commons-Law] Nalsar signs MOU with Microsoft To: Commons law <commons-law(a)sarai.net> Hi all This is very interesting, when I went to teach at Nalsar a year ago I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that all their systems were running on GNU Linux. But this raises some serious questions of institutional capture Microsoft had also sponsored a workshop in the national alw school a few years ago which was meant to train the lower judiciary in the evils of software piracy Lawrence =========== >From http://www.varindia.com/VNS/Oct5_1.htm Microsoft Corporation India has signed a 3-year Memorandum of Understanding with the prestigious National Academy of Legal Studies and Research University (NALSAR), Hyderabad, to implement the "Microsoft Intellectual Property Scholar Program". Under the aegis of this program, Microsoft aims to establish a Knowledge Bank in the area of Intellectual Property. Microsoft will select three "Microsoft Scholars" from the final year batch of the B.A. B.L. (Hons.) program at NALSAR, to undertake fundamental research and author papers on topics related to Intellectual Property (IP) rights. Research scholarships will be provided by Microsoft to these scholars and based on the research generated by them, a lecture series will be organized by NALSAR. Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Ranbir Singh, Vice-Chancellor, NALSAR, said, "As an institution which fosters a challenging and exciting intellectual environment, we are extremely excited about our new partnership with Microsoft. We are confident that our students will immensely benefit from the program and will be able to further the growth of Intellectual Property in the country." Under the terms of the MoU, NALSAR will make available to the Microsoft Scholars a dedicated study room, which was inaugurated by Hon'ble Mr. Justice K. Ramaswamy, Former Judge of the Supreme Court of India at the Dr. N. C. Banerjee Centre for Intellectual Property Law Studies. Relevant library and research resources will also be made available to the students, All software required in this computer facility for the Microsoft Research Scholars, will be provided free of cost, by Microsoft. The Professor of Intellectual Property at NALSAR, Professor V. K. Unni, will act as the resident administrator for the Microsoft Scholar Program in conjunction with the Legal and Corporate Affairs Department of Microsoft. An empowered project Review Committee comprising Dr. Ranbir Singh, VC, NALSAR, Shardul Shroff, Managing Partner, Amarchand Mangaldas, and Rakesh Bakshi, Legal and Corporate Affairs, Microsoft India, will be constituted to monitor the progress of the projects. _______________________________________________ commons-law mailing list commons-law(a)sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law -- __ __ gnu /noo/ n. Ox like antelope; (abbr.) /gnoo/ n. (recursive acronym) Gnu's Not Unix.

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KDE vs GNOME war
by Tinku Sampath 11 Oct '05

11 Oct '05

The great battle between the two most popular ( sorry.... if my word hurt any one whose use other lightweight desktops ...) KDE and GNOME (i am not the one who can decide which one is better ... ) continues. Here i am not concerned about spread the war to this mailing list. But we together can discuss the reasons behind it and conclude with individuals comments. GNU/Linux is taking small steps.. or creeping... towards desktop users. As far as the desktop environments, which are built upon Xwindow system, are concerned, they are gaining popularity and their look and feel and also the performance are improving with each new releases. Users in the free software will have so many choices. From hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions to admirable no. of quality desktops... the same things happens in the field of applications. But what is there for the fresh users to the world of GNU/Linux?. Initially they will be confused in choosing a GNU/Linux distribution at first which satisfies their requirements. The next difficult thing will be finding the application which will satisfy their day to day work they continued with other proprietary systems. But the desktop environments are the most important instances which will stick the users with GNU/Linux. So each desktop project has to be working to make the things done with easiness. But something strange in happening for past few months. The fight between KDE and GNOME is there from the beginning of the GNOME project which was started in protesting in the change of license of Trolltech Qt development tool, tool to develop KDE, to proprietary. But later Trolltech changed its license in to a dual license scheme which allows free use of qt for the applications released under GNU GPL V2.0. But the GNOME project continued and also turned as desktop environment favored by geeks and developers (may be for new users!). A lot of companies like Novell, Sun, Red Hat etc started supporting GNOME... and few of the distributions changed their default desktop environment in to GNOME from KDE.. But majorities are still staying with KDE giving a second rank to the GNOME. But the fight between these two environments are now in to public. This is visible if you go through previous few issues of Tux Magazine (http://www.tuxmagazine.com )<http://www.tuxmagazine.com/>. As a newbie GNU/Linux magazine, Tux Magazine's publishers make things going in KDE way. That means they are answering basic queries considering KDE as most users working environment. They may be right since all of we admit the fact that majority are KDE users than those who use GNOME. Since KDE gives a polished look like other proprietary systems (eg: Mac OS) and it is highly customizable than any other operating desktop in the world. Additions to this it provides quality applications of almost all kind. The KDE factor was also visible in the 2005 READER'S CHOICE AWARDS conducted by the magazine vendors on August. (Refer September 2005 issue of Tux Magazine). A lots of letters are coming to include more GNOME flavor equal to that of KDE. But the publishers are reluctant to give more recognition to GNOME. They continue to reply why they are strictly following KDE by showing only the user base. There is section called Q&A with Mango Parfait where newbies can ask Mango Parfait, a young woman (or may be acting like a young woman), for help. But her comments and way of convincing is not liked by a few users (or most?.. I can't say.. But i like her presentation... ). After hundreds of request from GNOME followers, finally she burst flames towards GNOME in the September issue of Q&A section. Her few comments are as follows ... *" Hint to GNOME developers: some of GNOME is okay, but most of it works like you hate users. Some of GNOME runs like you think users are too stupid to wipe themselves. What do you do for these users? You do not make GNOME easy. You just take away their toilet paper and force users to wipe themselves your way. Some of GNOME runs like you want users to suffer. The file open and save dialog is worse than bamboo shoots under fingernails. Better to call Nautilus an attack from space invaders than a spacial file manager. Here is my advice. Make your monkey-brain environment a configuration option if you want to keep using GNOME your way. The rest of us are not monkeys. Give us a default desktop for humans. If you keep having no clue, less and less people will use GNOME, and the only GNOME users will be monkey-brain GNOME developers. "* But the request for GNOME coverage continues. One of the user's comment is as follows ... *" More GNOME Coverage. I read the latest TUX today, and somebody asked the same question as me. Why not more GNOME coverage? Your response was that KDE is the preference of most new users. What distro are they using? Because in another breath, you heartily recommend Fedora, which uses GNOME as its standard desktop. And that's not even mentioning the popularity of Ubuntu. - Robert Holmes " *After lots of protest against magazines coverage and Mango's comments, Tux publisher NICHOLAS PETRELEY addressed readers with more specific reasons for their GNOME hate. A few of his comments from the P2P column of this moth's Tux... " *What bothers me is not GNOME, but that we critics of GNOME have been accused of disliking GNOME simply because we don't understand it. I don't think that's the case, but if we really don't understand it, shouldn't that tell you something? Why wouldn't we understand it? Could it be because GNOME is one of the most unintuitive, inconsistent desktop environments ever designed? Could it be because GNOME keeps undergoing dramatic changes in its philosophy toward how a desktop should behave?... Indeed, the frequent overhauls to the philosophical approach to how a desktop should behave puts GNOME evangelists and defenders in a very awkward position. Take Nautilus, the file manager, for example. "It's great because it does everything." When GNOME dumped the buggy Midnight Commander file manager in favor of the original version of Nautilus, the hype was all about how Nautilus would be a Swiss Army knife for GNOME. It was a file manager, browser, system administration tool, package manager and more. It was considered the core component of GNOME. See http://www.businesswire.com/webbox/ bw.032001/210790539.htm for a sample press release in 2001. "It's great because it's so simple and does only basic tasks." Later, GNOME developers decided to rip out most of the features in Nautilus and strip it down to basics for the benefit of speed and ease of use. But if you read the press release mentioned above, the original point of making Nautilus do everything imaginable was for the benefit of "ease of use". So which approach actually made GNOME easier to use? "It's great because it has a revolutionary new spatial design." Then Nautilus morphed into a "spatial" file manager. This "spatial" file manager was supposedly revolutionary, although anyone who has used OS/2 knows better. The idea was that every folder should have its own size and place on the desktop, which gives that folder a unique "spatial identity". Every time you opened a folder, that folder would appear in the same position and size on the desktop you had used the last time you visited that folder. Unfortunately, whenever you open a new folder, the previous folder window remains on screen. As you navigate deeper through subfolders, your screen becomes cluttered with open windows. When I complained to a GNOME advocate about this behavior, his response was that I could change the default behavior of Nautilus back to the way it used to work by changing a registry setting. A registry setting? That's GNOME's idea of ease of use? Eventually the Nautilus developers relented and added a preferences option to choose between the new "spatial" behavior and the old explorer version of Nautilus. "It's great because it's not spatial anymore." Now I've downloaded and installed the preview of Ubuntu 5.1, which includes the latest version of GNOME. I assume that GNOME still makes the "spatial" behavior of Nautilus the default behavior. I don't know. But Ubuntu makes Nautilus default to an explorer mode that works similarly to prior versions of Nautilus. This raises the question, if the "spatial" approach to file management was so terrific and simply misunderstood and underappreciated, why did the Ubuntu team decide not to use it by default? I'd applaud the change, but the new Nautilus explorer mode includes one of the most abominable features ever conceived, ostensibly "borrowed" from the hideous GNOME file picker. In one of the toolbars, you'll see a back arrow, after which buttons appear as you navigate through folders. Each button represents a folder, a subfolder, a sub-subfolder and so on, as a history of where you've been. If you go back one step, it keeps the extra button there, in case you want to go forward again. Why buttons are supposed to represent folders is a mystery to me. But here's a bigger mystery. If you navigate deep enough, there's no room for all the buttons, so a scroller appears. A scroller for buttons? Now that's revolutionary. This is especially a problem with the file picker, where there's even less space for the buttons. Worse, I still haven't figured out why the back arrow I mentioned earlier creates two buttons called home and then changes into an icon that, if clicked, takes me to the top level of the entire filesystem. This is intuitive? Here's the point. GNOME defenders can rant all they want about how critics simply misunderstand it. The problem illustrated by the crazy history of Nautilus is that there's no "it" to misunderstand. If "it" is so great, why does "it" keep going through so many radical changes in philosophy? I have sympathy for longtime GNOME advocates because they've had to defend both the original designs and the contradictory overhauls as being the best approach..... *" ... and the publisher concludes as follows.... " *So, many of the people who complain that we are obsessed with KDE and never deal with GNOME, obviously aren't reading TUX. Has someone told GNOME fans and evangelists to spam us with these letters? I don't know. But if so, it's time to call off your dogs. TUX will become a GNOME-focused magazine the day GNOME users vastly outnumber KDE users. So if you GNOME fans want more GNOME coverage, I suggest you improve GNOME first. Until then, we'll continue to publish according to the balance that we believe serves our readers best.* " What is happening every where?. Are you coming to my point?. The fight continues and have reached at a stage that must be seriously considered by every member of the Free Software community. I have a doubt. If GNOME is not great enough ( I am extensive KDE user from the beginning... No doubt in it... I tried GNOME at each of its release.. But i am not satisfied a little bit about it in considering as my desktop... I can't see any of my friends using GNOME as their desktop... I can see a few other people who are newbie to GNU/Linux using GNOME since most of the beginners start with Fedora and go for a personal desktop installation where the Red Hat guys continues to deselect KDE from their install section as default... Fact that, most of them don't know there is a feature rich polished alternate desktop named KDE ...), then why it can't be improved?. I don't know whether you know this fact. The birth of Mandrakelinux ( now Mandriva Linux) is a result of this war which started long ago when Red Hat removed KDE from their distribution supporting only GNOME. But after the popularity of Mandrakelinux, Red Hat was pressurised to include KDE with their distro but still GNOME as default. Even nowadays Red Hat is showing their excessive discrimination towards KDE. Most people ( including me ) are away from Fedora due to this attitude. Is GNOME is preferred since GTK is purely under GNU GPL?. I can see two types of outcome from this fight... Positive factor : This fight may create a competing environment in FOSS field and may result in the improvement and enhancements of each of the desktops. Negative factor: Rather than concentrating in the spread of GNU/Linux and FOSS across the world, rather than fighting against those actions that will wipe out the freedom in software field, this can make the community development to a debate and result in a creepy progress for free software revolution. What you think about all these? Comments please.... - Tinku Sampath

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FN'sEyeOnFLOSS *** Few hours to midnight... and FOSS.in deadline
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

................................................................ FN's Eye on FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software ........ ................................................................ [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] MEET INDIAN FLOSS BLOGGERS: http://planet.foss.in/ ---------------------------------------------------- FOSS4US blog (NGOs and FLOSS) http://foss4us.org/blog [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] NEWS FROM BANGALORE AND PLANS FOR FOSS.IN: Atul Chitnis <mail(a)atulchitnis.net> writes on the http://groups.yahoo.com/group/foss-in-announce/ list: This is it, the last day of speaker and talks registration for FOSS.IN/2005. By midnight tonight (October 8th), we will be closing registration for talks for the technical and community sessions of the event. Speakers who have registered but not submitted any talks will be removed from the speaker database tonight. So if you are planning to submit any talks - you have till midnight tonight (GMT+0530!) FOSS.IN seems to be generating massive amounts of enthusiasm in the Linux community, and *especially* in the BSD community (who have proposed several talks and workshops), the Gentoo community, the Debian community, etc. The FOSS community rulez! I will send in another mail giving you some top level stats about talks and speakers once we close registrations tonight. Once registrations close, we will spend a couple of days sorting things out, checking which talks need work on, and will release the first shortlist (minus work-in-progress talks and "star" talks) on schedule in the evening of the 12th of October. (See the schedule at http://foss.in/2005/cfp/). Once clashes and WIP talks are sorted out, we will release a second list with these added. "Star" speakers will be announced as soon as the remaining major sponsor confirmations come in. Call for participation for business sessions and student talks will go out early next week. Stay tuned. Atul ----------------------------------------------------------- FOSS.IN/2005 India's Premiere Free & Open Source Software Event Nov 29 to Dec 2, 2005 Bangalore Palace. foss.in/2005 Speaker Registration open till Oct.08, 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------- [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] WANTED, CODERS FOR AN EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT-ORIENTED GAME: Sunil Abraham sunil(a)mahiti.org of Bangalore sent across this note from his friend Dev <dev(a)thairuralnet.org> who put forward a specific proposal. Dev wrote: "I need your help to find young social technopreneurs (in your circle its probably Open source software engineers who might want to design a game like WFP Food Force or other software)." Global Knowledge Partnership's Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) fellowships are designed to help social entrepreneurs achieve their goals from the initial idea through to project implementation and impact creation. They seek to support projects by young people who are creating impact with innovative solutions to social problems, especially those using information and communication technologies (ICTs) for development. YSEI will support fellows by providing mentorship and training programmes; networking; and seed grants. If you are a young social entrepreneur (age <30) from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Philippines and Malaysia in search for support and opportunities. Please visit www.globalknowledge.org/ysei OR www.futureshifters.net to learn more and submit your proposal by 31st October 2005. Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) is a Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) Youth Program supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). Its partners include MITRA, OrphanIT, TakingITGlobal, YoungAsiaTelevision, Philippines Resources for Sustainable Development (PRSD), Development Research Network (D.Net) with TRN as the intiative's lead. Sunil Abraham <sunil(a)mahiti.org> also happens to be manager of the IOSN.net In addition, he's behind the Mahiti group in Bangalore. http://www.mahiti.org 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mob: (91) 9342201521 UK: (44) 02000000259 [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] YOUNG NETWORK IN GOA: Our friend 'DP' of the Goa Lug rediscovered this abandoned network and is trying to rebuild it. It's in the town of Ponda in central Goa. A place where a small but committed number of techies are deeply interested in GNU/Linux. Please offer your support: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-ponda [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] AN INTERESTING LINK: Guru Prasath <aprasadh(a)gmail.com> posted to the SonaLUG <sonalug(a)yahoogroups.com> recently, a link that gives an interesting background, in all its graphic detail: Unix history in graphic. http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] ENGICOS TAKE TO FLOSS, AND THEIR COLLEGE DISTRO IS BORN: Prof George Easaw <geasaw(a)gmail.com> of the Goa Engineering College, the live-wire behind Free/Libre and Open Source Software in that part of Goa, reports: The Goa Engicos linux iso, it is available for download from http://www.gec.ac.in/me , the temporary homepage of the mech engg dept. There you can find the link to engicos.iso. Right click and click on 'save link target as' and save it to your pc. Cut it on a cd and you can start the pc afresh. Contact: George Easaw Mech Engg. Dept., College of Engg. Ponda, Goa, 403 401. INDIA. ring : (0832) - 2319185 [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] WHY GNU/LINUX NEEDS A MENTOR PROGRAM: See this interesting essay at http://business.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/09/13/1816200&from=rss Why Linux needs a mentor program By: Tarun Agnani: Imagine you're a new Linux user. You ordered an Ubuntu CD weeks ago and forgot about it. You're surprised it actually comes in the mail. You slap the shiny disc into your PC and cross your fingers. The installation is quite slick. You're impressed by the splash screen and attractive desktop. Wow, you think you're hot stuff -- a Linux user. But the euphoria fades as you realize there's a problem with your modem. Now what do you do? ... [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] FLOSS FELLOWSHIPS FROM SARAI: V Vivek <viyyer(a)sarai.net> announces the Sarai/CSDS Short Term FLOSS Fellowship, 2005-2006. The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (www.sarai.net) invites applications for fellowship to projects in the area of Free Software, Open Source Software and Social Usage of Software. Sarai invites developers, researchers and programmers (practitioners as well as students) to propose projects in the area of free and open source software applications relevant to educational, social and community needs. They are looking for original ideas, as well as proposals to localize and adapt existing software and applications to South Asian conditions. They are also looking for ideas around technical manuscripts, beginners' manuals, review manuscripts etc. Some of the focus areas are: - Indic Computing - Developing/Distributing/Supporting a standalone / addon localized Linux distribution - Printing support (i.e. ability to print in Indian Languages) - Multimedia / Publishing Tools Research - Developing / Enhancing Tools like GIMP, Scribus for publishing quality work - Enhancing current audio/video tools available under Linux - Fixing/Supporting Cinelerra, LiVES etc - P2P - Researching on feasibility and implementation of P2P news distribution network - Researching and developing - Collaboration Tools/Frameworks (Apnaopus, CreativeDot ) - Developing extensions for the project newsrack http://floss.sarai.net/newsrack - Low Resource Computing - Devising solutions for networked computing in Low Resource Spaces (Define the parameters of the "low resource space" and work on it) - Generic - Developing Linux drivers/software for easily available hardware (usually the cheapest hardware available on the market is not supported under Linux (scanners, webcams etc)) [This would include writing a howto on how to get it to work under popular distributions (redhat, pcqlinux etc) and all.] - Review papers on emerging technologies - Indic Computing - IPV6 - Wireless Networks - Manuscripts for beginners For more information visit www.sarai.net. Sarai says it "is committed to promoting the free software and open source vision". Conditions: Applicants should be resident in India, and should have a bank account in any bank operating in India. These are support grants and grantees will be free to pursue their primary occupations, if any. Mail your project proposal, workplan and CV to both the following addresses: floss at sarai.net <https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc> Please mark your subject line 'FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Initiative'. Also point out what you see as the relevance of your work, and how you plan to share the resultant software once finalized. Enquires: floss at sarai.net Note: Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives, faculty are welcome, so long as the grant amount is administered by a single individual, and the funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual. *** Knowlege is power... share it equitably! [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] MAILING LIST FOR e-learning in FLOSS: ELEARN-OPENSOURCE(a)LST.IIEP-UNESCO.ORG [</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>]o[</>] Copyleft -- verbatim copying, with credits -- allowed/encouraged.

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(no subject)
by rajajimanikandan 08 Oct '05

08 Oct '05

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Software Freedom Day celebrated
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 07 Oct '05

07 Oct '05

Professional engineering students at MES College of Engineering organised a workshop "Mukti - liberate, enlighten, inspire", as part of celebrations of Software Freedom Day organised by the Free Software enthusiasts at the institution on 07 Oct 2005. Arun M and Anivar Aravind of FSF-India spoke and demonstrated the potential and enormous computing flexibility of Free Software. The event witnessed the FS Students' Chapter at MES College of Engineering releasing over 350 Compact Disks of 'Ubuntu', a distribution of GNU Operating System derived from Debian GNU Linux. "Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means "I am what I am because of who we all are". The Ubuntu Linux distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world. A primary goal of the Ubuntu Foundation is to ensure that a high quality distribution of free and open source software is available free of charge, throughout the world. "Free software is produced by expert volunteers who make their time and work freely available - our goal is to ensure that anybody in the world can make the best use of that work, at no charge." claims Ubuntu Community Relations, Netherlands based group that promotes Ubuntu. Ubuntu Foundation has made public commitments that Ubuntu will always be freely available, without the need for royalties or licence payments of any kind. "We include only free and unencumbered applications, ensuring that users have the ability to share and modify their software." As part of the 'bootstrapping process' of initiating the Free Software learning curve within the professional student community, the FS Students Chapter conducted parallel technical sessions at beginner, intermediary and expert levels within the institution, prior to the workshop. Anivar Aravind, Co-ordinator, FSF-India demonstrated a session on "Compiling Linux Kernel in a GNU system". The session focussed on compiling Linux Kernel in a GNU System to optimise the kernel for the present hardware configuration. Arun M, Secretary, FSF India spoke on "Freedom Matters" as part of FSF Movement's advocacy on the subject. The session explained the larger goals of Free Software Foundation of India. Discussions for funding viable software projects that would be of benefit to the Small and Medium enterprises or to the local community followed the Workshop. Dr M Achuthan, former Professor at IIT Bombay, earlier inaugurated the event. ------------------------------------- Cheers, CK Raju ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using NWebmail, BSNL's Webmail Program

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Software Freedom Day.
by Arun M 05 Oct '05

05 Oct '05

Software Freedom Day Celebration calls for the decolonisation of Indian minds from Proprietary Software. Commemerating the 136th birth anniversary of Mahatma FSF India AP Chapter celebrated the Software Freedom Day. As a part of the worldwide activity to celebrate freedom in software development, Free Software Foundation of India has organised a seminar on "Free Software and India". The seminar aimed at spreading the spirit of Free Software among young minds at Engineering collges throughout the state. Kiran Chandra, Convenor FSF India, A.P. chapter presided over the event. Prof. D.N. Reddy, Pricipal, Osmania University College of Engineering was the chief guest. Arun, Secretary of FSF India and Dr.Ravi Kumar, Director of Geodata Division, Geographical Survey of India were the other speakers. There was a technical session on "Power of GNU/Linux" with the aim of showing Free Software alternatives to proprietory software that we use everyday. Prof. Reddy noted that the availability of source code in Free Software has a potential to greatly impact the learning of technology in engineering colleges. He also listed the four primary freedoms that are the objective of Free Software in letting the user use, modify and redistribute software in any way desired. Arun noted the similarity between the East India companies set up by foreign countries long back and the current proprietary software companies that are a threat to our freedom. He described the proprietary software model as people keeping knowledge to themselves and building walls around themselves which hinders the advancement of science and technology in a knowledge society. Dr. Ravikumar told us how GRASS, a Free Software Geographical Information System, is creating a revolution at the Geographical Survey of India. It is zero costs and much superior alternative to proprietary GIS system that they were using earlier. He also mentioned that GIS software can be used as a key to solving problems and regulating the production of various crops in the A Software Freedom Campaign rally started at 9:35 AM from the University of Hyderabad, Gachibowli and touched the premier institutions like IIIT,JNTU and reached OU College of Engineering at 11.30 AM. The Freedom Campaign Flag was received by two children stating that the Freedom Campaign will continue as and long there is life existing on earth. The Freedom Campaign rally was led by M.Naveen the core member of FSF AP. An Oath was taken up by the one thousand participants. The pledged to take forward the freedom campaign and shall strive for a world with clear stream of reason breaking the narrow domestic walls that curtail this freedom. The pledge was taken from Rabindranath Tagores greatest work Geetanjali. Stalls were arranged for the participants, and they were demonstrated Free Software that could replace the currently being used proprietary software. Seven stalls covering common learning tools used by engineering students were setup. They include compilers like GCC,G++ integrated development environments like KDevelop, Anjuta, Eclipse , 3D modelling and animation tools like blender, installation of GNU/Linux operating system etc. This seminar was attended by one thousand engineering college students from all over the state. FSF AP core members co- ordinated the activity and GNU/Linux Osmania University Campus Club.

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