- Fsf-friends - lists.fsci.in

Re: [Fsf-friends] very poor image
by Dileep M. Kumar 23 Jun '04

23 Jun '04

On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 04:53:59AM +0800, Anwar wrote: >Also till yesterday the site had a w3c html mark on it and the check >had showed it had 68 errors describing as not strict, while all the >others are described as not transitional, with the errors ranging >from 3-30. I am not not sure if a page could keep its w3c compliant >logo while having many transitional errors. Now www.gnu.org.in/index.html is valid xhtml 1.0 strict. refer http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gnu.org.in%2F Regarding the rest of the pages, I have created a template which is valid html 4.01. Once I get the page approved, every thing will be fine. In future also please send broken links and other corrections (or suggestions) to fsf-webmaster (fsf-webmaster(a)gnu.org.in). Regards -- .''`. Dileep M. Kumar <dileep(a)kumarayil.net> : :' : http://www.kumarayil.net `. `'` Mobile: 98474-47437 `- Debian GNU/Linux - Choice of the Freedom Lovers

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Re: [Fsf-friends] very poor image
by Anwar 23 Jun '04

23 Jun '04

Refering to dileeps mail: I am the webmaster of FSF India website. Unfortunately I am not a good designer. Also I request you to carefully read the entire site before sending complaints. I am sure you haven't seen the site fully. IAC, you are the same person who send allegations about SMC project and then later regretted for doing so. First of all I am refering to the GNU Head logo that is present on fsf.org or gnu.org, I dont need to send it to you. Get it. Well I would say you are not a very good site designer. Also till yesterday the site had a w3c html mark on it and the check had showed it had 68 errors describing as not strict, while all the others are described as not transitional, with the errors ranging from 3-30. I am not not sure if a page could keep its w3c compliant logo while having many transitional errors. This is not my first mail about complaints about the website.Check http://mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/fsf-discuss/2004-March.txt.gz well I had recieved a mail from a guy from tifr claiming to be the site administrator saying that the problems I had pointed would be rectified. You might have also got the mail. I could see how bad you are when i pointed that the http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-*(discuss,friends,...) all had a link to http://mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/ , and the problem was rectified by creating another link to all the individual archives from http://fsf.org.in/mailinglists.html Well the thing is that there are other places that have link to individual mailing lists like fsf-friends. What you have done is not rectification but I could rather call it a detour to the archives so that you could hide the errors. Really bad. I think you dont know how to do it. How come the fsf keeps amateurs as its webmasters. Well I not saying that I am good because I dont know much about web designing, but I hate things that are done without perfection. About SMC I still dont regret it. Anu -- _______________________________________________ Get your free email from http://www.hackermail.com Powered by Outblaze

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very poor image
by Anwar 21 Jun '04

21 Jun '04

Well since everyone is celebrating the anniversary of the fsf-india, why dont I too celebrate the Occassion. But Whats there to celebrate about the formation of a non profit organization working in India that doesnt even know what its purpose is ? I am refering to the official website of fsf-india. Is the fsf-india trying to hide the identity of what the Free Software Foundation began by Stallman was trying to do. The site mentions about advocating, promoting and propagating the use and development of swatantra software in India but nothing is told about the GNU Operating System and the GNU Project. Is that all what fsf-india is about, to promote and propagate. While the fsf.org has a mission to preserve, protect and promote the freedom to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer software, and to defend the rights of Free Software users, the fsf.org.in only speaks of, is only a commitment. Then how come fsf-india has descided to help the sarovar in play-fair issue. There is a poor attempt from the site to promote Free Software and what freedom is all about. The site must either post more pages about GNU System and give more direct links to other places where users could get more information about what fsf-india is all about. The fsf-india is an emmissary of fsf. Then how come fsf shows itself as an indipendant organization adopting a different logo for its activities. The fsf-india didnt even bother to put up a GNU Head, the official logo of the Free Software Foundation anywhere on its site. It would have been better if the GNU Head was kept alog side the chakra. Its been three years and it seems that the fsf-india site is managed by a person who is illiterate about what freedom and free software foundation means. Is the fsf-india maintained by some site maintaining private company? Very poor image. -- _______________________________________________ Get your free email from http://www.hackermail.com Powered by Outblaze

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Raising levels
by Ramanraj K 20 Jun '04

20 Jun '04

Raising ridges raise water; Raising water raise crops; Raising crops raise the subjects; Raising subjects raise the king. That was the closest I could get to Avvayar's : Varappuyara Neer Uyarum; Neer Uyara Nel Uyarum; Nel Uyara Kudi Uyarum; Kudi Uyara Kon Uyarvaan. Regards, Ramanraj.

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News from the fields
by ramanraj＠vsnl.com 19 Jun '04

19 Jun '04

The "Madras Musings" issue dated June 16-30, has carried the following news, which should be noted by all those interested in egov: <quote> Palm leam records of significance were discovered at the Thanjavur Tamil University, documenting a British Survey of 2000 villages in a large area surrounding present day Chennai, a part of Thondamandalam. They indicated that between 1762 and 1766 there were villages which produced upto 12 tons of paddy a hectare - a level of productivity which is astounding and unachievable today even using the best of Green Revolution methods. The per capita food in this region of average fertility had been five times more than the average achieved at present. The secret of our forefathers' success - indigenous knowledge and traditional practices of water conservation! (Dakshinachitra News) </quote> A friend recently reminded me of the ancient wisdom: "Varappuyara Neer Uyarum,Neer Uyara Nel Uyarum, Nel Uyara Kudi Uyarum, Kudi Uyara Kon Uyarvaan" I guess no life threatening chloride based pesticides were used then, and also more fields under cultivation meant more evaporation of water and more rains too. How was the cycle broken and is it possible to return back to such times of plenty and prosperity? I hope egov experts can get the opportunity to analyse the historical records, and help us to return back to innocence. Regards, Ramanraj.

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Books and Ethics
by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh 18 Jun '04

18 Jun '04

Friends, I have long had this question in mind. Please help me out. Lawrence Lessig is a well known supporter of the free software movement. After all, he has joined the Board of Directors of the FSF. In the spirit of information sharing, shouldn't his books "CODE" and "the future of ideas" be free(as in freedom)? This happens with other people as well. For example Jessica Litman the author of the book "Digital Copyright", has not made the book free. I understand that, they have not published electronic versions of their book. But they do have excerpts for one or two chapters. I am not sure what kind of license they use for the book. I don't think the license is mentioned on the website.(Please correct me if I am wrong.) RMS, has always been very strict in this regard. All his essays, books, audio recordings and video clips - he has always made sure that they are made freely available. What I would like to know is, "Is it not ethically wrong, if an online version of a book is not made available?"(Especially when all books are typeset using computers, and all one has to do is upload the electronic version of the book to his website.) Vijay -- ______________________________________________ Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox. Powered by Outblaze

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Celebrating annual day of FSF India
by V. Sasi Kumar 15 Jun '04

15 Jun '04

Some of us in Thiruvananthapuram met on 6th evening and decided that we should celebrate the annual day of FSF India on July 21st. The group included Sathish Babu, M. Arun, V.K. Sajith and a few others. We are thinking of a one day programme that will include a public meeting, discussions and an exhibition. The exhibition will have posters on philosophy, posters on software and computers demonstrating different kinds of software. We hope that the function will draw some media attention and help in popularising Free Software. Applications like Blender, Gimp, OpenOffice and Scribus could attract both the public and media. An email discussion group, fsf-kerala(a)cc4.tifr.res.in, was also formed to discuss our activities, so that we could think of other activities in the future at Thiruvananthapuram, and also co-ordinate with people in other places who may be interested in conducting such programmes elsewhere. Any suggestions from members are welcome. -- V. Sasi Kumar <vsasi(a)hotpop.com>

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fsug-calicut@freelists.org;inquilab@yahoogroups.com; vimalekm@vsnl.net;kokul_k@yahoo.com;thomaspj@eudoramail.com
by Sajith VK 13 Jun '04

13 Jun '04

Hi all, Annual day of FSF India is on July 21st. We are planning of a one day programme that will include a public meeting, discussions and an exhibition. We hope that it can be a place for interaction between different free software promotion groups in kerala.. A mailing group, fsf-kerala(a)cc4.tifr.res.in, is formed to discuss activities and plan future plans in kerala. Please give your thoughts and suggestions on the event and what each of us can do for it.. -- "Freedom Matters" Sajith VK

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Announcing.. Planet FLOSS India
by Sayamindu Dasgupta 11 Jun '04

11 Jun '04

Announcing - Planet FLOSS India http://planet-india.randomink.org ************************************************************************* Planet FLOSS India is way for everyone to get an idea of what is happening in the world of Free/Libre/Open Source enthusiasts from India. It is a window into world, work and lives of FLOSS developers, contributors and users from India. Planet FLOSS India draws its inspirations from Planet GNOME, Planet Debian and the numerous other planets scattered throughout the world wide web. Planet FLOSS India is powered by "Planet", a RSS/RDF/whatnot feed aggregator. It works by downloading news feeds published by blogs and aggregates their content together into a single combined feed, latest entry first. Since it is just a simple aggregator, there is no scope for editorialising of content, and thus, the entries are not just about technology, but also about the lives and thoughts and opinions of the featured FLOSS'ers. If you are from India (you need not be physically present in India right now), and if you blog regularly, please get in touch with me (sayamindu(a)randomink.org). Your blog need not be entirely about FLOSS, we have no issues with you writing about your cat occasionally (heck! even I do it sometimes). :) To include you in the feed list, I would need an URL to your blog's XML feed, and your picture (optional, though highly recommended). Also, if you know someone who may be a likely candidate for inclusion in the Planet, please do let me know. -thanks- Sayamindu -- Sayamindu Dasgupta [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]

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[Fwd]: please comply with standards
by Mahesh T. Pai 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Any comments? ----- Forwarded message from "Mahesh T. Pai" <paivakil(a)vsnl.net> ----- > Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 23:46:31 +0530 > From: "Mahesh T. Pai" <paivakil(a)vsnl.net> > Subject: please comply with standards > To: contmngr-sfio(a)sb.nic.in > Message-ID: <20040609181631.GA5348(a)nandini.home> > > Dear Sir(s), > > This has reference to the home page of th Serious Fraud Investigation > Office, (http://www.sfio.nic.in/). > > The bottom of your page mentions that ``Site optimised for 800 X 600 > monitor resolution, java enabled, IE 4.0 or above.'' > > I feel that as an institution which has to interact with the public it > is most improper of you to `optimise' your pages for a browser for a > particular operating system. Firstly, it is in no way, > `optimisation'. You are simply using public funds for carrying > advertisement for a particular company. > > You ought be aware that the users of the world wide web use diverse > operating systems and browsers. In order to make things easier for > both developers and users of the internet, the W3C consortium (World > Wide Web Consortium) has laid down certain standards for web pages; > and it would have been appropriate for you to conform to those > standards. > > Also, you will appreciate that the Internet is a useful medium for > people with disabilities to communicate with the outside world, and > compliance with the W3C standards automatically ensures that people > with disabilities can access your site (for example, using a screen > reader). You will appreciate that as an organ of the government, and > an organisation discharging Sovereign functions, you have to adhere to > certain standards of fairness and propriety. > > In fact, on verification of your site, except for minor variations > which affect accessibility for the visually disabled, the pages are > by and large compliant to the W3C standard. What, then, is the > objective of recommending use of a specific browser? > > I hope that you will understand the issue in its proper perspective, > and ensure that your pages fully conform to W3C standards and further, > remove references to specific brands of browsers. > > Hoping early compliance with this request, > > Thanking You, > Sincerely Yours, > > Mahesh T. Pai, > Advocate, `Nandini', > SRM Road, Cochin - 682018. > Kerala State. > > ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.port5.com Encryption: A powerful algorithmic encoding technique employed in the creation of computer manuals.

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Re: Re: [Fsf-friends] [Fwd]: please comply with standards
by Kanti Jadia 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Hi Mahesh et all, The best way to proceed according to me would be http://www.anybrowser.org/ Campaign for a Non-Browser Specific WWW. We should spread the word for anybrowser. This would help us all. Thanks Kanti On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 Mahesh T. Pai wrote : >Kanti Jadia said on Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 03:27:38AM +0000,: > > > NIC maintains/develops/deploys the websites for most of the >Public > > utility, Gov. etc. > >Actually, non-NIC pages are worse. See cochinshipyard.com >and >kfri.org. > >And also have alook at http://patentoffice.nic.in/, which is >free of >the noxious advertisement, but not W3C compliant, anduses >proprietary, >non-standard tags. (hint - marqee). > >-- > Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.port5.com >free - (adj) able to act at will; not hampered; not under > compulsion or restraint; free from obligations or >duties; > not bound to servitude; at libertyx. > >_______________________________________________ >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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Re: [Fsf-friends] [Fwd]: please comply with standards
by Kanti Jadia 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Hi Mahesh, Just a point in time, As per the website "This site is developed and hosted by National Informatics Centre Contents are provided and maintained by The Serious Fraud Investigation Office Site optimised for 800 X 600 monitor resolution, java enabled, IE 4.0 or above." So its better to let NIC know what its doing. NIC maintains/develops/deploys the websites for most of the Public utility, Gov. etc. My 0.2 cents ( oops paise ) Thanks On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 Mahesh T. Pai wrote : >Any comments? > >----- Forwarded message from "Mahesh T. Pai" <paivakil(a)vsnl.net> >----- > > > Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 23:46:31 +0530 > > From: "Mahesh T. Pai" <paivakil(a)vsnl.net> > > Subject: please comply with standards > > To: contmngr-sfio(a)sb.nic.in > > Message-ID: <20040609181631.GA5348(a)nandini.home> > > > > Dear Sir(s), > > > > This has reference to the home page of th Serious Fraud >Investigation > > Office, (http://www.sfio.nic.in/). > > > > The bottom of your page mentions that ``Site optimised for >800 X 600 > > monitor resolution, java enabled, IE 4.0 or above.'' > > > > I feel that as an institution which has to interact with the >public it > > is most improper of you to `optimise' your pages for a >browser for a > > particular operating system. Firstly, it is in >no way, > > `optimisation'. You are simply using public funds for >carrying > > advertisement for a particular company. > > > > You ought be aware that the users of the world wide web >use diverse > > operating systems and browsers. In order to make things >easier for > > both developers and users of the internet, the W3C >consortium (World > > Wide Web Consortium) has laid down certain standards for >web pages; > > and it would have been appropriate for you to conform >to those > > standards. > > > > Also, you will appreciate that the Internet is a useful >medium for > > people with disabilities to communicate with the outside >world, and > > compliance with the W3C standards automatically ensures >that people > > with disabilities can access your site (for example, using >a screen > > reader). You will appreciate that as an organ of the >government, and > > an organisation discharging Sovereign functions, you have to >adhere to > > certain standards of fairness and propriety. > > > > In fact, on verification of your site, except for minor >variations > > which affect accessibility for the visually disabled, the >pages are > > by and large compliant to the W3C standard. What, >then, is the > > objective of recommending use of a specific browser? > > > > I hope that you will understand the issue in its proper >perspective, > > and ensure that your pages fully conform to W3C standards and >further, > > remove references to specific brands of browsers. > > > > Hoping early compliance with this request, > > > > Thanking You, > > Sincerely Yours, > > > > Mahesh T. Pai, > > Advocate, `Nandini', > > SRM Road, Cochin - 682018. > > Kerala State. > > > > > >----- End forwarded message ----- > >-- > Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.port5.com >Encryption: A powerful algorithmic encoding technique employed >in > the creation of computer manuals. > >_______________________________________________ >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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Free the Law
by Ramanraj K 10 Jun '04

10 Jun '04

Free the Law: Initiative needed to have indlii.org I was recently searching for some legal material and landed at http://www.austlii.edu.au/ - the website of Australasian Legal Information Institute. The website allows _free_ access to most of the Australian legal resources, including legislation and decisions of the High Court of Australia [the Highest court in Australia]. They have devised standard notation for citing case law that is uniformly followed througout Australia, with most of the Courts sending in the judgements and transcripts of proceedings to austlii in standard formats. Legislation is reported to the site by the attorneys who represent the state. Austlii has also led initiatives in England that led to www.bailii.org Free access is available to all to the legal resources at austlii In India, NIC has taken several initiatives, and a wealth of information relating to legislation and case-law are available, but not everything is free. AFAIK, there are no standard notations that enable citing case-law published at the NIC servers before the courts. Again, AFAIK, many proprietary software tools are used in India, in sharp contrast to Austlii that uses GNU C and has created its own in-house software to index information. [ http://www2.austlii.edu.au/%7Egraham/Slides/London/technical.html ] [ http://causelists.nic.in ] Austlii also has a worldlii site to provide access to legal information in other jurisdictions. An initiative to have a site named indlii on the lines of austlii may help to standardise reporting of legal information on the internet. Details about how the austlii project was created, funded and works is available at: http://www.lawonline.cc/accesslawright.htm under the title "Free the Law" Having free and easy access to legal information would be the first serious step in e-governance efforts. Probably, FSF-India, and a few law universities in India could take the initiative to move NIC to create indlii on the lines of austlii, possibly by teaming up together along with austlii. Regards, Ramanraj.

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Fwd:Latest news on European Softwarepatents
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 09 Jun '04

09 Jun '04

FYI --arky --- contributors-request(a)osnews.com wrote: > Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2004 12:00:00 +0000 > From: contributors-request(a)osnews.com > Subject: Contributors digest, Vol 1 #62 - 1 msg > To: contributors(a)osnews.com > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Latest news on European Softwarepatents (Arend > Lammertink) > > --__--__-- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2004 13:27:13 +0200 > From: Arend Lammertink <alam(a)home.nl> > To: contributors(a)osnews.com > Subject: [OSNews Contrib] Latest news on European > Softwarepatents > > This is a multi-part message in MIME format. > --------------090001040703070402060103 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-2; > format=flowed > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > Hi there, > > I was part of a delegation that handed over a > petition to the Dutch > government on behalf of the FFII, against > softwarepatents. > > As a result of this, the decision taken by the > Counsil of Ministers is > once again under discussion and might even be > overturned! > > I have typed about half the story and would like to > know if this would > have any chance of being published. > > Of course, I'm open to any suggestions and > improvements (English is not > my native language) and I still need to write the > other half, which I > think is quite interesting. > > For example, the only company that was present at > the emergency debate > were our friends from Redmond. Since they also > sponsor the Irish > presidency, it is obvious they had something to gain > here. > > What do you think? > Should I write the other half? > > Kindest regards, > > Arend Lammertink. > > > > --------------090001040703070402060103 > Content-Type: text/plain; > name="swpat.txt" > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Content-Disposition: inline; > filename="swpat.txt" > > The latest news on European Software Patents. > > > The battle about Software Patents in Europe seemed > all but lost. The council of ministers voted for a > directive that basically slapped the European > Parliament in the face because they shamelessly put > aside a democratic decision taken by said > Parliament. And even though the Parliament still has > a second reading where it has to go to a lot of > trouble to repair the damage done by the Council, it > is a serious matter that the Council of Ministers > have shown they have no idea of the devastating > consequences of their directive for the European > SME's. What's more, they have shown twice in one > week that they have no respect for the democratic > opinion of the European Parliament, which in itself > is absolutely unacceptable. > > It turned out that the Dutch Eurocommisionar had > played a big role in convincing our German > neighbours to vote in favor of a "compromise" that > basically puts the European Software industry on > sell-off, since of 30.000 softwarepatents the EPO > already gave out against the letter and spirit of > the existing law, 75% belong to non-European > multinationals and it is unclear what happens to the > legal status of these patents. > If he reads this, I want him to know that I am going > to vote for the Parliament coming Thursday as I did > last time and I, as a European citizen, want my vote > to be respected. > > > _Seemed_ all but lost. But it ain't over yet. We've > played our cards (and luck!) quite nicely here in > The Netherlands (if I may say so myself) and at this > moment the Dutch Parliament is seriously considering > to revoke the vote Minister Brinkhorst gave at the > Council. This has never happened before in the > history of the European Union! > > > So, what's going on out there? Did we miss > something? > > > Well, the ball started rolling because I knew a > member of the Dutch Parliament, Annie Schrijer ( > http://www.tweede-kamer.nl/leden_commissies_fracties/griffie_lfc/kamerdet63… > ), who turned out to be vice-chairman of the > Committee for Economic affairs in the Dutch > Parliament. > After the demonstration on friday the 14th of May at > the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs, I talked to > some of the representatives of the FFII and > vrijschrift.org and I told them I knew Mrs. Schrijer > and could be able to contact her. Since we thought > it might help, I decided to call her. > > Since she lives just a few kilometers from where I > live, it could happen that I went over to her place > the next saturday and was able to tell her the whole > story. Fortunately she had had patent issues in her > dossier before, so it didn't took long for her to > understand exactly what was going on. > > Even though she could not do much herself directly, > she could tell me how I could try to hand over an > urgent petition to the Dutch Parliament on tuesday > May 18th, the day the Ministers were to vote in the > Council. That always seems to "shake the bed" as she > put it. > > Well, I could not have imagened how right she was. > First of all, we offered the petition to the right > persons this time. Previously, we had offered it to > the civil servants who wrote the letters on behalf > of the Minister that later turned out to contain > critical errors... > Of course, these guys were not very interested in > "shaking the bed". They were more interested in > getting this over as quickly and quietly as > possible. > > But, there we were. > > Tuesday, the 18th of May. Just 5 geeks disguised as > businessmen standing eye to eye with the Commision > for Economic Affairs of the Dutch Parliament : > http://www.harmwal.nl/img/20040518denhaagmaastricht/pict0007.jpg > What happens in such a case is that you are allowed > to say your thing for about 5 minutes. After that, > it's usually "thanks" and off you go. > > This time, there was just a little tiny extra > detail. Apparantly Annie had done her homework and > she had noticed that there was an error in the > letter the Minister (or better: his civil servants) > had sent to the Parliament prior to the vote in the > Council, explaining that there was "agreement" > between the European Parliament and the Council, > which had been understood by the Dutch Parliament as > saying "dont't worry, everything is arranged and in > order". By that time, it was already clear that the > Dutch members of the European Parliament were not > exactly speaking about an "agreement". Oops. > > So, we had our hands on a classical case of > "onjuiste informatie" ("incorrect information") to > the Parliament by a responsible politician, not > seldom resulting in the forced resignation of such a > politician. > Clearly this is something the opposition is always > interested in. In the Netherlands, they have an > important task in being the guarding dog of the > Parliament. It just had to be wakened.... > > So, Annie whispered something into their ears that I > was unable to hear. However, we would soon find out > the guarding dog had been wakened. What happened was > that a letter was sent to the Minister where he was > asked to explain the situation. Unfortunately, we > don't have a copy of this letter, but the answer of > the Minister is available on the official website of > the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affars (in Dutch): > > http://www.ez.nl/upload/docs/Kamerbrieven/PDF-Documenten/4033973-vtk.pdf > (Exercise for the reader: Who actually wrote it?) > > Of course, we had some remarks (in Dutch), > co-authored by mr.ir. R.B.Bakels [1]: > > http://www.vrijschrift.nl/Members/arend/Brief_AO_EZ/becommentarieerde_brief… > > > > For those of you that don't understand Dutch, the > letter, prepared in the Minister's name by his civil > servants, contains just the standard arguments > copycatted from the European Commission, but no > answer to the question "was there or was there not > an agreement between the European Parliament and the > Council?". > > What might be interesting at this point is to take a > look at the transcriptions of the debate at the > Council of Ministers: > > http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/V002.ogg > http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/V003.ogg > > Especially the last part of the second transcription > shows an interesting insight into democracy as > practiced by the Council of Ministers. > > (Note: even though the extension suggests they're > ogg files, they're not. > They are transcriptions of ogg files and in > html format. The audio > recordings are also available: > http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/Transcription ) > > > Anyway, the answer of the Minister was unsatisfying > and therefore the Dutch Commission for Economic > Affairs ordered a "spoed-debat" ("emergency debate") > on the matter. They wanted to know if an error was > made and also if they would be able to revoke the > vote of the Minister, should they want to. > > > > :-:-: > > Short answer for now: > > * Yes, there was an error > * Yes, all European countries can revoke their vote > if they want to > > The Dutch Parliament will debate on the subject > before the end of this month. > > To be continued before publication ... > > > ======= > > [1] Mr.ir. R.B. Bakels. Connected to the Centre for > Intellectual Propertyright of the University of > Utrecht. Author of the "JURI 107" report about > Softwarepatents for the European Parliament > (together with prof. Hugenholtz). He is considered > as one of the leading experts on the subject of > Softwarepatents. > > > > --------------090001040703070402060103-- > > > > --__--__-- > > _______________________________________________ > Contributors mailing list > Contributors(a)osnews.com > http://lists.osnews.com/mailman/listinfo/contributors > > > End of Contributors Digest __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/

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[FSFE PR][EN] FSF Europe newsletter (fwd)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 08 Jun '04

08 Jun '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- 1. Introducing the FSFE newsletter 2. EU Council decision on software patents directive 3. AGNULA 4. Welcoming FSFE press speaker Joachim Jakobs 5. Georg Greve in South America 6. Protecting Free Software from over regulation 7. Other important public appearances 1. Introducing the FSFE newsletter Around the official general assembly of the Free Software Foundation Europe on May 15, the core members took the chance to discuss several ideas on how to improve public information about the activities of the FSFE. One of the results was the decision to periodically publish a newsletter, and this is the first one. 2. EU Council decision on software patents directive The most widely regarded event in May was probably the decision of the Council of the European Union about the Software Patent Directive. After the European Parliament made its clear vote against unlimited patentability of software algorithms, the Irish Presidency proposed a version of the directive that undoes virtually all of the Parliament's changes. Even though some countries did not approve it, this version got the necessary qualified majority in the Council. The fact that the Council's opposition against software patent was still stronger than expected can well be regarded as a result of the successful cooperation of FSFE, FFII and many other organizations in informing citizens and politicians about the danger of the Presidency's proposal. As the decision process is still not finished, the FSFE will continue to work on the software patent issue together with these organizations. 3. AGNULA While AGNULA (A GNU/Linux Audio Distribution) is already regarded a big success by all participants (and also by the European Union, who funded the project), work is not over with the final release. The FSFE still supports the project by helping with things like the AGNULA trademark license. 4. Welcoming FSFE press speaker Joachim Jakobs To relieve the core members from the increasingly time-consuming press work, the FSFE hired Joachim Jakobs on a part-time basis as a press speaker. 5. Georg Greve in South America Georg Greve is currently visiting several locations in South America, getting in contact with local Free Software Activists there and supporting them in building up a Free Software network there like the FSFE is here. His public activities in South America included an interview for Argentinas most important newspaper, a speech at the University of Cordoba about Free Software in Education, an interview for TV as well as for the largest national radio station in Uruguay and the keynote at USUARIA, a South American congress on Free Software topics. We expect these activities to help building up a global network of Free Software organizations, of which the FSFE will be an essential part. 6. Protecting Free Software from over regulation The Italian Chapter has been very busy trying to amend a new Italian law that could harm Free Software. To limit the supposed damages that the Italian motion picture and record industry claims to come from peer-to-peer file sharing, the government proposed a law that makes it illegal to publish any digital content on the web without "declaring to the SIAE that the publisher has a license to do so". The law also introduces more restrictions, making a criminal offense punishable with up to four years of jail sharing without consent of the author any file on the web, even if it is not "for profit". The law is so absurd that FSF Europe has been asked by BSA (Business Software Alliance) to cooperate to prevent its approval. Unfortunately, though, the law passed despite the fact that in the end both the government and the opposition agreed that "it is a very bad law". The government promised to correct it soon and already announced a revision: FSFE will continue its strong pressure on the whole Parliament. 7. Other important public appearances Stefano Maffulli participated at a forum about "Intellectual property" at the Istituto Bruno Leoni (IBL) in Italy to point out some problems regarding software patents. At the end of the month he participated to a "summit of Italian free software organizations" in Avellino where there was the chance to discuss a better coordination between them. -- Free Software Foundation Europe http://www.fsfeurope.org _______________________________________________ Press-release mailing list Press-release(a)fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release

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news from fsf-europe
by Mahesh T. Pai 08 Jun '04

08 Jun '04

The FSF-Europe has put out a News Letter. It is at:- http://lwn.net/Articles/88615/ Cant' locate this on the FSF-Europe site. -- Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.port5.com Buy Free Software -- It gives you freedom!

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grmtech.com - a free software documenting company
by Dileep M. Kumar 08 Jun '04

08 Jun '04

----- Forwarded message from aji(a)grmtech.com ----- >>>Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 02:43:12 -0700 (PDT) >>>From: aji(a)grmtech.com >>>Subject: A note about our company >>>To: dileep(a)kumarayil.net >>> >>>Hi Dileep, >>> >>>We are a web related company using free softwares and really blessed by >>>the free software community. In the coming days we are planning to work on >>>the following issues with fs community, >>> >>>1) tech writing >>>http://www.geteducation.com/techwriting/index.html , we will be doing the >>>documentation for free softwares and also will publish few useful article >>>time to time(looking for technical writers). >>>2) GNU press >>>3) FSDN >>>4) Any other thing that the community suggestes and which follows the >>>guidelines on http://www.grmtech.com/fund.html >>> >>>Regards >>>Aji -- .''`. Dileep M. Kumar <dileep(a)kumarayil.net> : :' : http://www.kumarayil.net `. `'` Mobile: 98474-47437 `- Debian GNU/Linux - Choice of the Freedom Lovers

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Hello
by rms＠gnu.org 08 Jun '04

08 Jun '04

Important data!

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Virtual forum: FLOSS for e-learning
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 08 Jun '04

08 Jun '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=15841&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION… UNESCO's IIEP Organizes Virtual Forum on Free and Open Source Software for E-Learning 25-05-2004 (UNESCO) An internet discussion on "Virtual Forum on Free and Open Source Software" (FOSS) is being organized by the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) in response to the interest expressed during the first discussion forum Virtual universities and e-learning Policy issues – What are they? and Whose are they? associated with the IIEP study on the virtual university and e-learning. At the conclusion of the first forum in February 2004, many participants asked IIEP to maintain its support for the community built around the topic of e-learning. The objective of this second forum is to support information exchange and reflection upon the potential of free and open source software for e-learning and to consider the pros and cons and its applicability for developing countries. The forum will take place from 1-25 June 2004 and will be organized in two sessions. Session 1 (1-11 June): FOSS – what is it and what should you know about it? FOSS for e-learning – what are the pros and cons? Session 2 (14-25 June): FOSS solutions for e-learning It will be generally moderated by Susan D’Antoni, the editor of the IIEP study on the virtual university, with input from the members of the informal organizing group for the forum: Tony Bailetti (Carleton University, Canada) Jean Claude Dauphin (UNESCO) Ross Gardler (University of the West Indies) Stafano Mazzocchi (Apache Software Foundation) Paul West (Commonwealth of Learning). The format will be informal with an open exchange of information among participants. However, in addition to the informed input from the organizing group, some experts have been invited to share their experience and ideas. Participants will be given a brief document introducing the forum, with several suggested general background documents. The discussion and debate will be summarized in a report that will be made available to all the participants as documentation on the issues and concerns related to the potential of FOSS for e-learning. To join the forum, you can send an e-mail message to: virtual.university(a)iiep.unesco.org

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GPL-Virus Or Vaccine
by Raj Shekhar 08 Jun '04

08 Jun '04

Hello @ all I have put an article on the Linux India Wiki called GPL-Virus Or Vaccine . http://lug-bhopal.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/GPL-VirusOrVaccine <quote> A common refrain that I keep hearing on the mailing lists and the websites is how the GNU General Public License ( http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses.html#TOCGPL), henceforth referred to as GPL, is viral. Microsoft, SCO and clueless marketing drones have added their share of fuel to this smear campaign, making companies and managers wary of choosing GPL licensed products. A virus is a parasitic microorganism that can make humans or computers sick; comparing anything with a virus is a nasty accusation. Usually the accusers provide no justifications on why has not tried to justify this accusation. Let us therefore try to investigate whether the GPL is really like a virus. </quote> Please have a look at it and let me know what you all think. Better still, you can edit the article (since it is on Wiki) to share your ideas. If you are new to wiki you can learn on how to use the wiki from here http://lug-bhopal.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/HowToUseWiki Regards -- / \__ ( @\___ Raj Shekhar / O My home : http://geocities.com/lunatech3007/ / (_____/ My blog : http://lunatech.journalspace.com/ /_____/ U

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Free S/w in Education
by Mahesh T. Pai 05 Jun '04

05 Jun '04

State of the IT syllabus in the States :- http://www.newsforge.com/business/04/05/26/0146253.shtml Iseems that inclusion of f/s in the syllabus is demand driven; the `you learn what we tell you to study' approach is only for non-free s/w. -- Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.port5.com ~/\$ mv -vfi linux gnu/linux

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Re: [fsug-kochi-discuss] M$ patented double lick
by Mahesh T. Pai 05 Jun '04

05 Jun '04

Anivar Aravind said on Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 12:52:10PM +0800,: > I must say that in my entire life, I've never seen anything quite as > stupid as what M$ has done this week -- i.e.patenting "clicking > technology". Groklaw has an excellent article on this; see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040605025933409 > I think I'll figure out a way to take an old Atari 2600 joystick > and turn it into a clickless mouse.... Nah. No chance. Patents like this cover *concepts*. Not things. It covers double clicks. At first glance, this patent covers even the pause `button' on the tape recorder your gran presented you. Have a sleepless night!!! -- Mahesh T. Pai <<>> http://paivakil.port5.com Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make all of them yourself.

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Sourceforge.net needs a mirror site in India!
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 03 Jun '04

03 Jun '04

Be a SF.net download mirror (South America / India) --------------------------------------------- SourceForge.net is looking to add a mirror in a South American country and India. If you have a *lot* of bandwidth (enough to provide the mirror a minimum of 40Mbps) and approximately a terabyte of available disk space, we'd like to hear from you. Besides helping SourceForge.net and the open source community, your organization will be listed on SF.net's download page, which is accessed approximately 1,500,000 times per day. If you have interest, please email pat(a)sf.net. Set the email subject to "bandwidth." Please include information about your company or organization and your bandwidth in the email. Thank you. --------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================== You receive this message because you subscribed to SourceForge site mailing(s). -- --------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa, India f r e d @ b y t e s f o r a l l . o r g Ph 832.2409490 / 832.2409783 Cell 9822 122436 784 Near Lourdes Convent, Sonarbhat, Saligao 403511 Goa ---------------------------------------------------------

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My Share Manager
by rajeev joseph sebastian 02 Jun '04

02 Jun '04

Hello Frederick, Couldnt find anything except a couple of emails on the ilug-indore group homepage: probably because im not a member. hjave you tried GnuCash ? i think it has support for stocks and shares. But im not too sure ... Rajeev J Sebastian > Could anyone offer feedback to Farooqui's work? Tks, > FN > > On Sat, 17 Apr 2004, Sharique uddin Ahmed Farooqui > wrote: > > > > dear sir, > > > > I'm an independent > developer(c++,linux,qt,mysql,java) . I have > developed an > > accouting software using Qt and mysql for small > investors > > , which keep track of their investments. Free > edotion is availble to download > > from groups.yahoo.com\ilug-indore. Also > screenshots of paid version is also > > there. > > Thanks. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 14, Issue 2
by rajeev joseph sebastian 02 Jun '04

02 Jun '04

Hello Frederick, Couldnt find anything except a couple of emails on the ilug-indore group homepage: probably because im not a member. hjave you tried GnuCash ? i think it has support for stocks and shares. But im not too sure ... Rajeev J Sebastian > Could anyone offer feedback to Farooqui's work? Tks, > FN > > On Sat, 17 Apr 2004, Sharique uddin Ahmed Farooqui > wrote: > > > > dear sir, > > > > I'm an independent > developer(c++,linux,qt,mysql,java) . I have > developed an > > accouting software using Qt and mysql for small > investors > > , which keep track of their investments. Free > edotion is availble to download > > from groups.yahoo.com\ilug-indore. Also > screenshots of paid version is also > > there. > > Thanks. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/

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[Fsf-friends] Free Software seems to have found a way to do that, but...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 02 Jun '04

02 Jun '04

THE INTERNET came with a promise that "everybody can be a publisher". Although not everybody wants to be a publisher, those who actually do, find it hard to make it work. As it turns out, this promise is only true in an extremely limited, technical sense. Yes, I can set up a website, or put my song on the Net, but what next? The problem becomes not so much technical as social -- there is a lot of sharing, but little in terms of making a living. Money remains squarely in the hands of the old industry. The issue of distribution is not just an economic question. It's also a political one. At stake is the 'semiotic democracy', that is the ability of the largest number of people to create and share culture freely. It is about making sure that despite of heavy-hitting marketing machines, new, independent content can still fill its audience. In short, the question is how do innovative production and distribution come together to support each other. Free Software seems to have found a way to do just that, but what about the rest of cultural production? How do we get from technological visions to actual cultures that are open yet sustainable in a climate where funding runs short? FreeBitflows will bring together artists, researchers, activists, and hackers from Europe and beyond to investigate current strategies to build sustainable, open and experimental cultures through electronic media. A conference, workshops, performances and an exhibition will examine cultures of access and the politics of dissemination from a broad range of perspectives. http://freebitflows.t0.or.at S P E A K E R S Ian Clarke (IE/US) architect and coordinator of the Freenet project http://www.freenetproject.org Marco Deserlis (IT) freelance journalist, Internet critic and media activist http://www.thething.it http://www.d-i-n-a.net Volker Grassmuck (DE) researcher at the Humbold University Berlin and initiator of the Wizards of OS conference. http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck/ Menno Grootveld (NL) co-founder of the former pirate TV channel Robotnik TV and co-founder of the festival for tactical media, Next 5 Minutes. http://www.next5minutes.org Bjoern Hartmann (DE/FR) conceived the Net label textone.org http://www.textone.org http://www.bjoern.org Reni Hofmueller (AT) media artist and activist http://helsinki.at http://www.mur.at Brewster Kahle (US) founder and digital librarian for the Internat Archive (IA) http://www.archive.org Paula Le Dieu (UK) project director of the Creative Archive, a BBC initiative to distribute its audio and video archival content in ways that allows the UK public to use it to fuel their own creative endeavours http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/03_march/02/on_… Pauline van Mourik Broekman (UK) founding co-editor and co-publisher of the techno culture magazine Mute, co-founded as "the Arts and Technology Newspaper" in 1994. http://www.metamute.com/ http://www.openmute.org Sjoera Nas (NL) works with Bits of Freedom, a not-for-profit privacy and civil rights organisation http://www.edri.org or http://www.bof.nl Istvan Rev (HU) professor of History and Political Science, Central European University, Budapest http://www.osa.ceu.hu Janko Roettgers (DE/US) writes for on- and offline-media about net culture, net policy and music on the Internet. http://www.mixburnrip.de http://www.lowpass.de Thorsten Schilling (DE) founder and president of mikro.org also http://www.bpb.de Pit Schultz (DE) author, artist and computer professional. Co-founder of Bootlab, Berlin and before that the mailing list Nettime. Currently, project manager for reboot.fm, a Berlin-based open radio http://www.Bootlab.org or http://www.reboot.fm Wendy Selzer (US) staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she focusses on intellectual property an dfree speech issues. http://www.eff.org http://cyber.law.havard.edu/seltzer.html Kristin Thomas (US) research director and organizer with The Future of Music Coalition and works for a DC-based PR firm. http://www.futureofmusic.org Exhibitions run from June 3 to 17, 2004. Locations: Semperdepot, K-Hause, Temporary locations: Karlsplatz, Vienna. POSTED VIA: -- --------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa, India f r e d @ b y t e s f o r a l l . o r g Ph 832.2409490 / 832.2409783 Cell 9822 122436 784 Near Lourdes Convent, Sonarbhat, Saligao 403511 Goa ---------------------------------------------------------

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Re: my share manager
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 01 Jun '04

01 Jun '04

Could anyone offer feedback to Farooqui's work? Tks, FN On Sat, 17 Apr 2004, Sharique uddin Ahmed Farooqui wrote: > dear sir, > > I'm an independent developer(c++,linux,qt,mysql,java) . I have developed an > accouting software using Qt and mysql for small investors > , which keep track of their investments. Free edotion is availble to download > from groups.yahoo.com\ilug-indore. Also screenshots of paid version is also > there. > Thanks. > > _____________________________________________________________ > Linux.Net -->Open Source to everyone > Powered by Linare Corporation > http://www.linare.com/ > -- --------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa, India f r e d @ b y t e s f o r a l l . o r g Ph 832.2409490 / 832.2409783 Cell 9822 122436 784 Near Lourdes Convent, Sonarbhat, Saligao 403511 Goa ---------------------------------------------------------

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Hidden message
by Vsasi 01 Jun '04

01 Jun '04

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Site changes
by Vsasi 31 May '04

31 May '04

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[Positions] at TIFR, HBCSE
by Nagarjuna G. 31 May '04

31 May '04

OOPS, XML and web engineers required to work on the gnowledge project at hbcse. see the ad. good for fresh graduates. http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/Data/Objects/pr_advt Nagarjuna

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Help with FLOSS Concept booklet
by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh 31 May '04

31 May '04

The book FLOSS Concept booklet http://wikibooks.org/wiki/FLOSS_Concept_Booklet is at the verge of completion. But I need some help with the following. 1. List of popular distributions that come with non-free software. 2. In the question "What kinds of problems might I expect to encounter using free software?". Write about inability to play encrypted DVDs? About the DMCA??? 3. The answer to the question "I'm still not convinced. Surely a big computer company knows best when it comes to designing software? Why would I want to use software designed by an amateur?" has gathered a lot of meat. Can somebody summarize it? 4. There are some questions on Digital Commons. Does anybody have answers for it? If there are any questions that might be useful for newbies please do add it... Regards, Vijay -- ______________________________________________ Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox. Powered by Outblaze

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Incoming message
by Vsasi 31 May '04

31 May '04

1 0

Re: Thanks :)
by Vsasi 31 May '04

31 May '04

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[Tugindia] Indic LyX on Blog (fwd)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 30 May '04

30 May '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Hi, We have started work on developing an Indic version for the LyX WYSIWYM tool for LaTeX. a blog has been created at http://blog.sarai.net/community/indic_lyx/ . Though work started on 15 may, all entries have been put up today, so endure the clutter please. please have a look and comment. Amitabh Trehaan _______________________________________________ Home: http://www.tug.org.in/ unsubscribe: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/tugindia

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Re: Yahoo!
by Vsasi 30 May '04

30 May '04

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Open access to scholarly information
by V. Sasi Kumar 28 May '04

28 May '04

Here is an update on the Open Access Initiative -------------- From: Stevan Harnad <harnad(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> Reply-To: BOAI Forum <boai-forum(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> To: AmSci Forum <american-scientist-open-access-forum(a)amsci.org> Subject: [BOAI] Elsevier Gives Authors Green Light for Open Access Self-Archiving Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 23:51:58 +0100 (BST) Elsevier has just gone from being a Romeo "Pale-Green" publisher to a full Romeo Green publisher: Authors have the publisher's official green light to self-archive both their pre-refereeing preprints and their refereed postprints. Elsevier has thereby demonstrated that -- whatever its pricing policy may be -- it is a publisher that has heeded the need and the expressed desire of the research community for Open Access (OA) and its benefits to research productivity and progress. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html There will be the predictable cavils from the pedants and those who have never understood the real meaning and nature of OA: "It's only the final refereed draft, not the publisher's PDF," "It does not include republishing rights," "Elsevier is still not an OA publisher." I, for one, am prepared to stoutly defend Elsevier on all these counts, and to say that one could not have asked for more, and that the full benefits of OA require not one bit more -- from the publisher. For now it's down to you, Dear Researchers! Elsevier (and History) is hereafter fully within its rights to say: "If Open Access is truly as important to researchers as they claim it is -- indeed as 30,000+ signatories to the PLoS Open Letter attested that it was http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/cgi-bin/plosSign.pl -- then if researchers are not now ready to *provide* that Open Access, even when given the publisher's official green light to do so, then there is every reason to doubt that they mean (or even know) what they are saying when they clamour for Open Access." Elsevier publishes 1,700+ journals. That means at least 200,000 articles a year. Eprints.org will be carefully quantifying and tracking what proportion of those 200,000 articles is made OA by their authors through self-archiving across the next few months and years. Indeed we will be monitoring all of the over 80% of journals sampled by Romeo that are already green. (The following Romeo summary stats are already out of date, because 1700 pale-green journals have now become bright green! http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Romeo/romeosum.html but we will soon catch up at: http://romeo.eprints.org/ [which is under construction, waiting for full journal lists from each of the 93 publishers sampled so far].) The OA ball is now clearly in the research community's court (not the publishing community's, not the library community's). Let researchers and their employers and funders now all rise to the occasion by adopting and implementing institutional OA provision policies. Don't just sign petitions for publishers to provide OA, but commit your own institution to providing it: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php Stevan Harnad -- V. Sasi Kumar <vsasi(a)hotpop.com>

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Open access to scholarly information
by V. Sasi Kumar 27 May '04

27 May '04

Statement on open access to scholarly information The Group of Eight vice-chancellors, representing Australia's pre-eminent research universities, record their commitment to open access initiatives that will enhance global access to scholarly information for the public good. The vice-chancellors note that: * information, if it is to achieve maximum benefit for society, must be readily available to a global audience * the rapid development of digital communication technologies provides expanded opportunities for the widespread dissemination of scholarly information * new business models are required to ensure that scholarly publishing is cost effective * any development in digital publishing must incorporate the current framework of scholarly publishing standards relating to the quality of inquiry and reporting * digital publishing initiatives must appropriately recognise and protect the intellectual property of the authors and require accepted standards of attribution * the Group of Eight universities are providing leadership in the development of digital publishing initiatives in Australia. The vice-chancellors support: * ongoing development of open access initiatives in Group of Eight universities * digital publishing practices that underpin the timely, cost-effective dissemination of the highest quality scholarly information with a commitment to good practice * further examination of criteria for promotion in new publishing models. Professor Ian W. Chubb AO Chair, The Group of Eight Vice-Chancellor The Australian National University Professor James McWha Vice-Chancellor The University of Adelaide Professor Kwong Lee Dow AM Vice-Chancellor The University of Melbourne Professor Richard Larkins AO Vice-Chancellor Monash University Professor Mark Wainwright Vice-Chancellor The University of New South Wales Professor John A. Hay AC Vice-Chancellor The University of Queensland Professor Gavin Brown Vice-Chancellor The University of Sydney Professor Alan Robson AM Vice-Chancellor The University of Western Australia April 2004 -- V. Sasi Kumar <vsasi(a)hotpop.com>

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Science Olympiads... Prof Vijay A Singh
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 25 May '04

25 May '04

During our recent GNU/LUG meeting in Goa, I had the chance of meeting Prof Vijay A Singh, the National Coordinator of the Science Olympiads. It was nice to know that Dr Singh (IIT Kanpur, on deputation at the Science Olympaids, is also a part of the FSF-Friends list. Wonder if the ideals of Free Software and FLOSS could be somehow networked with the National Olympaid, so that we could benefit from each other's synergies. Incidentally, Prof Singh is at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, so it could be easy for Prof Nagarjuna to build the links too. BTW, we have just shifted the venue of the GNU/LUG meetings in Goa to the Goa Science Centre, located at a nice setting on the Miramar beach. Our argument was that while the GSCP (Goa Science Centre Panjim) is promoting science, we are promoting technology -- as such a made-for-each-other match. We hope that we can take the idealism of FLOSS to the younger generation, and thus help take ahead the agenda of the GSCP, while at the same time gaining from a suitable venue for holding our meets. Let's see how this works. In the past, our Goa group had also closely networked with the Computer Society of India (Goa chapter). The only handicap was the lack of hardware for demos at their office premises, which they were very generous to loan out to us without any charge for our meetings held over the past two to three years. FN -- --------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa, India f r e d @ b y t e s f o r a l l . o r g Ph 832.2409490 / 832.2409783 Cell 9822 122436 Phone calls: preferably from 1300 to 0500 (IST) Try landlines is mobile is temporarily unavailable JUST OUT: Goa photos http://www.goa-world.com/fotofolio ---------------------------------------------------------

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Free Software User's Group in Bangalore...
by Abhas Abhinav 24 May '04

24 May '04

Dear Friends, Bangalore now has a Free Software User's Group (FSUG)! Starting off from the 'GNUs Grazing' initiative by Rakesh Ambati we have met up twice already. During Arun's trip to Bangalore earlier this month, we were able to press out a firm agenda for Free Software related activities in Bangalore. Broadly speaking, FSUG (Bangalore) works towards two broad areas: o Free Software advocacy, lobbying and awareness in Bangalore o Technical help for Free Software and GNU/Linux The minutes of previous two meetings are available in the list archives (not yet web-viewable) and will be put up on a web-site by tomorrow. (Or I could post them here to the fsf-friends list if that's more convenient!) FSUG (Bangalore) discussions happen on the fsub-bangalore mailing list. To know more about what's happenning, who's involved and how to get involved, please subscribe to the mailing list by sending an email to fsub-bangalore-subscribe(a)lists.deeproot.co.in . A lot of activities are planned for the next few weeks - please do participate and give you comments and feedback. Regards, Abhas. -- Abhas Abhinav <abhas(a)deeproot.co.in> CEO, DeepRoot Linux http://www.deeproot.co.in / +91 (80) 2856 5624 Getting Linux to work for you. Faster. Better. Today. Every way.

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Say 'NO' To SCO !
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 21 May '04

21 May '04

Dear Friends, Take few minutes off your nice weekend and read about the subpoena. Let's unite our voices to say no to SCO http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/subpoena.html TIA --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Domains � Claim yours for only $14.70/year http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer

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FLOSS "Concept Booklet" WIKI!
by Aniruddha Shankar 20 May '04

20 May '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The FLOSS Concept Booklet Wiki is online at http://wikibooks.org/wiki/FLOSS_Concept_Booklet For those who are not exactly clear on what a wiki is, it's a collaborative Web site comprised of the collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to easily edit, delete or modify content that has been placed there. This method of working, apart from being a literal application of the collaborative opensource methodology will allow many many more people than would otherwise be possible to contribute. The more the people who read, comment and modify, the denser will be this resource base, so please, people, contribute! The original introduction to the FLOSS Concept Booklet that I had posted in my earlier mail is appended with the appropriate modifications: Hello. I work in a non-profit organisation (www.sarai.net) that is deeply involved in and committed to Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We're in the process of creating and publishing a Concept Booklet on Free/Libre/Open Source Software that will, hopefully, be accessible even to people with an extremely limited understanding of computers and absolutely no knowledge of open source/free/libre software. In collaboration with one such layperson, we created a set of questions on FLOSS and are in the process of generating the answers and the additional content for the concept booklet. We'd be thrilled if you people would contribute as many answers as you can to the questions that are outlined in the wiki. Of course, please feel free to comment on the existing questions and to make additions to them. All contributions will be gratefully acknowledged. The booklet will either be published under the Creative Commons/Share Alike License or the GNU Free Documentation License and distributed free or at a nominal cost. We will, of course, be providing a full version online, including print-quality PDFs. This call for contributions from the wider community interested in free/libre/open source software is an effort to extend the methodology used in creating free software into the arena of collaborative publishing. All contributions, no matter how small, trivial or they might seem, are extremely valuable to us. Please, do take the time to read the questions and contribute, if possible. I apologise to those who are subscribed to two or more of the lists to which this is posted for the crosspost. Please feel free to forward this email to people or entities that you feel might be helpful. cheers, - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFArFVNhJkrd6A3rSsRAlgZAKC4yee13L3tCTb/k3n/6XP+JbcRBgCgnK4o HgX6ZHf4OczksDK0DEaX8BY= =3fIN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Some news aand some threats
by Mahesh T. Pai 19 May '04

19 May '04

An update to the FSF site. http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/subpoena.html And oh. That is a non-threat. So what are the real threats? See http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040226003735733 -- "Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty"

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Re: [Fsf-friends] FLOSS concept booklet...
by Vijay Kumar Bagavath Singh 19 May '04

19 May '04

I have answered a few questions. But I guess the questions need a little bit of reordering and rephrasing. I am posting this to the fsf-friends list so that the experts can correct me. It would be better if this could be done on wiki. Vijay ---------- Intro / Concept: What is free software? Free software is software that gives the user the following four freedoms Freedom 0: Freedom to run the program. Freedom 1: Freedom to help yourself, by studying and modifying the program to your needs. Freedom 2: Freedom to help your neighbour, by distributing copies of the program. Freedom 3: Freedom to help build your community, by publishing a modified version of the program. Well tell me what's not "free" about other kinds of software? So "free" means that I don't have to spend any money then? With free software, it might not be possible to "sell" the software itself. But when you get free software, you might be paying for the distribution media. Or you might be paying for support bundled along with the software. Or you might be paying for printed manuals that come along with the software. So in some cases you might get the software for zero dollars, in some cases you might be paying a small amount, and in yet some cases you might be paying a lot! Whether the software is gratis or not is an unimportant side issue, what is important is whether you have the above said freedoms. Proprietary software could also be obtained gratis. For example Microsoft is giving schools gratis copies of Windows, that does not make Windows ethically legitimate. How is Free Software actually made? You mean, how do people raise funds to develop free software? Many people who write free software are volunteers, they probably have an unrelated day time job. These people spend their free time developing free software. Commercial organisations that benefit from free software distribution or that provide free software support also develop free software by investing portions of their profit. Example of such organsiations are Redhat and Mandrake. There are many non-profit organisations that raise funds to develop free software, through donations from free software users. The Free Software Foundation is one such organisation. Other examples are SPI, Gnome Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, and the like. Some free software packages are developed by universities. The Festival text to speech engine, Octave - the Matlab clone are examples of software developed by universities. Many commercial organisations also contribute to the development of free software, because these organisations benefit from the existing free software code base. For example IBM maintains the port of the Linux kernel to the PowerPC, because it needs a OS for its processor. So how is this different from the production of other kinds of software? Well, freedom three has enabled a new development methodology, in which a lot of people can collabrate through the internet and can help make the software better. This has resulted in free software being superior in quality to other non-free software. So the term Free Software is a legal definition then? What do you mean by "Copyleft" ? What's wrong with copyright? How is this different? One way to make your software free would be put the program in the public domain. That way there would be no restrictions on the program and the users of the software would have the above four freedoms. But there is a problem with this approach. It enables uncooperative people to take free software make modifications in it and release it as non-free software. The new features might tempt some of the users to give up their freedom. And the free software developers would be forced to compete with improved versions of their own software! This is not mere speculation, this has happened with the X Window system and the BSD operating system, where less restrictive free software licenses were used. Copyleft is a way of using the copyright provisions to prevent people from parasitically using free software code in non-free programs. Copyleft ensures that the freedoms are passed along in every version of a free software program. The GNU General Public License is a realisation of the copyleft. What's wrong with copyright is a very different issue. You might want to read Stallman's essay on "Misinterpreting Copyright - A series of errors". But remember most of the free software programs are copyrighted. Is this Copyleft against the law? No. What does GNU GPL stand for? The GNU General Public License. If this software is free as you say then why do we need legislation to protect it? What is this supposed to mean... What other licenses exist to protect Free Software? There are many license that make a software free. But only some of them preserve the freedom aka copyleft. The non-copyleft license include MIT, BSD, ... The copyleft licenses include the GPL, LGPL, ... -- ______________________________________________ Check out the latest SMS services @ http://www.linuxmail.org This allows you to send and receive SMS through your mailbox. Powered by Outblaze

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Open Access Initiative
by V. Sasi Kumar 19 May '04

19 May '04

The scientific journal Nature presents some discussions on the Open Access paradigm: Nature Web Focus on "Access to the Literature" http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/ The Green and the Gold Roads to Open Access http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html (Harnad, Bordy, Vallieres, Carr, Hitchcock, Gingras, Oppenheim Stamerjohanns & Hilf) -- V. Sasi Kumar <vsasi(a)hotpop.com>

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Software Patents and India
by rajeev joseph sebastian 19 May '04

19 May '04

Dear friends, I support Pai's call for discussions on patent issues at local groups. I also urge the leadership of the FSF and also the lovers of free software, and freedom in general to rise-up against these series of events. I frankly think that its only awareness that will solve the issue - "they" can't buy them all. Rajeev J Sebastian __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/

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Debian Weekly News - May 18th, 2004 (fwd)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 19 May '04

19 May '04

---------- Forwarded message ---------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Debian Weekly News http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2004/20/ Debian Weekly News - May 18th, 2004 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to this year's 20th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community. In an [1]interview Miguel de Icaza [2]said that Debian's community commitment is fantastic, but it is a very hard platform to support for an independent software vendor. Philip Charles also [3]announced new K6 mini [4]iso [5]images. 1. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6989 2. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6989&page=2 3. http://lists.debian.org/debian-hurd/2004/05/msg00034.html 4. http://na.hurd.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/K6/ 5. http://eu.hurd.gnuab.org/pub/debian-cd/K6/ Two Debian Developers died. Debian [6]mourns the loss of two project members. Manuel Estrada Sainz (ranty) and Andrés García (ErConde) were killed in a tragic car accident while returning from the [7]Free Software conference held in Valencia, Spain. The Debian Project honors their good work and strong dedication to Debian and Free Software. The contributions of both Manuel and Andrés will not be forgotten, and other developers will continue their work. 6. http://www.debian.org/News/20040515 7. http://www.lliurex.net/congres/cas/ Status of Java to main Effort. Arnaud Vandyck [8]reported on the progress of moving packages that use Java but can be run without the aid of non-free software from contrib to main. A number of packages have been moved to main and new releases of [9]GNU Classpath, [10]SableVM, and [11]Kaffe promise further steps ahead. Two of the major issues currently being looked at are making [12]gjdoc a proper javadoc replacement and building [13]ant with Free Software only. People wanting to help can start by inspecting packages labeled as unknown on the [14]Java to main wiki. 8. http://lists.debian.org/debian-java/2004/05/msg00023.html 9. http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/classpath.html 10. http://www.sablevm.org/ 11. http://www.kaffe.org/ 12. http://packages.debian.org/gjdoc 13. http://packages.debian.org/ant 14. http://java.debian.net/index.php/MovingJavaToMain Debian powers Binoculars. The world's largest selection of [15]binoculars is powered by Debian GNU/Linux as Jon Thralow [16]reported. The site uses a technology they call dynamically generated HTML. The pages are regenerated every five minutes and pushed to the web server as static pages. This looks similar to the technique used for the Debian website itself with regeneration just more frequently. 15. http://www.binoculars.com/ 16. http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/05/12/157257 Status of GNOME 2.6 for unstable. Sebastien Bacher sent in another [17]status report covering GNOME 2.6 in Debian. The reason is to ask the release team for advice regarding the transition to unstable, given the [18]progress the packages have made in the last few weeks. The packages have been [19]tested by many users without any major issues reported. In response Anthony Towns [20]told him that many architectures are still missing and that GNOME is ready when everything has been uploaded to experimental and only the version number needs to be bumped up for unstable. 17. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/05/msg00064.html 18. http://pkg-gnome.alioth.debian.org/package-status.html 19. http://wiki.debian.net/index.cgi?GnomeTwoDotSixFAQ 20. http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2004/05/msg00071.html Should Sun use Debian GNU/Linux? David Edmondson [21]argued that Sun should base their GNU/Linux efforts on Debian. A key advantage of Debian is the breadth and depth of applications just an apt-get away. Glynn Foster [22]agreed with him and noted that for the most part Debian 'Just Works'. 21. http://www.dme.org/log/2004/05/14/linux-debian-bad-news 22. http://www.gnome.org/~gman/blog//15052004 Supporting more Features. Eric Dorland [23]wondered how Debian should handle requests to activate compile-time controlled features. He [24]asked to [25]enable deactivated features or split out packages with these features enabled, but the maintainers were concerned by feature-creep and having to maintain more packages than needed. Matthew Palmer [26]suggested to either create new binary packages, to add the features into the existing packages or to make it very easy for the user to rebuild the package to support the optional feature. 23. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00811.html 24. http://bugs.debian.org/222421 25. http://bugs.debian.org/231472 26. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg00813.html Removing System Accounts. Stephen Gran [27]wondered how system accounts should be treated upon removal if they were created upon package installation. Wouter Verhelst [28]explained that it may be a good idea to leave the system user since arbitrary files could still be owned by it. 27. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01151.html 28. http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/05/msg01156.html Right of Publicity. Branden Robinson [29]explained why he is annoyed by no-advertising clauses in several licenses. In the United States, there are several legal [30]remedies available to people whose names or likenesses are misappropriated for advertising or promotional purposes. In order to prevent similar misuse no special clause is needed. Branden seeks information on how this is handled in other countries in order discourage no-advertising clauses more actively. 29. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00540.html 30. http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/publicity.html IBM Public License. Frank Lichtenheld [31]stomped over the [32]IBM Public License again and wondered if it is suited for Debian. [33]MJ Ray and [34]Walter Landry raised some concerns. However, this license is already used for [35]postfix as Steven Augart [36]pointed out. 31. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00597.html 32. http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/oss/license10.html 33. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00600.html 34. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00603.html 35. http://packages.debian.org/postfix 36. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00617.html Sendmail Open Source License. Richard Nelson [37]reported that a new license for [38]sendmail is discussed and the authors are seeking feedback. In particular they want to know whether the new license is as acceptable as the sendmail 8 license. [39]Henning Makholm and [40]Nathanael Nerode asserted that a license is non-free if one is forced to go to San Francisco to defend ones innocence. 37. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00598.html 38. http://packages.debian.org/sendmail 39. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00636.html 40. http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/05/msg00742.html Concerned about new GPL Version. Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho is [41]concerned about the [42]Free Software Foundation (FSF) developing the next generation GNU [43]General Public License (GPL). One of the rumours about potential changes involve a requirement to post sources of GPL'd software that is used to power a website, which would probably fail the [44]Debian Free Software Guidelines. He also wondered whether differences about the GNU [45]Free Documentation License are symptoms of a deeper difference of opinion between Debian and FSF. 41. http://www.kaijanaho.info/antti-juhani/blog/en/debian/gpl-dfsg.html 42. http://www.fsf.org/ 43. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html 44. http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 45. http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html Security Updates. You know the drill. Please make sure that you update your systems if you have any of these packages installed. * [46]mah-jong -- Denial of service. * [47]heimdal -- Potential buffer overflow. 46. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-503 47. http://www.debian.org/security/2004/dsa-504 New or Noteworthy Packages. The following packages were added to the unstable Debian archive [48]recently or contain important updates. 48. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/newpkg_main * [49]amavis-stats -- Virus statistics RRDtool frontend for Amavis. * [50]aspell-bn -- Bengali Wordlist for Aspell. * [51]bittornado -- Bittorrent client with enhanced GUI and curses mode. * [52]diogenes -- Web content management system. * [53]hspell-gui -- Graphical front-end for the hspell hebrew spell checker. * [54]kstreamripper -- KDE frontend for streamripper. * [55]lksctp-tools -- User-space access to Linux Kernel SCTP - command-line tools. * [56]mtink -- Status monitor and configuration tool for Epson inkjet printers. * [57]perlindex -- Index and query Perl manual pages. * [58]siproxd -- SIP proxy/redirect/registrar. * [59]tcng -- Linux traffic control language interpreter. 49. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/amavis-stats 50. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/aspell-bn 51. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/bittornado 52. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/web/diogenes 53. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/text/hspell-gui 54. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/sound/kstreamripper 55. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/lksctp-tools 56. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/misc/mtink 57. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/perlindex 58. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/siproxd 59. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/tcng Debian Packages introduced last Week. Every day, a different Debian package is [60]featured from the testing distribution. If you know about an obscure package you think others should also know about, send it to [61]Andrew Sweger. Debian package a day introduced the following packages last week. 60. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/ 61. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=debaday * [62]binclock -- binary clock for console with color support. * [63]mywiki -- Personal wiki on GNUstep or Cocoa environment. * [64]srs -- Command-line Sender Rewriting Scheme client. * [65]telnet -- The telnet client. * [66]procmail -- Versatile e-mail processor. * [67]whitespace -- Programming language where only whitespace counts. * [68]regexplorer -- Visual regular expression explorer. 62. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13221.html 63. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13432.html 64. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13601.html 65. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/13874.html 66. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14220.html 67. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14410.html 68. http://www.livejournal.com/users/debaday/14835.html Orphaned Packages. 2 packages were orphaned this week and require a new maintainer. This makes a total of 159 orphaned packages. Many thanks to the previous maintainers who contributed to the Free Software community. Please see the [69]WNPP pages for the full list, and please add a note to the bug report and retitle it to ITA: if you plan to take over a package. 69. http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ * [70]imwheel -- Program to support the "wheel" on most new mice. ([71]Bug#249533) * [72]libmail-audit-perl -- Perl library for creating easy mail filters. ([73]Bug#248606) 70. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/imwheel 71. http://bugs.debian.org/249533 72. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/perl/libmail-audit-perl 73. http://bugs.debian.org/248606 Want to continue reading DWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteer writers who watch the Debian community and report about what is going on. Please see the [74]contributing page to find out how to help. We're looking forward to receiving your mail at [75]dwn(a)debian.org. 74. http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/contributing 75. mailto:dwn@debian.org --

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FLOSS concept booklet...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 18 May '04

18 May '04

________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 18:46:45 +0530 From: Aniruddha Shankar <karim(a)sarai.net> Subject: FLOSS "Concept Booklet":Contributions/Criticism/Addenda solicited -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello. I work in a non-profit organisation (www.sarai.net) that is deeply involved in and committed to Free/Libre/Open Source Software. We're in the process of creating and publishing a Concept Booklet on Free/Libre/Open Source Software that will, hopefully, be accessible even to people with an extremely limited understanding of computers and absolutely no knowledge of open source/free/libre software. In collabroation with one such layperson, we created a set of questions on free software and are in the process of generating the answers and the additional content for the concept booklet. We'd be thrilled if you people would contribute as many answers as you can to the questions that we have outlined below. Of course, please feel free to comment on the existing questions and to make additions to them. All contributions will be gratefully acknowledged. The booklet will be published under the Creative Commons/Share Alike License and distributed free or at a nominal cost. We will, of course, be providing a full version online, including print-quality PDFs. This call for contributions from the wider community interested in free/libre/open source software is an effort to extend the methodology used in creating free software into the arena of collaborative publishing. All contributions, no matter how small, trivial or obvious they might seem, are extremely valuable to us. Please, do take the time to read the questions and contribute, if possible. I apologise to those who are subscribed to two or more of the lists to which this is posted for the crosspost. Please feel free to forward this email to people or entities that you feel might be helpful. Cheers, Aniruddha Shankar Intro / Concept: What is free software? Well tell me what's not " free" about other kinds of software? So " free" means that I don't have to spend any money then? How is Free Software actually made? So how is this different from the production of other kinds of software? So the term Free Software is a legal definition then? What do you mean by " Copyleft" ? What's wrong with copyright? How is this different? Is this Copyleft against the law? What does GNU GPL stand for? If this software is free as you say then why do we need legislation to protect it? What other licenses exist to protect Free Software? Okay so I can see that Free Software is legal but surely if I duplicate something that means that someone is losing out somewhere along the way? History of F.S: When did this whole Free Software thing start? How long have people been using it for? So Free Software actually pre-dates Microsoft? So are you saying that in some ways the history of Free Software and the internet run parallel to one another? Okay, but now what is Linux? When did that come about? So how this changed the development of software in general? Who's this Stallman character then? Where does he fit into the picture? How do you see the future development of Free Software? Production Methodology: How is Free Software actually made? What kinds of people make Free Software? But I still don't understand why anyone would want to give away their work for free? What's in it for them!? What do you mean by a Digital Commons? In what ways could I benefit from involving myself in this Digital Commons? Arguments for using F.S: I'm still not convinced. Surely a big computer company knows best when it comes to designing software? Why would I want to use software designed by an amateur? But what about bugs? Surely Free Software is more likely to be virus prone? So you're saying that Free Software actually evolves at a faster pace than closed software? Software that can be modified actually runs better than closed software then? Free Software is only something used by computer enthusiasts, right? Have any established organizations actually used Free Software to their advantage? Personal Relationship to F.S: What kinds of problems might I expect to encounter using F.S? Okay but why would I want to modify my software anyway? Look, I'm no computer whiz! Isn't it easier for me to just use packaged software? Who do I turn to when something goes wrong? But how do I know I can trust someone not linked to a big company that has a reputation to uphold? Won't this cost me more than just calling someone out through the help-line of an established computer company? Well what do I have to lose from using Free Software? Okay so how would I begin to install Free Software on my machine? Glossary: - -- Aniruddha 'Karim' Shankar The Sarai Programme Key ID: 0xA037AD2B Public Key Fingerprint: 9167 C0E7 A679 0906 7E47 83C0 8499 2B77 A037 AD2B To get my public key, search http://pgp.mit.edu for my email id. To directly import my key into your keyring, run gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A037AD2B . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFAqLs6hJkrd6A3rSsRAnM/AJ97T14ztuABNlWolokpoF6koxeOcgCgvLGZ z59adLmHeP6FoXeah3OlmJ0= =Imd+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________

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death of democracy
by Mahesh T. Pai 17 May '04

17 May '04

I am forwarding a message to show how the European Union's legal policies are being hijacked by a few, in the teeth of strong public opposition. Just see how strongarm lobbying is winning (at as of now) in the teeth of opposition from an overwhelming majority. Why is this relevant on this list? Simple - the patent issue was re-opened in EU by the Irish republic, which has a coalition government. The smaller parties, which wield power disproportionate to its strength call the shots. One such party has been `purchased' by a particular company, and they are effectively dictating the terms here. With cow-herds who proudly trumpet their ignorance about Information Technology playing power-brokers and king (err queen) -makers at New Delhi, we are situated in identical situation as the Irish republic. And we have a serious additional disadvantage - lack of public awareness. I request all of you to devote at least half an hour to discussing philosophical issues and in particular, dangers from patents at the next local user group meet. ----- Forwarded message from Mandrakesoft Team <return(a)mandrakesoft.com> ----- Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 17:10:30 +0200 (CEST) From: Mandrakesoft Team <return(a)mandrakesoft.com> Subject: Mandrakelinux NWL: Software patents - fresh news and call for action To: Flash: Software patents - fresh news and call for action As a follow-up to our latest flash regarding the upcoming decision of the European Council to legalize software patentability in Europe, here are some fresh news and information on what you can do to help. If nothing changes, tomorrow, Tuesday May 18, the European Council, that is, the European body which represents all the governments of the European Union, will vote in favor of a directive that will legalize software patents in Europe. Last September, faced with a similar choice, the European Parliament voted major amendments to the directive text drafted by the European Commission, actually rejecting software patentability. However, the Council, ignoring all of these amendments, is going to vote in favor of a text that is even worse than the initial version of the Commission. Why can the Council take a decision which will be so harmful to the European software industry? Unlike the Parliament, which is a place open to the public, where Members of the European Parliament have had time to study the proposal and hear many positions on the issue in order to take a well-thought decision, the Council is a closed body where, due to the alledged complexity of the subject, representatives of the governments have handed out the file to committees of experts. These experts, who re-drafted the text and wrote position papers on why to vote it, are in fact mostly representatives from the national patent offices, backed by the heads of the legal departments of some big industrial companies, all of whom have a common interest: more patents mean more power for them, irrespective of the harm that will be done to the economy at large, and even to their own companies. In the name of "the Industry" and of "innovation", they manipulated the political decision-makers to make them believe that the new text did not allow to patent pure software, that it was a good compromise between the Commission and Parliament texts, and that not all of the parliamentary amendments could be kept because some of them were illegal with respect to international treaties such as TRIPS. All of this is plain lie. In fact, if voted, the text of the Council would lead to a situation where big companies with large patent portfolios use these to lock their respective markets and prevent competition from innovative SMEs, and where "intellectual property" companies that do not create any software use their own patent portfolios to collect license fee rents from everybody. This is the situation which is happening in the US, putting at risk its successful software industry. This is what may just happen in Europe in a few months. However, it is not too late. Because of growing pressure from computer professionals and from the public, and because they get more and more feed-back from the media, political decision-makers begin to get aware of the issues, and to have doubts about the sincerity of the patent lobby. In some countries, they have taken the file back from the patent offices http://lwn.net/Articles/85379/ http://kwiki.ffii.org/?SwpatcninoEn and some countries of the Council have just decided to switch from a voting procedure without debate to a voting procedure with debate, as the text gets less and less consensus among the members of the European Union. You can convince even more of them to reject software patentability. In order to do that, please take some time to read about the issues at stake, and spread the information across your friends and business contacts, the press, your members of the parliament and your government. It is essential that elected policy makers get back into command of the situation and do not leave the patent offices decide alone. Here are some texts which can help you to present the issues to the media and to convince policy-makers of all countries of the European Union. A very readable analysis by Fran?ois Pellegrini explaining the legal and economic issues of software patentability: http://www.abul.org/article191.html A thorough analysis by Jonas Maebe of the difference between the three versions of the directive, and why software patents are indeed illegal with respect to TRIPS: http://www.elis.ugent.be/~jmaebe/swpat/councilanalysis/paper-en.pdf Positions of the member countries of the European Union: http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/ (add "pt", "ie", "fr", "de", "be", "gr", etc to have the positions of the member countries) The page of the FFII giving some directions for actions: http://kwiki.ffii.org/?LtrSmePolit0405En A recent paper published in the Washington Post describing the current situation in the United States: "Patenting Air or Protecting Property? Information Age Invents a New Problem" http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54548-2003Dec10?language=printer 31 companies sued for using the JPEG image format (the plaintiff filed for a patent while recommending the adoption in international bodies of a standard including its patented technology): http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html%3Ftw%3Dwn_bizhead_1 A US company sues companies of on-line content distribution: http://www.e-data.com/ http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5205529.html http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5144097.html A well-documented file on the reference site Law.com: http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZV4RVSSPC Thank you very much for your help. Mandrakesoft Online Team. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- "Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve neither security nor liberty"

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Patently stupid
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 14 May '04

14 May '04

Hi, Patents are back !!!!! Hide if you can, they'll get you. <news> In direct contravention of the recent vote by the European Parliament to curtail Software Patents, the Irish Presidency of the European Union has surreptitiously reinstated unlimited software patent language into the text of a statement to be adopted by the European Council of Ministers on Monday, May 17, without further debate! The new text, if adopted, will extend Software Patents to every piece of software, including computer programs, data structures, and process descriptions. This will directly harm most software firms and all Open Source projects unable to pay patent licensing tribute, and amounts to an appropriation of the public domain by proprietary interests. A direct beneficiary will be a new class of pure patent companies without any real business or contribution to employment, which will use the threat of litigation to extort payments. Of note is that a sponsor of the Irish Presidency is Microsoft, currently building a large patent portfolio. If the Software Patent text is adopted, Microsoft may use this patent portfolio against Linux and other Open Source projects. </news> Read More Software patents back on the horizon after EU leaders ignore the vote of MEPs: http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/05/13/1447225.shtml?tid=132&tid=1… FYI --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/

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Re: [Fsf-friends] FairPlay is now Hymn
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 11 May '04

11 May '04

--- Sajith T S <sajith(a)symonds.net> wrote: > Rakesh 'arky' Ambati wrote: > > > The project has been renamed Hymn, according to > Anand > > Babu, the maintainer of the project. It is being > > hosted on two sites by a US-based hosting service > > provider. > > Where is Hymn hosted? Just found this news update. The project has been renamed Hymn, according to Anand Babu, the maintainer of the project. It is being hosted on two sites (http://playfair.org/ and http://hymn-project.org) by a U.S.-based hosting service provider. Babu said last month that the project would be hosted outside the U.S. cheers --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover

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