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[raju@linux-delhi.org: [LIG] London University doesn't permit Linux/Unix]
by Nagarjuna G. 24 Oct '02

24 Oct '02

RMS, are you aware of this? FSF should protest. Nagarjuna ----- Forwarded message from Raju Mathur <raju(a)linux-delhi.org> ----- Envelope-to: nagarjun(a)hbcse.tifr.res.in From: Raju Mathur <raju(a)linux-delhi.org> List-Archive: <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=linux-india-general> List-Help: <mailto:linux-india-general-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=help> List-Id: General non-technical discussions about Linux in India <linux-india-general.lists.sourceforge.net> List-Post: <mailto:linux-india-general@lists.sourceforge.net> List-Subscribe: <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-general>, <mailto:linux-india-general-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=subscribe> List-Unsubscribe: <https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-general>, <mailto:linux-india-general-request@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=unsubscribe> Reply-To: linux-india-general(a)lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [LIG] London University doesn't permit Linux/Unix To: ilugd(a)wpaa.org, linux-india-general(a)lists.sourceforge.net X-AntiVirus: OK! AntiVir MailGate Version 2.0.0.0 at hbcse.tifr.res.in has not found any known virus in this email. X-BeenThere: linux-india-general(a)lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.9-sf.net X-Original-Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 09:35:23 +0530 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.4 required=7.0 tests=SUPERLONG_LINE version=2.31 Interesting... http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=7d532ada.020918… I'm moving into King's College (London University) student accomodation at the moment. They give out LAN connections, which is great! But to my horror, I find this text in their terms and conditions: > You may not run any Unix operating system since they can represent a serious > risk to network integrity. Any student found running a Unix system (e.g. > Linux) connected to the College network will have that system disconnected. <snip> -- Raju -- Raju Mathur raju(a)kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ It is the mind that moves ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by: Influence the future of Java(TM) technology. Join the Java Community Process(SM) (JCP(SM)) program now. http://ads.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?sunm0002en _______________________________________________ Linux-india-general mailing list Linux-india-general(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-general ----- End forwarded message -----

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US State Congressman tries to ban the GPL
by Sayamindu Dasgupta 23 Oct '02

23 Oct '02

Hello, I just got this at newforge - entire text copy pasted (apologies for that) It would be helpful if you can fwd this to your American friends, who in turn can write to these Congressmen. -regards- Sayamindu PS: Sayan, could you post an article on this at www.peacefualction.org, I am not being able to access the administrative interface =========Begin Message================ Wednesday October 23, 2002 - [ 12:47 PM GMT ] Print this Article Topic - Government An anonymous reader writes: "Leaders of the New Democrat Coalition attempt to outlaw GPL. A call to sign off on explicit rejection of "licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption of promising cyber security technologies developed through federal R & D." has been issued by Adam Smith, Congressman for the Ninth District in the State of Washington. It's already signed off on by Rep. Tom Davis(R-Va), Chairman of Government Reform Subcomittee on Technology, and Rep. Jim Turner (D-TX) Ranking Member of the same committee, with the backing of Rep. Jim Davis (D-FL), and Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI). It's a note to fellow New Democrats under the guise of protecting commercial interest's right to make money from the fruits of federal R & D, and to sign off on an attached letter to Richard A. Clarke, Chair of the President's Critical Infrastructure. They are attempting to convince Clarke, Chair of the President's that licensing terms such as "those in the GNU or GPL" are restrictive, preclude innovation, improvement, adoption and establishment of commercial IP rights. Let's take a look at the highlights: 1) They use the Internet, by virtue of TCP/IP, as "proof" of their thesis. 2) They state that you cannot improve OR adopt OR commercialize GPL software. 3) They state that you cannot integrate GPL'd software with proprietery software. 4) They say you should keep publicly funded code away from the public sector, so that proprietary interests can make money from the work. 5) They equate a lack of understanding of the GPL with valid reasoning against it. In essence, that non-proprietary interests should not be allowed to use, adopt, improve, or make money from the work. That taxpayers should pay for it twice. And that nobody should be able to stop commercial entities from taking publicly funded code, they will then close off. Write or fax each of the Congressmen mentioned as supporting this, and let them know they have been given bad information and that categorically anti-opensource and anti-GPL stance will be reflected at voting time: Rep. Jim Davis 424 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-3376 Fax: (202) 225-5652 Webmail: http://www.house.gov/jimdavis/message.html Rep. Tom Davis 306 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515-4611 Phone: (202) 225-1492 Fax: (202) 225-3071 Rep. Ron Kind 1713 Longworth HOB Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: 202.225.5506 Fax: 202.225.5739 Rep. Adam Smith 116 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: 202-225-8901 Fax: 202-225-5893 E-Mail: http://www.house.gov/adamsmith/contact/contact.htm l Rep. Jim Turner 208 Cannon HOB Washington, DC 20515 Phone: (202) 225-2401 Fax: (202) 225-5955 For those without e-mail listed, email them at: http://www.house.gov/writerep/ Here's the note to the New Democrats from Smith, Kind and J. Davis: Support Innovation in Cybersecurity -- Sign The Attached Dear Colleague Deadline: Friday, October 18th Dear New Democrat Colleague: Attached is a letter that is being sent to Dick Clarke, the Chair of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. As he shapes the "National Strategy"on cybersecurity, it is important to affirm that government R&D should be made available under intellectual property licenses that allow for further development and commercialization of that work. Licenses such as the General Public License (GPL) are problematic and threaten to undermine innovation and security. I urge you to sign this letter. As you know, the basis of the Internet - the TCP/IP protocol - is a result of federal R&D efforts at DARPA. The advancement and commercialization of this research provided significant economic growth as well as gains in productivity and efficiency. Public-private partnerships have been hallmarks of technological innovation and government has played a positive role in fostering innovation by allowing the private sector to develop commercial products from the results of publicly funded research. As such it is important that the National Strategy reject any licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption of promising cybersecurity technologies developed through federal R&D. The terms of restrictive license's - such as those in the GNU or GPL - prevent companies from adopting, improving, commercializing and deriving profits from the software by precluding companies from establishing commercial IP rights in any subsequent code. Thus, if government R&D creates a security innovation under a restrictive license, a commercial vendor will not integrate that code into its software. So long as government research is not released under licensing terms that restrict commercialization, publicly funded research provides an important resource for the software industry. New Democrats have long supported public-private partnerships -- it's important that any licenses do not compromise a company's intellectual property rights in their own technology. I encourage you to sign the attached letter to Mr. Clarke. If you have any questions, please contact Mike Mullen (Rep. Jim Turner; 5-2401) or John Mulligan (Rep. Adam Smith; 5-8901). Thank you. Sincerely, Adam Smith Member of Congress Ron Kind Member of Congress Jim Davis Member of Congress Text of attached letter to Mr. Clarke Congress of the United States Washington DC 20515 October 8, 2002 Honorable Richard A. Clarke Chair, President's Critical Infrastructure Board The White House Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. Clarke: We are writing to submit our views on the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace that you circulated for comment on September 18, 2002. We believe the National Strategy should explicitly recognize that overall cyber security will improve if federally funded research and development is made available to Americans under intellectual property licenses that allow for further development and commercialization of that work product. This is a long-standing federal principle that should be explicitly stated in the National Strategy. The leading example of this principle is DARPA's research in the 1970s that resulted in TCP/IP - the key set of communications standards that form the technical basis of today's Internet. These communications standards were made available under licensing terms allowing their integration into commercial software, which in turn enabled a wide range of companies to develop innovative communication and networkingservices. Taxpayers are still realizing a tremendous return on that federal investment through Internet driven productivity gains, economic growth, job creation, and individual empowerment that could not have been predicted by the federal, academic and private sector researchers who developed TCP/IP. However, none of these returns would have been possible unless the research was made available under licensing terms that allowed the private sector to commercialize TCP/IP. Nor would the government and industry have enjoyed the fruits of this economic activity-- fruits that have funded additional research and development-- unless it had been made available for commercialization. It would be very unfortunate - indeed, couterproductive and contrary to the public-private partnership that is at the core of the national cyber security strategy - if companies were reluctant to adopt promising security technologies produced by federal research for fear that doing so may compromise their intellectual property rights in their own technology. For these reasons, it is essential that the National Strategy affirm federal tradition by explicitly rejecting licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption of promising cyber security technologies developed through federal R&D. We commend your hard work on an issue of pressing importance, appreciate the opportunity to participate in this process, and trust you'll consider our views when you issue the final version of your report. Sincerely, (signed) Tom Davis (signed) Jim Turner Ranking Member, Reform Subcommittee on Technology NOTE: Their letter is addressed to Mr. Clarke who has *not* expressed support of this initiative."

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Can you trust your computer?
by Frederick Noronha 23 Oct '02

23 Oct '02

Can you trust your computer? (Xposted) By Richard Stallman - Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal. Proprietary software means, fundamentally, that you don't control what it does; you can't study the source code, or change it. It's not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage. Microsoft has done this several times: one version of Windows was designed to report to Microsoft all the software on your hard disk; a recent "security" upgrade in Windows Media Player required users to agree to new restrictions. But Microsoft is not alone: the KaZaa music-sharing software is designed so that KaZaa's business partner can rent out the use of your computer to their clients. These malicious features are often secret, but even once you know about them it is hard to remove them, since you don't have the source code. In the past, these were isolated incidents. "Trusted computing" would make it pervasive. "Treacherous computing" is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission. The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. (Microsoft's version of this is called "palladium.") Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If you don't allow your computer to obtain the new rules periodically from the Internet, some capabilities will automatically cease to function. Of course, Hollywood and the record companies plan to use treacherous computing for "DRM" (Digital Restrictions Management), so that downloaded videos and music can be played only on one specified computer. Sharing will be entirely impossible, at least using the authorized files that you would get from those companies. You, the public, ought to have both the freedom and the ability to share these things. (I expect that someone will find a way to produce unencrypted versions, and to upload and share them, so DRM will not entirely succeed, but that is no excuse for the system.) Making sharing impossible is bad enough, but it gets worse. There are plans to use the same facility for email and documents -- resulting in email that disappears in two weeks, or documents that can only be read on the computers in one company. Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. "Getting it in writing" doesn't protect you when the order is written in disappearing ink. Imagine if you get an email from your boss stating a policy that is illegal or morally outrageous, such as to shred your company's audit documents, or to allow a dangerous threat to your country to move forward unchecked. Today you can send this to a reporter and expose the activity. With treacherous computing, the reporter won't be able to read the document; her computer will refuse to obey her. Treacherous computing becomes a paradise for corruption. Word processors such as Microsoft Word could use treacherous computing when they save your documents, to make sure no competing word processors can read them. Today we must figure out the secrets of Word format by laborious experiments in order to make free word processors read Word documents. If Word encrypts documents using treacherous computing when saving them, the free software community won't have a chance of developing software to read them -- and if we could, such programs might even be forbidden by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the U.S. government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself. You might think you can find out what nasty things a treacherous computing application does, study how painful they are, and decide whether to accept them. It would be short-sighted and foolish to accept, but the point is that the deal you think you are making won't stand still. Once you come depend on using the program, you are hooked and they know it; then they can change the deal. Some applications will automatically download upgrades that will do something different -- and they won't give you a choice about whether to upgrade. Today you can avoid being restricted by proprietary software by not using it. If you run GNU/Linux or another free operating system, and if you avoid installing proprietary applications on it, then you are in charge of what your computer does. If a free program has a malicious feature, other developers in the community will take it out, and you can use the corrected version. You can also run free application programs and tools on non-free operating systems; this falls short of fully giving you freedom, but many users do it. Treacherous computing puts the existence of free operating systems and free applications at risk, because you may not be able to run them at all. Some versions of treacherous computing would require the operating system to be specifically authorized by a particular company. Free operating systems could not be installed. Some versions of treacherous computing would require every program to be specifically authorized by the operating system developer. You could not run free applications on such a system. If you did figure out how, and told someone, that could be a crime. There are proposals already for U.S. laws that would require all computers to support treacherous computing, and to prohibit connecting old computers to the Internet. The CBDTPA (we call it the Consume But Don't Try Programming Act) is one of them. But even if they don't legally force you to switch to treacherous computing, the pressure to accept it may be enormous. Today people often use Word format for communication, although this causes several sorts of problems (see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html). If only a treacherous computing machine can read the latest Word documents, many people will switch to it, if they view the situation only in terms of individual action (take it or leave it). To oppose treacherous computing, we must join together and confront the situation as a collective choice. For further information about treacherous computing, see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html. To block treacherous computing will require large numbers of citizens to organize. We need your help! The Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) and Public Knowledge (www.publicknowledge.org) are campaigning against treacherous computing, and so is the FSF-sponsored Digital Speech Project (www.digitalspeech.org). Please visit these Web sites so you can sign up to support their work. You can also help by writing to the public affairs offices of Intel, IBM, HP/Compaq, or anyone you have bought a computer from, explaining that you don't want to be pressured to buy "trusted" computing systems so you don't want them to produce any. This can bring consumer power to bear. If you do this on your own, please send copies of your letters to the organizations above. Postscripts: 1. The GNU Project distributes the GNU Privacy Guard, a program that implements public-key encryption and digital signatures, which you can use to send secure and private email. It is useful to explore how GPG differs from treacherous computing, and see what makes one helpful and the other so dangerous. When someone uses GPG to send you an encrypted document, and you use GPG to decode it, the result is an unencrypted document that you can read, forward, copy, and even re-encrypt to send it securely to someone else. A treacherous computing application would let you read the words on the screen, but would not let you produce an unencrypted document that you could use in other ways. GPG, a free software package, makes security features available to the users; they use it. Treacherous computing is designed to impose restrictions on the users; it uses them. 2. Microsoft presents Palladium as a security measure, and claims that it will protect against viruses, but this claim is evidently false. A presentation by Microsoft Research in October 2002 stated that one of the specifications of Palladium is that existing operating systems and applications will continue to run; therefore, viruses will continue to be able to do all the things that they can do today. When Microsoft speaks of "security" in connection with Palladium, they do not mean what we normally mean by that word: protecting your machine from things you do not want. They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine from access by you in ways others do not want. A slide in the presentation listed several types of secrets Palladium could be used to keep, including "third party secrets" and "user secrets" -- but it put "user secrets" in quotation marks, recognizing that this is not what Palladium is really designed for. The presentation made frequent use of other terms that we frequently associate with the context of security, such as "attack," "malicious code," "spoofing," as well as "trusted." None of them means what it normally means. "Attack" doesn't mean someone trying to hurt you, it means you trying to copy music. "Malicious code" means code installed by you to do what someone else doesn't want your machine to do. "Spoofing" doesn't mean someone fooling you, it means you fooling Palladium. And so on. 3. A previous statement by the Palladium developers stated the basic premise that whoever developed or collected information should have total control of how you use it. This would represent a revolutionary overturn of past ideas of ethics and of the legal system, and create an unprecedented system of control. The specific problems of these systems are no accident; they result from the basic goal. It is the goal we must reject. Copyright 2002 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.

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FSF-Edu mailing list
by Nagarjuna G. 23 Oct '02

23 Oct '02

Due to some problems with the fsf-edu mailing list, the list has been recreated with the same members. Some of you who have configured the list may have lost the configurations in this process, such as if you have set the mailing list in the digest mode. If you find any problems in accessing please inform me. Sorry for the inconvenience! Nagarjuna

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Police put GNU/Linux on trial
by Baiju M 21 Oct '02

21 Oct '02

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2123999,00.html

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Re: [Bytesforall_Readers] More on Windows versus Free Software
by CK Raju 19 Oct '02

19 Oct '02

Hindu archives it the next day. Here's the new link http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/10/15/stories/2002101404040400.htm CK Raju On Saturday 19 October 2002 00:01, you wrote: > Yes, I too had a problem in accessing it. Maybe we could source the journo > who wrote it, Roy Mathews. Raju could you help? Tks, FN > > On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, James Howison wrote:

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Trip is on again!
by Arun M 18 Oct '02

18 Oct '02

RMS is coming to India <snip> The trip is on again. I should arrive in Bangalore in the morning on Oct 31. My plan is to go to Goa on Nov 6 and to Delhi on Nov 8. I will leave Delhi on Nov 11 in the evening. </snip>

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FLOSS... e-government... and India
by Frederick Noronha 15 Oct '02

15 Oct '02

Open Source... e-government ... and India This is an international conference on Open Source (Free Software/Open Source might have been a better description) in the US. And look at the 'desi' participation: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (27) ex-Delhi and key author of the FLOSS European study; a special session for India (Ajay Kumar of Kerala, Jivtesh Maini of Punjab, Sunil Abraham of Mahiti-Bangalore... a convert to GNU/Linux and its relevance for NGOs, and Vinay Deshpande of Simputer Trust). There are also other desi-sounding names. Wish more desis could travel the globe at the drop of a hat... there are more points to be made http://www.egovos.org/egovosagenda.htm * * * * * * * * * More such info at http://linuxinindia.pitas.com * * * * * * * * *

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Re:[Flags]
by psk 15 Oct '02

15 Oct '02

Khuzaima A. Lakdawala wrote : >No need to formalize it with "rules" etc. You >will probably get caught up in your own >mini-bureaucracy :) Isn't FSF India enough of a >formal organisation to work under? Why add another >layer of formality with "official rules" etc? The idea is not about adding a new layer of formality. The formalization was just saying about the things for the groups to work in the FsF (Actually both in and out in the Internet). The FORMAL was the only word that can be used at that place. It was about the activities of FsF itself. Just acting and working in local areas which will help the FsF india. (Something similar to FsF and FsF-India. See India is a wide country) >Just do what you want to do in as informal a >manner as possible. When you do need an >"official" banner, the banner of FSF India is >enough. You don't need another one. Flag is not another one but FsF itself (FsF Local Activists Groups). It will/should contain all the ideas of FsF and FsF only. It should not contain anything that hurts freedom. Why can't it be started as a sub group using a sub-domain in the FsF India and talk the Freedom locally? See there are problems of Freedom in each local stations. How will others consider about a talk of the political matter which promotes the propritory stuff. (for eg. In Kerala the IT Kerala mission can use the Freedom stuff to save a lot of money with the government and in Kollam (a local place in Kerala) the mayor can talk with the Flag for using GNU for the local use. Hope s/he can't arrage a meeting with FsF india) When it comes to some matter which includes outside locality too let Flags refer FSF-India. Classification is something like dividing the batch of students in a school into different batches. --HTH --psk __________________________________________________________ Give your Company an email address like ravi @ ravi-exports.com. Sign up for Rediffmail Pro today! Know more. http://www.rediffmailpro.com/signup/

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Flag
by psk 15 Oct '02

15 Oct '02

Vinay Pawar wrote : >I think the idea of free software should sink in >to peoples minds. Rightly said pawar. The idea of Free Software should be in the minds of believers. But as anything else there should be some one to talk about it.Only because there are a few percentage of the total community of Developers know what the stuff FsF* is. The main problem is there is no official topics in the normal cource of study for any computer student or developer to know about FsF. A developer can live his entire life without knowing about FsF and can use FsF products..( Sorry that's the case in India Now) Another problem is a developer or student who wants to know about some GNU stuff have no place to go for information..(bandwidth problem will block him from living in internet) >Forcing it in by a "Activists Group" >wouldn't help, Right.... Never force someone to believe in a philosophy.. But the ideas can be given to the air and let others smell it.. >instead might be counter-productive. >All that needs to be done is that every LUG in the >country should have atleast one FSF representative. It's the way.. The Flags* and the current LUG's are the same except in two things. 1)Flags will be saying the ethics too 2)Flags will contain other GNU lovers also than GNU/Linux.. (other OS's such as GNU/Hurd and similar BSD stuff and etal.) >I might've suggested this before. It works. It has >worked for us at the Pune GNU/Linux Users Group. >Noticed on multiple ocassions as the most active >and coolest User Group in the country. >Almost all of the "flag" activities could/should be >done at existing User Groups. It should be understood >by the LUG's that Linux(yes, i mean the kernel) >wouldn't have gone very far if it wouldn't be under >the GPL. > >Thanks, >Vinay Pawar there should not be any competetion between the existing LUG's and Flags. It'll be better to convert the LUGS in the Flag way. Something like start Flags where there are no LUGS and let the LUGs come in the Flag way (don't bother about the names but the content) -HTH -psk __________________________________________________________ Give your Company an email address like ravi @ ravi-exports.com. Sign up for Rediffmail Pro today! Know more. http://www.rediffmailpro.com/signup/

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IRC Channel.
by Arun M 15 Oct '02

15 Oct '02

Hi friends, A channel is registered in irc.openprojects.net/irc.debian.org. channel name is #fsf-india. See you there. regards Arun.

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The Hindu takes up the thread
by CK Raju 15 Oct '02

15 Oct '02

The Hindu has taken up the thread in case of Pattenchery Grama Panchayat, being forced to opt Windows OS, even after getting a resolution passed to adopt Free software. The link is at http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2002101404040400.htm Cheers to Roy Mathew who brought it out. CK Raju

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not using sourceforge
by Sayamindu Dasgupta 12 Oct '02

12 Oct '02

Hello, I want to start a Free project of my own (a centralised place for Unicode compliant Bangla fonts) , and I do not want to use sourceforge. I was looking for alternatives The first one that cam to my mind was savannah.gnu.org But, for some reason, they have not responded to my Project proposal (it is almost 1.5 weeks now) So, I was thinking of some other place - https://developer.berlios.de/ Can anyone advice me on this site - do they have licensing terms similar to srcfrge?? -iti- sayamindu

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Re: LINK: Open domain software meet
by Arun M 12 Oct '02

12 Oct '02

> Open Domain Software Movement has gained momentum in recent years. Open > software is increasingly viewed as a panacea to the digital divide and a > means of providing cost effective e-governance. > > Many countries are ready to exploit the benefits of Open Source software > by framing policies encouraging the use of open source > software wherever possible. Open software are usually copyrighted or > copylefted. While they are generally freely distributable, > there are certain redistribution and reusability guidelines that require > the attention of every user of that software. I was just wondering, in India, do we really have 'Open Source Movement', less a 'Open Domain Software Movement'. What is the role of Open Source Movement !!! Is it really a Movement or just a 'mask' some people wanted, to further their commercial interest ? I think Fred's interview with Rishab Aiyer, gives some idea. <snip> In the developer survey (part 4), one interesting result was, despite the adoption of the term "open source" among most of the media and support structure (e.g., O'Reilly, Slashdot, Sourceforge), developers themselves identify with the term free software by a huge margin. </snip> It tells who dont wants to say Free Software, its not Developer nor the User.

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]Open IT - Govt to rewrite source code in Linux
by Frederick Noronha 11 Oct '02

11 Oct '02

Inspite of all one's enthusiasm about Free Software and Open Source, it's hard to be too sure or optimistic about the story below. If government decides on such policies (i) shouldn't the policy decision be taken openly, on the record and without the possibility of any later hanky-panky? (ii) is nobody willing to take responsibility for such a stand -- which is very welcome -- and say so publicly? (iii) if not, why should we not conclude that this is just some kind of kite-flying, which actually may be intended to pressurise some 'proprietory solutions' vendors to come up for equally behind-closed-doors negotiations? In a neighbouring country, Pakistan, some quaters at least were trying to use the GNU/Linux-is-great argument to get Microsoft to reduce its prices. [One recalls times when a number of attempts were made to appeal to Microsoft to offer discounts for the use of their products in schools. These appeals were studiously ignored, or snubbed. Today, when there is a growing demand for GNU/Linux being implemented in schools (inspite of blocks like a Microsoft-products-only syllabus in parts of India), the proprietory coders are willing to offer 'special discounts'.] It might be a good thing if companies like Microsoft could be convinced to offer more realistic prices to the Third World (just as, say, book publishers have special prices for South Asia, which are one-seventh or less of the Western prices) to take care of the lower earning capacity and the unfair exchange rate we get for our currencies. But it would be surely a better thing to ask fundamental questions about what should be the nature of software, whether knowledge should be meant primarily to harvest profits or to meet desperate human needs. Free Software and/or Open Source needs to be adopted not just as a cheaper option, or a matter of convenience, but as a rational choice that would -- in some small way -- make ours a less iniquiteous world by taking the gift of skills and knowledge to those who need it so badly. -FN PS: To put things very bluntly, is this report a plant? If not, then let's see that scrap of paper which would make it something more than loud thinking..... On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Ashish Kotamkar wrote: > Open IT - Govt to rewrite source code in Linux > TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 09, 2002 01:29:29 AM] > http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=24598339 > > NEW DELHI: If the Chinese have IT, get it. The Indian government seems to be > taking a leaf out of China's operating system, and is planning a countrywide > drive to promote the open source operating system, Linux, as the 'platform > of choice' instead of 'proprietary' solutions. > > For proprietory, read Microsoft, which controls over 90% of the desktop > software market. > > The Department of Information Technology has already devised a strategy to > introduce Linux and open source software as a de-facto standard in academic > institutions, especially in engineering colleges through course work that > encourages use of such systems. > > Research establishments would be advised to use and develop re-distributable > toolboxes just as Central government departments and state governments would > be asked to use Linux-based offerings. > > DIT is in talks with leading industry players like IBM and HCL to get a feel > of their work in the area and invite proposals for joint projects. "As a > first step we are persuading all government institutions to offer courses on > Linux and programming for Linux environment. We would also set up Linux > Resource Centres in academic institutes (with co-funding from government and > industry)," said a senior government official. > > Though India has made a name for itself selling solutions, software as a > product is expensive within the country. And the cost will bite once India > starts implementing IPR protection in earnest, as it has committed itself > to. > > While redistribution of proprietary software is restricted through a licence > agreement, the licensing terms for Linux grants the right to obtain and > redistribute copies. Many analysts believe that China's growing dominance in > the IT space is fuelled by its low cost open source bias. > > The Chinese government has consistently promoted its local software based on > Linux, both for cost reasons, and reportedly for 'security' concerns as > well. > > The source code for proprietory software is not revealed, and this, it is > believed, has not found favour with the Chinese, especially in defence and > security related applications. > > Microsoft, in what many observers and reports say is an attempt to soften > the Chinese government's stand, recently committed to investing $750m in > China in three years to help set up a software college and put its money > into Chinese education. > > In comparison, Microsoft has announced investments worth only $75m over a > three-year time frame in India. Howver, the Chinese company Redflag > Software, which was set up by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the country's > most prestigious research institute, has often come out with low-cost > software based on Linux, in direct competition to Windows-based software. > > The Indian government's plan, however, is not driven by security concerns, > but by the far more simple arithmetic of costing. To put it simply, India > being a developing country needs low cost solutions. > > Unlike the Microsoft-developed Windows operating system, Linux code is free > and downloadable from the internet. With the addition of special > applications, it can be personalized to meet specific needs. > > An industry-government-user-developer conference on the subject would be > organised to throw up ideas for specific initiatives including funding, > reliable sources told ET. > > The only issue here is support and services, which Indian government sources > feel is not likely to be an issue in a country known for its software > support and service skills. > > Like China, the government is also eyeing the increasingly lucrative global > support and services market for the Linux environment may prove lucrative. > While proprietary support agreements govern only the systems purchased (with > licences), for free software support is independent of the number of copies > owned. > > "With applications in security being a focus area, inputs have been sought > from the Defence on their experience with Linux. Indian-language based > solutions, e-governance, embedded and high performance cluster solutions are > other areas. But firstly we want to concretise the position on IPR issues in > the use of Linux," the source said. > > DIT is planning a three-tier mechanism, with itself as the first, industry, > user groups and state governments as the second and a national apex > committee headed either by a government representative, an industry expert > or an academician to oversee manpower and skill development, applications > development and deployment and public policy support, said sources. > > According to IDC's figures for '00, Microsoft still controlled 94% of the > desktop software market and while Linux is expected to overtake the number > two � Apple Mac OS � by '03, it would still control less than 4% of the > market. > > In server software, it fares a little better and is expected to control > around 30% of the market by '03, according to IDC. Linux, which has > established itself in the server space, is an open reliable OS that runs on > virtually any platform and was developd by Finnish technologist Linus > Torvalds. > > After developing the initial source code, Linus made it available on the > Internet for use, feedback and further development.

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SMALL GRANTS: Need resources to write Free Software?
by Frederick Noronha 11 Oct '02

11 Oct '02

Sarai/CSDS, a Delhi-based research network that realises the potential of Free/Open Source software, is offering a limited number of small grants (in three categories of under Rs 10,000; Rs 10-30,000; and Rs 30,000-60,000) for those willing to write socially-useful programmes and put these out in the public domain. Ownership of these programs will remain with its writer(s), under the GNU/GLP or similar suitable licence. But the coders will undertake to widely distribute and make available their work to those who desire to use the same, in the interest of promoting Free Software/Open Source in India. Email in your plans and suggestions via email to application(a)sarai.net with a copy to fred(a)bytesforall.org not later than October 31, 2002. Use "FLOSS application" as the subjectline. This should contain the following details: * Outline of project * How this project would be relevant to society's needs * Stage of the project (if work is underway) * Time-frame required for completion * Whether work will be done singly, or if jointly, names of all individuals/groups to be involved * Estimated number of man-hours for completion of this project * Estimated cost with break-up * Any other information you feel relevant. Last date for application is October 31, 2002. Feel free to pass around this note, particularly to students who could use such help productively.

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need a summary comparison of MS vs linux
by akr!linux-delhi.org＠linux-delhi.org 10 Oct '02

10 Oct '02

i need a quick and short summary comparison of MS versus Linux (or open source) deployment. i know that there could be several (google searchable) sites that i can troll. but if any of you have a ready document, or can point to the right website or url, i would be very grateful. basically the document should describe in short and non-technical language, the cost-benefit analysis, the non-monetary benefits, and long term vs short term implications of using open source/free software, as against proprietary software like MS. thanks in advance, ajit ranade. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .

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INTERVIEW: Europe (and a desi) takes a deeper look at FLOSS
by Frederick Noronha 09 Oct '02

09 Oct '02

EUROPE TAKES A DEEPER LOOK AT FREE/LIBRE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE... It is being viewed as a "major research project" coming out of Europe, that takes a detailed look at the reasons behind the growing use of Free and Open Source software. One of the key persons behind this study is Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, who moved from the Indian capital of New Delhi to Europe just a couple of years ago. Does Aiyer Ghosh see this report changing the way Free and Open Source software is seen? "Not necessarily," says he modestly. But then adds, almost as an after-thought: "But hopefully the study will increase the depth and clarity with which the phenomenon is understood." Commentators have already called this study perhaps the "first large-scale rigorous study concerning any aspect of free software". It included interviewers with thousands of developers and hundreds of businesses. Till a couple of years back, the 27-year-old Indian-born author of the study was based in Delhi, and closely involved in the Indian internet/telecom scene. He wrote for technical and mainstream publications too. Ghosh had his own newsletter, 'Indian Techonomist', which went out to people like Reed Hundt and Vint Cerf, and he wrote various consultation papers on the opening up Internet policy (especially to small providers) on the request of senior Indian government officials. Extracts from an exclusive interview Aiyer Ghosh <rishab at dxm dot org> had with Frederick Noronha <fred at bytesforall dot org>: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: What was your contribution in preparing the report? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I wrote the original proposal and workplan for the FLOSS study, and after approval from the EC (European Commission), was coordinator of the project consortium (University of Maastricht and Berlecon Research). I was lead author of the parts written at the university. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: How much time was put into it in all? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FLOSS was a 13 month project. there were three people at the university and three at Berlecon Research working on it. But I off-hand can't give you a person-hours breakdown! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: What was the most surprising finding/s? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- That's a hard question to answer. We weren't really surprised by our own findings, but from the user survey (Berlecon; final report part 1) the level of F/OSS use among organisations was higher than one might have expected (e.g. 6% of all companies use some F/OSS on the desktop). An important, though expected, finding was that licence fees were #3 on the list of reasons for user organisations choosing F/OSS -- stability and security were more important. In the developer survey (part 4) one interesting result was that despite the adoption of the term Open Source among most of the media and support structure (e.g. O'Reilly, Slashdot, Sourceforge) developers themselves identify themselves with the term free software by a huge margin. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: What are the aspects that are still to be researched on FLOSS, in your view? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Much more work needs to be done on measuring organisation and production of the software itself (started in part 5 of the report); lots of analysis remains to be done on the data from the developer survey. On the user side, due to a limited budget, FLOSS didn't ask organisations who said they don't use any F/OSS why they don't do so, which would have been interesting. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: This dilemma of explaianing why affluent Europe is increasing turning to FLOSS, how would you look at it? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't see that as a dilemma. I can imagine that licence fee savings are an attraction in developing countries, but arguably the total cost of ownership isn't necessarily much lower for f/oss than for proprietary solutions. Certainly, most advocacy in Europe emphasises other advantages rather than cost, which is a dubious advantage if it is one at all and easier to attack ("cheap" software must be bad...) As the user survey showed, F/OSS is being adopted more for stability and security than price. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: Besides this study, what have you been busy with since moving out of India? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- i moved to Maastricht in October 2000, and the FLOSS proposal was submitted that month. I've been working mostly full-time with this study and related research, and speak frequently on the topic of free software and the "cooking-pot market" model I developed to explain non-monetary economic activity on the Internet. (Ghosh explains the 'cooking pot model' at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/ghosh/ ) I also continue my involvement as a founding editor of First Monday, the now very successful peer-reviewed Internet journal, and organised the first First Monday conference in Maastricht last year (www.infonomics.nl/newdefinitions/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: Do you see this report as changing the way FLOSS is seen? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Not necessarily. But hopefully the study will increase the depth and clarity with which the phenomenon is understood. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: Could you tell us something about how you chose the word -- rather apt in my view -- FLOSS, to describe both Free Software and Open Source in one neat twist of phrase? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- European Commission projects often have long-winded titles and the official project acronym is therefore quite important. Early drafts of the project proposal were entitled Free/Open Source User and Developer Study. FOSUDS sounded rather less catchy than FLOSS, which also had the additional advantage of incorporating "Libre Software", a term that is hardly in use outside the french-speaking members of the EC bureaucracy, which is a pity. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- FN: If you had a chance to do this study all over again, what would you have done differently? ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't know, really, still digesting what we've just finished. But certainly we would have asked user organisations for reasons _not_ to use F/OSS... See the report at http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/ For a photo of Aiyer Ghosh, please see http://www.infonomics.nl/niew/about/people_cv.php?id=81

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Re: [FSF-WG] [rajnibakshi@yahoo.com: Re: From Rajni Bakshi]
by klak＠giasbm01.vsnl.net.in 09 Oct '02

09 Oct '02

On Mon, 07 Oct 2002 18:43:14 -0400, Richard Stallman <rms(a)gnu.org> wrote: > Please tell him about the ways that Indian governments are > promoting Windows. > > From: rajni bakshi <rajnibakshi(a)yahoo.com> > Subject: Re: From Rajni Bakshi > To: rms(a)gnu.org > Date: Sun, 6 Oct 2002 21:17:04 -0700 (PDT) > > Please send me more information about government's > forcing Windows on schools etc. Especially names and > contact numbers of people in India who are involved in > these issues. > It is not certain if I can write about this myself but > I will try and alter journalists who would write about > it. > Regards, > Rajni

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Profits from piracy
by klak＠giasbm01.vsnl.net.in 09 Oct '02

09 Oct '02

What we were really worried about is beginning to happen: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/09/26/piracy_unlimited/ Going "soft" on so-called piracy is now a part of MS's strategy, at least in China. (India next?) They have realised that "allowing" piracy to happen is an efficient way to fight free software. (Not to mention giving away free (zero-cost) licenses to entire school systems across states and countries) Forgive me for this "I told you so" attitude, but please see http://forum.gnu.org.in/1016695648/index_html where this strategy was predicted to stress why Cost should not be an Issue in the advocacy of free software. -- Khuzaima A. Lakdawala

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Good news for Linux(GNU Linux?)! On Economic Times today!
by N S Srikanth 09 Oct '02

09 Oct '02

Hi Listers Good news for Linux Lovers! Front Page cover story on Economic Times today (09/10/2002)! "Linux turns government's "Platform of choice"" It gives details about the IT ministry's broad guide lines and directives to promote Linux in Govt depts and more so in Engineering colleges. Isn't this good? Pl give your feedback. N S Srikanth Trivandrum

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RE:FLAG
by Kanti Jadia 08 Oct '02

08 Oct '02

I have come in contact with few people who would like to donate money for this cause. Now the problem is two fold. a.To whom should i direct this small amount of money. b.How can i further the cause so as to help them donate more.They have been using various free software's for some work and like the concept too. On the point of running informal Free Software User Groups. The group we need to form in nagpur will cater both as a FLUG as well as a GLUG. This in simple terms means that they will also provide help in formalising/configuring/using free software for certain needs. The monetory portion thus collected will be further directed towards promoting use of free software. We also plan to distribute free software cd's since they are not available locally. To support all these activities what things have to be done. From the following link http://plug.org.in/minutes.php i understand that a trust can be formed which will take care of the activities. Would like input from all patrons of FSF-India as well as the members. regards Kanti Jadia

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Free TTF Fonts of Akruti
by Nagarjuna G. 08 Oct '02

08 Oct '02

----- Forwarded message from "M.S.Sridhar" <mssridhar(a)vsnl.com> ----- Envelope-to: nagarjun(a)hbcse.tifr.res.in Cc: nagarjun(a)hbcse.tifr.res.in From: "M.S.Sridhar" <mssridhar(a)vsnl.com> Subject: Fonts To: jitendras(a)vsnl.com X-AntiVirus: OK! AntiVir MailGate Version 2.0.0.0 at hbcse has not found any known virus in this email. Dear Jitendra and Nagarjun I have uploaded the fonts at the following url. www.akruti.com/freedom/fonts/freefont.zip These can be put on your servers. I will also publish the glyph list and other details. Please let me know if there is any problem. Regards Sridhar ----- End forwarded message ----- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ nagarjun(a)hbcse.tifr.res.in www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/gn/ Key fingerprint = C1E2 1B8C 8E98 A697 68B7 ADAC E956 6D4B DE90 BF01

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Fwd: Free software movement in Cochin University of Science and Technology
by klak＠giasbm01.vsnl.net.in 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

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Fw: [seul-edu] educationaLinux 2003 miniconference: Call for Papers
by Mahesh T Pai 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

Forwarding:- ===========+++++++++++================ Please forward this release to any educational lists you're on that have a computer focus, and any computer lists you're on that have an educational focus. And anyone who wants a learning holiday in sunny Perth, Western Australia during the Northern Hemisphere's winter. (-: THE CONFERENCE educationaLinux 2003, the Education mini-conference attached to the Australian Linux Conference 2003, is now seeking papers and presenters for two days of intense learning and networking in the leadup to the LCA2003 proper. LCA2003 promises to be a doorbuster conference, a hard act to follow (which is why we're running before it) and we've obtained permission to piggyback an Education mini-conference on it - in parallel with a Debian mini-conference - in the two days leading up to it. Rolling through into the main conference gives educators involved with Linux that little bit of extra time with an educational focus, an extra reason for attending LCA2003. An educational prefix to the main conference turns up fresh material to hammer out in the workshops. THE PAPERS Even before this CFP went out, we've had some interesting papers waved at us. The presentations will include reports from Australian implementors fresh from a new rollout in the field. We're looking to cover two main areas: Linux as seen from an educational perspective (Monday 27 January), and education as seen from a Linux perspective (Tuesday 28 January), with some overlap. The former means presentations on opportunities, problems and experiences with Linux from the educator's seat, be it school IT staff, teachers or consultants. We're looking for educational applications for Linux and what needs to be done to make them better, features to build on and misfeatures to repair, both theory and testimony. The latter means presentations on setting up and altering Linux to meet the special needs of academia, such as the ability to migrate user contexts between grades, ways of tuning for or dissipating load spikes from start-of-lesson stampedes, plans and experience with various network arrangements, adaptations for special-needs input devices, unobtrusive security hardening; go wild with your special project or experience! THE LOCATION The LCA2003 conference is being competently kitted out for an optimised, immersive networking experience; just the right balance between the convenience of everything-laid-on and the interest and satisfaction of roll-your-own. By penguinistas, for penguinistas. The University of Western Australia is about the closest thing Oz has to real historical buildings; these ancient, hallowed halls are equipped with wireless LAN, wired sound and other modern facilities to make your visit a highly productive one. Accomodation is close to hand, the city centre only a few kilometers further away and `geek' attractions like the UCC, home of one of the first Coke machines on the Internet and many other digital treasures, are right on campus. Perth itself has a wonderfully mild climate, is big enough to offer practically any facility, and small enough to still be friendly. Western Australia is packed with interesting things to see (from unique natural grandeur through impressive industry to world-class fishing and world-famous wineries) so an extended holiday stay is a definite option. The main Conference ends on Australia Day. On the Sunday night you'll get to see some of the biggest, most impressive fireworks ever to be launched in Australia. WHAT YOU NEED TO DO NOW 1. Register for LCA2003, even if you have no paper to present. 2. Notify educationaLinux that you're planning to attend. 3. If you have a paper, submit a precis and a brief bio to educationaLinux. 4. Arrange your schedule and finances so you can roll up on the day. THE LINKS http://plug.linux.org.au/~leonb/lca2003/papers.html Presenters' instructions http://plug.linux.org.au/~leonb/lca2003/ educationaLinux home http://linux.conf.au/ LCA2003 entry http://conf.linux.org.au/register.html Conference registrations http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/mmmgroup/e-gall.html The Spanish Linkquisition

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Re: Good News!
by Suresh Titus 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

Thats really good news. Suresh ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com

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RE:flag
by Kanti Jadia 07 Oct '02

07 Oct '02

>Hi hackers, >The works for starting flag(FsF Local Activists Group)s are on >the >way. I mailed rms & as he advised we met Arun. The activities >are >currently going on by planning how the groups should be >working. The need for GNU user groups/Free Software user groups is true. People need local group to discuss and implement free software. I am facing similar problems here in NAGPUR(Maharashtra) also. > The current plans are >*Arranging awareness classes of FsF both ethical & technical >*Arrange the local activists meetings monthly >*Promote the FsF distributions >*Sale & support of FsF softwares & Documentations >*Find out and use the developers for developing Free Software >*Each flag is planned in such a way that they support Other >Free >Softwares (including other OS's)as well as the GNU/Linux >*Each meeting will be having the discussions about the current >activities in Freedom world & technical world of FsF >*Cooperate with the lugs for promoting the GNU/Linux environment >& >support them to think about the freedom >*Seminars on any of the papers either in the ethical (better) >or >the technical >*** MOST importantly maintain a Free Software journel containg >the >articles of budding FsF'ians and FsF 'Gurus' from allover the >country. >The journel may be an Online One for atleast a few issues & by >analysing the stuff we can plan for a printed one forum.gnu.org.in >We have started the primary activities at alappuzha district of >Kerala. We are on the way to find out more members from >alappuzha >& now it's a 58 member group untill today. The activities are >based around a GNU software training computer institute (JRS >Academy*) and with the help of students from Cochin University >College of Engineering Kuttanad. (Hope similar groups start all >over the country.) It is true that local Colleges and Institutions can be the hub for such groups. >Now we need the support of all the Free Software Community to >make >up official rules for all the flags* & further advices & >guidelines. The flags can be organized under the FSF-India banner and to me it seems the best. Rules /Guidelines need to be formulated so that proper communication can be established.The laws of the land also need to be seen so as to get Tax Free donations and other benefits for FSF-India and the FLAG's or FLUG's (Free Software User Groups) > The better thing will be deciding the formalization only >after >an active chat in the mailing list. I would suggest a mailing list of fsf-india itself to cater to the FLUG's. This is emphasized since mailing lists at present tend to be a better methed due to bandwidth and other limitations in online forums. Articles can and should be posted to the forum so as to make the available at all times and an easy to read format. >***The articles are invited from all over the country & 'll be >better if in TeX format. Send them to >praveenskhan(a)rediffmail.com*** >We people are having a daily meeting now & are planning to >start >the official functioning after the Pooja* (14th & 15th)days. > Hope we'll be forming an idea before that > HTH > -psk Regards Kanti Jadia

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Console frontend to wvdial
by Frederick Noronha 06 Oct '02

06 Oct '02

This msg is from Asterix Baron <b2ornot2b(a)yahoo.com> in Goa. -FN ---------- Forwarded message ---------- hi all heres a set of scripts that act as a front end to wvdial ... console based it gives u a bar of traffic on ppp interface ideal for the 'console happy' ;) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa/files/inet.zip if u have any probs with these hack them to suit ur taste adieus cheerio b2 p.s. Does anyone have any interesting scripts to share ??? p.s. Is anyone interested in forming an (e)group ... BCLU - Brotherhood of Command Line Users ??? to share the power of the command line

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Wanted: Links about GNU/Linux in Asia...
by Frederick Noronha 05 Oct '02

05 Oct '02

I am currently trying to locate more information on the role that GNU/Linux is playing in Asia, and would be grateful if you could offer me some clues on where to look. In particular, would be grateful for (i) URLs of any useful GNU/Linux websites in Asia (ii) email addresses of key persons play a role in the Free/Libre Software and Open Source domain in countries of this region (iii) mailing lists that are active and innovative in this field (iv) any useful contributions to GNU/Linux coming out of Asia. Thanks so much for your help, Frederick PS: Please visit my recently updated site at http://linuxinindia.pitas.com -- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783 BYTESFORALL www.bytesforall.org * GNU-LINUX http://linuxinindia.pitas.com Email fred(a)bytesforall.org * Mobile +9822 122436 (Goa) * Saligao Goa India Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference

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Flag
by psk 05 Oct '02

05 Oct '02

Hi hackers, The works for starting flag(FsF Local Activists Group)s are on the way. I mailed rms & as he advised we met Arun. The activities are currently going on by planning how the groups should be working. The current plans are *Arranging awareness classes of FsF both ethical & technical *Arrange the local activists meetings monthly *Promote the FsF distributions *Sale & support of FsF softwares & Documentations *Find out and use the developers for developing Free Software *Each flag is planned in such a way that they support Other Free Softwares (including other OS's)as well as the GNU/Linux *Each meeting will be having the discussions about the current activities in Freedom world & technical world of FsF *Cooperate with the lugs for promoting the GNU/Linux environment & support them to think about the freedom *Seminars on any of the papers either in the ethical (better) or the technical *** MOST importantly maintain a Free Software journel containg the articles of budding FsF'ians and FsF 'Gurus' from allover the country. The journel may be an Online One for atleast a few issues & by analysing the stuff we can plan for a printed one We have started the primary activities at alappuzha district of Kerala. We are on the way to find out more members from alappuzha & now it's a 58 member group untill today. The activities are based around a GNU software training computer institute (JRS Academy*) and with the help of students from Cochin University College of Engineering Kuttanad. (Hope similar groups start all over the country.) Now we need the support of all the Free Software Community to make up official rules for all the flags* & further advices & guidelines. The better thing will be deciding the formalization only after an active chat in the mailing list. ***The articles are invited from all over the country & 'll be better if in TeX format. Send them to praveenskhan(a)rediffmail.com*** We people are having a daily meeting now & are planning to start the official functioning after the Pooja* (14th & 15th)days. Hope we'll be forming an idea before that HTH -psk __________________________________________________________ Give your Company an email address like ravi @ ravi-exports.com. Sign up for Rediffmail Pro today! Know more. http://www.rediffmailpro.com/signup/

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Fwd: Govt Stand on Linux
by Ajith Kumar 04 Oct '02

04 Oct '02

pandarinathan raman wrote: > It is highly irregular to pass comment about officials > without knowing full context. It could have been > rejected probably some existing applications have to > be ported. What is the present level of computerization in the govt. offices. Does it go anything beyond MSOffice. If a panchayat is capable of handling its requirements using GNU/Linux, preventing it by an order from Trivandrum is sheer misuse of power. Once I had the following experience. We we met the mayor of a corporation , that was computerizing some records, to talk about Free Software and he directed us to the officer handling it. When we pointed out about the cost savings the curt response from the officer was "we have enough funds from the government". This is the prevailing mentality. If money is there, just spend it. If somebody under you come up with something better , reject it without assigning any reason. If linux is rejected due to the lack of some application, he should have point out that reason. Sending an order "strictly objecting to installing linux" is not a sensible thing to do. Such reply comes from the attitude " I do not have to explain any reason since I have power" I am also a govt. employee and working in a place where more that 100 machines running GNU/Linux for word processing, communication, databases, scientific computing and control applications. Fortunately it not under an official who rejects something without reason. > > We can progress by our actions and not by accusing > others or by emotional outbursts. For real success in > govt sector you should show some successful sites in > India entirely running on FS, which I think are > reallly rare. The decision makers in the govt. also should keep their eyes open. They should interact with academics in places like engg. colleges and IITs. At least they should see what is happening around the world. If they do not do any of these, at least they should not issue orders "strictly objecting to something without assigning any reason" . A nations fate cannot be decided by the information provided by sales representatives. If somebody does that, one can always suspect the motive. ajith >

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Fwd: Govt Stand on Linux
by CK Raju 04 Oct '02

04 Oct '02

On one hand the Government says that it has decentralised and transferred most of the powers to local bodies, and here it appears to be strengthening its hold. CK Raju KILA ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: letter Date: 3 Oct 2002 17:28:43 -0000 From: "ramanunni s sivasankaran" <hitharamanunni(a)rediffmail.com> To: ckraju(a)zyberway.com I invite your kind attention to the resolution adopted by the Pattanchery Grama Panchayat about the installation of Linux in the computer during the month of January this year. In this regard we had sent a letter to the secretary to the government for the approval of Linux installation in the computers. The additional secretary for secretary department of local administration in his letter ltr.no 31914/02 dla dt.25.9.02 to the secretary pattanchery grama Panchayat has strictly objected the installation of Linux as operating system in the computer when it is being installed in the Panchayat instead of windows. The secretary pattanchery grama Panchayat called on me over the phone yesterday and informed this fact to me. This is for your information please. Nothing more at present. Thanking you, (Ramanunni) -------------------------------------------------------

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Free software movement in Cochin University of Science and Technology
by bharat chandran 03 Oct '02

03 Oct '02

Sir, An Open Forum of Free Software Movement was held in the Dept of Polymer Science,Cochin University of Science and Technology,Cochin,Kerala,India on 25th September at 2 P.M. for promoting Free Software Movement in CUSAT.The following decisions were taken (i) To form a core group of people interested in Free Software (ii) To form an egroup for Free Software Movement in CUSAT. ('FSCUSAT'(CUSAT Free Software Movement > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fscusat/) is now available) (iii) To start loading Linux in the systems of interested users (iv) To arrange a workshop on Free Software towards the end of October.(For atleast two representatives from each Department) (v) A committee was formed with two convernors 1. Mr. G.Santhosh Kumar (Lect. ,Dept of Computer Science) 2. Mr. Bharat Chandran.R.S (Student, Dept of Instrumentation) Regards, Bharat Chandran NB:- Please tell me how to be a member of FSF india.Also tell me how our members in Cochin University will be able to a member in FSF India __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com

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Good News!
by Nagarjuna G. 02 Oct '02

02 Oct '02

A very good news. I am just coming from a meeting with Mr. M.S. Sridhar (of Cyberscape Multimedia Limited) and Prof. Jitender Shaw (VJTI, Mumbai). Sridhar is releasing the Indian Language TTF fonts (more than hundred) under GPL today the the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. He has fonts for all the languages. The press release and release note will be posted by evening. I wanted to break the news to all of you. We have been trying to have this meeting happen, but it happened today. The fonts will be putup on FSF-India's website for download, as well as their companies web site. The details will be announced soon. I will put it up on the FSF site as soon as I get the CD. We can also put them up at indic-computing site at sourceforge. Now the task is to make use of the set of TTF fonts and solve the immediate problem of encoding and rendering with TTF fonts in all the Indian Languages and release the GNU/Linux distro with GNOME applications enabled by January 26. The next task is to convert these fonts to Open Type fonts as soon as possible. Mr. Sridhar is only anticipating from the free software community the technical know how so that their company will also start developing applications under GNU/Linux OS, and also help us solve the problem of converting TTF to OTF. I hope this news will add momentum to the efforts of localization. I wish to thank on behalf of the free software community Sridhar and also Jitender Shaw for initiating this process and making this happen. I think this gesture of Sridhar will be a slap on the face of CDAC and other both Govt and private companies who are refusing to share such resources. Nagarjuna

4 3

Register Your Protest
by Ajith Kumar 02 Oct '02

02 Oct '02

Hello, Register your protest against the inclusion of a products from a Multinational Company in the IT@school syllabus by sending mail to the following. The Executive Director IT @ SCHOOL Project SCERT Buildings Poojapura Thiruvananthapuram-12 email: itschool(a)asianetindia.com Also ask your friends, especially school/college teachers, who are familiar with GNU/Linux to do the same. regards ajith

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Ten ways to promote communication within a GNU/LUG
by Frederick Noronha 02 Oct '02

02 Oct '02

Thanks to Shyam Kumar.s <shyamkumars(a)yahoo.com> for his feedback and constructive criticism on an earlier version of this posting. Responsibility for errors, or conceptual flaws continues to be mine. Send in your feedback to fred at bytesforall dot org. FN COMMENT: Ten ways to promote communication within a GNU/LUG... * Build a network of GNU/LUG speakers, who are capable to speak and evangelise on the power of GNU/Linux. It's important to list who's available to speak on what subject, so that the interests of newbies are catered to. Technical issues are imporant; but issues like the philisophy of Free Software needs to be adequately understood. The power of sharing and helping one another also can be emphasised. * List readily available GNU/Linux software, where available, and under what terms it can be shared freely and without artificial restrictions. * List GNU/LUG members and contact details. Group communications through GNU/LUG mailing-lists build a self-learning environment for all, but sometimes one-to-one correspondence may be more apt in order to (i) avoid mailing-list overload (ii) address issues which might not be of wider group interest. * Expanding numbers is important. It helps GNU/LUGs attain critical mass. At the same time, it's equally important to take care of one another's learning needs, and the requirement of building a caring, sharing environment. Sharing and community building could prove more valuable than mere technical excellence, as the latter could lead to stagnation and elitism along its trajectory. * Report regularly on GNU/LUG meetings. This build bridges to those not present. * Plan for GNU/LUG meetings in advance. Meetings with outlined agendas and scheduled talks could attract more people than vague, no-agenda meetings. Meetings should also take care of newbie interests, including talks and subjects that would help to build interest among those who are not so well-versed with GNU/Linux. * If nothing else works, trying to build more mini-GNU/LUGs in your area.

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Indian Language Fonts
by M.S.Sridhar 02 Oct '02

02 Oct '02

Release Notes: M/S Cyberscape Multimedia Limited, Mumbai, developers of Akruti Software for Indian Languages, are here by releasing a set of TTF fonts for nine Indian scripts (Devanagari, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Oriya, and Gurumukhi) under GNU General Public License (GPL). The fonts will be made available through Free Software Foundation of India and will be uploaded at the web site of FSF-India (www.gnu.org.in), indic-computing(a)sourceforge.net and also at the Akruti site (http://www.akruti.com). For any further information or assistance please contact mssridhar(a)vsnl.com.

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Voilation of GPL
by Kanti Jadia 28 Sep '02

28 Sep '02

the following link refers to xvid.org(video cedec software). What actions can be taken to prevent Sigma Designs from further voilating the GPL ? what should be done to prevent such kind of voilations ? http://xvid.org/ regards Kanti Jadia

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[fred@mail.rons.net.cn: Hackerdom Training]
by Nagarjuna G. 26 Sep '02

26 Sep '02

----- Forwarded message from Hong Feng <fred(a)mail.rons.net.cn> ----- Envelope-to: nagarjun(a)hbcse.tifr.res.in cc: fred(a)mail.rons.net.cn From: Hong Feng <fred(a)mail.rons.net.cn> Subject: Hackerdom Training To: nagarjun(a)hbcse.tifr.res.in Hi Nag, our hackerdom training courses are fixed this week, it is published at http://www.rons.net.cn/MNM/training/hackerdom Best, Frederic -- +------------------------------------------+ | Hong Feng | | Publisher, FREE SOFTWARE Magazine (FSM) | | fred(a)mail.rons.net.cn hongfeng(a)gnu.org | | http://www.rons.net.cn/hongfeng.html | +------------------------------------------+ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ nagarjun(a)hbcse.tifr.res.in www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/gn/ Key fingerprint = C1E2 1B8C 8E98 A697 68B7 ADAC E956 6D4B DE90 BF01

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Free Software to the masses
by Ajith Kumar 25 Sep '02

25 Sep '02

Hello All, If we are not taking counter measures, the so called IT will be the biggest burden on our foreign exchange spendings. It is a fact that our large loans from foreign agencies does not reach the public, it was for selected few. We bought arms, high tech items and stuff like that. Even when something can be made here we imported it, yes somebody was getting the commission and fighting elections with that money. This is the way India has been 'progressing' . IT is now added to the list. Note the enthusiasm of almost all the govt. agencies for computerization. Among the people involved in it , some are eagerly waiting for big purchases to be done and some are not aware of cost effective solutions. The question is How to avoid wasting public money to the MNCs in the name of IT? A grassroot level movement to educate the public about this issue is a must. I have some suggetions. It require time, energy and money. 1. Conduct something similar to the "Sastrakaja Jatha" organized by KSSP some years back. Cover the entire Kerala, talking about Software Freedom, the dangers of MNC exploitation using proprietary software and demonstrating the capabilities of GNU/Linux. Is anybody willing to consider such a thing. If it is May-june, count me. 2. Free/subsidised GNU/Linux trainng centres. One option is to setup our own facilities but an easier option is to have tieup with the existing institutes. We decide the syllabus, help setting up the software and provide some subsidy for each student. regards ajith

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[Fwd: Re: Your India visit.]
by Arun M 25 Sep '02

25 Sep '02

Hi All, RMS is planning to come to India next month. <snip> My tenative plan is to arrive in Bangalore on Oct 31, go to Goa on Nov 6 or 7, go to Delhi on Nov 9, and leave Delhi in the evening on Nov 11. </snip>

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Indianisation... at Sun
by Frederick Noronha 24 Sep '02

24 Sep '02

This sounds important. Pl pass it around to anybody whom you think it could help. From the indiccomputing mailing list at Sourceforge.net. We need more of your GNU/Linux guys there! FN --__--__-- ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 12:06:30 -0700 From: Prabhat <prabhat.hegde(a)sun.com> To: Rajkumar S <raj(a)linuxense.com> Cc: naveen.gangadhar(a)sun.com Subject: Re: hi rajkumar, That's great. Actually, we are not doing localization yet but concentrating on internationalization. We at Sun are contributing to multiple open-source projects for indian languages: A> Mozilla B> OpenOffice C> XIM/IIIM (Input method) D> X11/Gnome We have completed indian language enabling on most of the above-mentioned. If you can help with localization, that would be well appreciated. Let me know what you do and how you can help. prabhat Rajkumar S wrote: >hello Prabhat, > >I am Rajkumar, one of the member of Indic computing initiative. Indic >computing project <http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net> is a group of >volunteers interested in enabling computing in Indian languages. One of >the stated aims of our project is to reach out to other groups both >commercial as well as volunteer and to work with them to avoid duplication >of work and to make better use of scarce resources available. > > >I had a chance to talk to Naveen Gangadhar about the work Sun is doing in >localization, and he referred me to you. It will be interesting to know >more about the work you are doing and we are also interested to help you >out where ever possible. > >raj

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BBCTV and RedFlag
by Frederick Noronha 23 Sep '02

23 Sep '02

Yep, agree. All one was saying was that BBC-TV is reporting on it now. In case anyone wanted to watch. Quite old hat though. But then I guess it's meant for a non-specialist global audience. FN > From: CK Raju <ckraju(a)zyberway.com> > Reply-To: ckra(a)vsnl.net > Organization: KILA > Fred, > I suppose the story is a year old. > It initially came out in http://news.com.com/2102-1001-272299.html > CK Raju

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TUG 2002: Fonts, TeX, Indianisation, Kerala, etc...
by Frederick Noronha 23 Sep '02

23 Sep '02

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Received from CVR... Radhakrishnan CV <cvr(a)river-valley.org> TUG 2002: A Report from God's Own Country By KG Kumar, Indian TeX Users Group For the 33 delegates from 13 countries who gathered at Trivandrum, the capital of the south Indian state of Kerala, for TUG 2002, the ambience of the environs and the deliberations at the sessions only served to reinforce this year's theme: Stand up and be proud of TeX! To which, the local hosts, TUGIndia or the Indian TeX Users Group, had added the teasing rider: After all, you are heading for God's Own Country! That phrase may have seemed like marketing overkill for most TeXies who had never before heard of Kerala, but the moment they landed in Trivandrum -- or Thiruvananthapuram, to give the tongue-twisting name of the city in the local language, Malayalam -- most knew that this was some form of paradise. Especially when they first glimpsed the idyllic setting of their place of temporary abode, Hotel Samudra, at Kovalam, a seagull's wing-tip away from the rolling surf of the Arabian sea. Minds and bodies suitably relaxed after various trans-continental flights, it only remained to see whether the sessions of the 23rd Annual Meeting of TUG would live up to their promise, as advertised in the pre-conference mailers and Web postings. Many of the delegates had battled initial misgivings to travel to India, as several countries had put out negative travel advisories, prompted by the political tensions in the subcontinent. In fact, at one early point in the run-up to the conference, there were strong doubts whether TUG 2002 would actually happen at all. So it was with more than idle curiosity that the delegates trooped into the airconditioned mini-bus on Wednesday, 4 September for the 40-minute ride from Hotel Samudra to the Park Center, Technopark, the modern, state-of-the-art electronics technology park that was to be the venue for the three-day conference. But most delegates were too busy taking in (and storing digitally!) the sights of the green countryside they had to traverse, to bother with syntax highlighting and server-side compilation! And when they did land outside the Park Center, where they were joined by the other delegates staying in a city hotel, most of whom had attended the pre-conference tutorials from 1 to 3 September. Were they in for some surprise! Waiting to greet them, all bedecked in a cape with the TUG 2002 logo, was a little elephant! Talk about life imitating art. Who would have imagined the very Indian elephant on top of which Duane Bibby's TeX lion and METAFONT lioness were happily perched would actually be there in the flesh, gobbling bananas and swaying his trunk in joy?! A couple of intrepid delegates clambered on top of the elephant for a short ride, while most others remained content feeding it bananas and taking snaps. Also present to welcome the delegates was a team performing the panchavadyam, Kerala's traditional five-instrument musical ensemble, which built up to a crescendo as the delegates entered the Park Center. Appropriately enough, a couple of the foreign male delegates were clad in dhotis, the traditional sarong-like attire of Kerala, while the odd lady did try out a salwar-kameez or a saree! Day One Suitably localised, the delegates were treated to a brief opening ceremony at a session chaired by Sebastian Rahtz, before Ajit Ranade of ABN-Amro Bank, Mumbai, India talked to them about the status of TeX in India, where software contributes to 2 per cent of the national Gross Domestic Product. He also pointed out that all 13 of the Indic scripts can be typeset in TeX, but only 10 of the 5,000 fonts are free. That set the tone for the next presentation by S. Rajkumar of Linuxense Information Systems, Trivandrum, India, who talked about the processing of Unicode text to produce high-quality typeset material for Indic scripts using Opentype fonts. Continuing the focus on the Indian subcontinent, Amitabh Trehan of the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Delhi, India, narrated the experiences of his team in typesetting in Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian. They had recently published the first Indian-language book totally typeset in LaTeX, using the devnag package, later, also incorporating the sanskrit and ArabTeX packages. In her paper, Gy\"ongyi Bujdos\'o of the University of Debrecen, Hungary, dealt with how the Hungarian TeX Users Group (MaTeX) has resumed the localization of LaTeX for the Hungarian language, keeping in mind the specialities of Hungarian grammar, like hyphenation, and handling definite articles and suffixes. By the time Gyongyi had got to plans for designing special Hungarian ligatures and new fonts, everyone had built up a reasonably good appetite! Thankfully for the organizers, the first lunch of TUG 2002 proved to be a hit, with most of the delegates preferring to polish off the local Indian dishes, and giving the continental offerings a wide berth! There weren't too many complaints about levels of spice either, normally the scarier side of Indian cuisine for the average foreign visitor. The post-lunch session was kicked off by Satish Babu, Chair of the TUG 2002 Organizing Committee who, while admitting that he was preaching to the converted, nevertheless went on to give an Indian perspective of the free software model, and how a poor country like India can use it as a key enabler in the development process. In his talk on ``The Tao of Fonts'', Wlodzimierz Bzyl of the University of Gdansk, Poland, searched through Yin and Yang symbols and I Ching hexagrams for answers to such questions as: Why are there so many variations of letter-like shapes? How were these achieved? And what are the other ways of getting them? In the last talk of the day, Roozbeh Pournader of the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran set his sights on ``Unicode, the Moving Target''. He stressed the recently introduced features of Unicode, now over a decade in development, and pointed out how the TeX community has remained largely ignorant of the moving target, preferring to stick to its own special formats and traditions. He also specified new requirements for the Omega typesetting system, to make it usable for standard renderings. Which, predictably enough, drew some sharp observations from John Plaice of the University of New South Wales, Australia, and primary author of the Omega (and now, Omega 2) project, billed as the successor of TeX. In fact, all the lectures were followed by brief Q\&A sessions, which often had to spill over to the lunch and tea breaks. Needless to add, these bouts helped renew several old passions, while igniting many more new ones! Back at the Hotel Samudra, Kaveh Bazargan of Focal Image Ltd., UK, and Member of the TUG 2002 Organizing Committee, had arranged for a live demo of kalari payattu, the traditional Kerala martial arts form, on the lawns of the hotel, just before dinner. Introducing the show, Dominik Wujastyk of University College, London, explained some of the salient aspects of the art form and its significance to the development of other Asian forms like karate and kung fu. Day Two Thursday, 5 September managed to squeeze in one more speaker to the day's list, taking it up to a total of eight lectures. The day began with an invited keynote talk by Hans Hagen of Pragma, Netherlands, who illustrated the fact that TeX can meet many of the demands of modern publishing, especially thanks to the tight integration of the ConTeXt macro package with METAPOST. With ConTeXt becoming XML-aware, users can now comfortably mix XML and TeX techniques, he pointed out. David Kastrup of Bochum, Germany, in his lecture, revisited WYSIWYG paradigms for authoring LaTeX, highlighting input manipulation tools, including editors like TeXMACS and LyX, and page-oriented previews like Whizzy-TeX and Instant Preview. Kastrup's own preview-latex package offers better coupling by placing previews of small elements into the source buffer. In the third talk of the day, Ross Moore of Macquaire University, Sydney, Australia, elaborated on how serendiPDF makes it easier to find the correct way to express complicated mathematics, especially aligned environments, using LaTeX. The existence of extra (initially hidden) mathematical fields within PDF documents helps solve the problem of how to search for pieces of mathematics within typeset documents, he said. Just before lunch, Stephen M. Watt of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, lectured on conserving implicit mathematical semantics in conversion between TeX and MathML. Several efforts have been made to design software to convert mathematical expressions from TeX to MathML and vice versa. Unlike the standard approach of expanding macros and then translating from low-level TeX to MathML, Watt's approach is to map macros in one setting to corresponding macros in another, thus conserving implied semantics. After lunch, Karel Piska of the Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic, presented his paper on converting public Indic fonts from METAFONT into PostScript Type 1 format with the TeXTRACE program developed by Peter Szabo in 2001. For TUG 2002, Piska prepared a collection of PostScript Type 1 Indic fonts corresponding to their METAFONT sources from CTAN. In a joint presentation on FarsiTeX and the Iranian community, Behdad Esfahbod and Roozbeh Pournader of the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, dwelt on the history, technicalities and future of FarsiTeX, the bilingual Persian/English localized version of LaTeX that meets the minimum requirements of Persian mathematical and technical typography. The FarsiTeX project team is working on a new release with PostScript Type 1 fonts, as well as including Unicode support and integration with Omega, Esfahbod and Pournader said. Denis Roegel of LORIA, France, presented a paper on the METAOBJ system and its features for the implementation of very high-level objects within METAPOST. He first dealt with the usual low-level way of drawing within METAPOST, and then described a functional approach to drawing and how objects can be implemented. In the last lecture of the day, Karel Skoupy proposed a new typesetting language and system architecture to overcome the oversimplified type system of TeX and the incomplete set of TeX primitives. Skoupy's future typesetting system will be composed of flexible components that can support multiple inputs (TeX, XML) and output formats (DVI, PostScript, PDF) and different font types. The second day of TUG 2002 ended with the official -- and sumptuous -- conference dinner at Hotel Samudra, which was preceded by a song-and-dance show by a group of homeless children from the Sri Chitra Home for the Poor and Destitute, Trivandrum, as well as a flute recital of classical Carnatic music by V. C. George. Both these offerings were greatly enjoyed by the delegates, many of whom posed alongside the performers for souvenir photographs. Many also lingered on long after the performances and dinner, to savour the cool breeze from the sea, late into the night, emboldened by the fact that the next day, Friday, would be a relatively easygoing day, with no official sessions scheduled. This was made necessary by an earlier call by local trade unions for a day-long general strike that would have prevented vehicular traffic on the streets of Trivandrum, which would have made it almost impossible for delegates to reach Technopark. The organizers therefore rescheduled the programme to allow for some tutorials for delegates at Hotel Samudra itself. In the event, though the strike was called off at the last minute, the delegates spent the Friday well, some attending David Kastrup's tutorial, and others setting out for sightseeing and shopping! Day Three Saturday, 7 September began with none of the laziness of a typical weekend, as the TUG Business Session reviewed the past year's annual report, discussed some points of budgets and finances, and the forthcoming elections to various official posts. After that, the first lecture of the day was by G. Nagarjuna of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, who talked on semantic Web, the GNOWSYS project and online publishing. The theme of online communication was also a key point in the next presentation by Srivathsan, Director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management - Kerala (IITMK), who talked of using free software in the nationwide education grid that his institute is now working on. A Chinese touch followed, with a presentation by the founder and Chairman of the Chinese TeX Users Group, Hong Feng, who attempted to marry TeX with Lojban, an artificial, ambiguity-free language constructed in 1955. Feng pointed out how it is possible to encode Chinese by using Lojban as the meta-language and by importing the idea of re-encoding Chinese in variable length strings of human-readable ASCII codes. In a brief but interesting presentation just before lunch, K. Anilkumar of Linuxsense Information Systems, Trivandrum, India, presented a way of exploiting shell-escape to make TeX read databases and generate reports. In the first lecture after lunch, John Plaice of the University of New South Wales, Australia presented a paper written along with Yannis Haralambous of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications de Bretagne, France. They presented tools, based on the Omega typesetting system and using fonts from devnag, for typesetting languages using the Devanagiri script (Hindi, Sanskrit, Marathi). These tools can be adapted to particular environments of input methods and fonts, and even to other Indic languages, the paper argued. Fabrice Popineau of SUPELEC, France, talked of what's new with the 7th version of TeXLive under Windows. He also told delegates of an imminent project, funded by the French Ministry of Education, to tightly integrate XEmacs and TeX to provide an easy-to-use, out-of-the-box word processing tool. In the last lecture of TUG 2002, Karel Skoupy discussed the development of a TeX file server, which will offer cross-network transparency and resource sharing. He demonstrated the prototype of the server, and its protocol and integration with kpathsea. Before the closing ceremony of TUG 2002, delegates were treated to a video display that showcased the attractions of Big Island, Hawai'i, the venue of TUG 2003, the Silver Anniversary of TeX. At the closing ceremony, Satish Babu thanked all those who had worked tirelessly to make the conference a success. Dominik Wujastyk summed up the achievements of TUG 2002, noting, in particular, how potential disruptions had been managed in a quiet, unobtrusive and peaceful manner. As TUG 2002 came to a close, and delegates began exchanging hugs and goodbyes (or ``Alohas'', which is Hawai'ian for both ``goodye'' and ``hello''), all eyes were trained on the Outrigger Waikola Beach Resort, Big Island, Hawai'i, where, from July 20 to 24, TeXies will congregate to celebrate 25 years of TeX. See you in Hawai'i!

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BBC and Red Flag Linux
by CK Raju 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

Fred, I suppose the story is a year old. It initially came out in http://news.com.com/2102-1001-272299.html CK Raju

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School Syllabus with Free Software
by Arun M 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

Hi All, Any idea about IT Syllabus with Free Software ? It would be nice to have one which we can put forward to Public Education departments in various states. Also it would be good to get real case studies on Free Software in Education (from developing countries). Regards Arun.

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BBCTV focuses on GNU/Linux ...
by Frederick Noronha 21 Sep '02

21 Sep '02

Red Flag Linux... national pride... more reliable... cheaper... these are some of the keywords emerging from BBC TV ClickOnline's current program which focuses on GNU/Linux in China, apart from other issues. It was telecast on Saturday 21 Sept at 1200 IST (and next coming up on Sunday 22 Sept at 1600 IST and Tues 24 Sept at 1300 IST). An interesting programme, though as is typical of television, it only skims the surface of the issue. (You've guessed my biases when it comes to reading, radio and TV) "If you haven't heard of Linux, it does the same things as Windows. But unlike Windows (its code is freely available)." That's approximately how BBC introduces GNU/Linux. Many Free/Libre and Open Source Software enthusiasts might cringe to hear their favourite OS being compared to Windoze. But the programme makes the point that there are many reasons for a growing number (even if still a small segment of total computer users) opting for GNU/Linux in China. It's cheaper, more reliable, there are questions of national pride (building software indigenously), China's strategy of adopting and adapting, security flaws, and even suspicion of secret backdoors in closed-source proprietory software.... Perhaps the progamme could have mentioned that the international journal of the Free Software Foundation is today published from China... If interested, contact hongfeng(a)gnu.org This programme also has an interesting debate on the usual question: can China compete with Indian software... Do we have to see everything in terms of competition? Louisa Liu agrees that this needn't be so. On an offtopic subject, one learnt of a very interesting plan to teach Internet and computing to the elderly -- the oldest student being 85. Maybe we too could think of similar approaches. Why not? A good way of fighting both the digital and age-bias all in one. --FN PS: If you'd like to suggest future topics for programs to BBC, write in to clickonline(a)bbc.co.uk -- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783 BYTESFORALL www.bytesforall.org * GNU-LINUX http://linuxinindia.pitas.com Email fred(a)bytesforall.org * Mobile +9822 122436 (Goa) * Saligao Goa India Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference

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What makes Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) attractive?
by Frederick Noronha 20 Sep '02

20 Sep '02

European Union Researches the Benefits of Open Source Software -------------------------------------------------------------- [Desi angle to an international study...] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/09/16/platform.html European Union Researches the Benefits of Open Source Software by Andy Oram 09/16/2002 Editor's Note: Andy Oram reports on the possible implications of a recent study that explored the reasons behind the widespread use of, and support for, free and open source software. A major research project under the name Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and Study, or FLOSS, recently explored reasons behind the widespread use of, and support for, free and open source software. This is, to my knowledge, the first large-scale, rigorous study concerning any aspect of free software. It involves interviews with thousands of developers and hundreds of businesses, with carefully-chosen questions and a correlation of results. ----------------------- FN's comments: Don't miss this. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, chief writer of the FLOSS study, <rishab(a)dxm.org> has been in the Netherlands for just two years. Before that he was based in Delhi, and closely involved in the Indian internet/telecom scene, though he stopped writing for PCQ/DQ/Asianage in 1996. Rishab had his own newsletter, Indian Techonomist, going out to people like Reed Hundt and Vint Cerf, and he wrote various consultation papers on the opening up Internet policy (especially to small providers) on the request of telecom secretaries such as Takkar and Gokak. Googling "Indian Telecom" still shows up his site as two of the top four hits, even though "it's heavily cobwebbed", as Rishab says! He's keen to find out the number of active LUG members in India too. Is that somehow possible?

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NEWS: Indian computing seeks allies, solutions from wide range
by Frederick Noronha 20 Sep '02

20 Sep '02

Indian computing seeks allies, solutions from wide range by Frederick Noronha fred(a)bytesforall.org BANGALORE: From distant expats to tiny groups of computing enthusiasts, elite research centres and language-speakers whom India doesn't have much contact with... all these are being looked to as allies in finding local language computing solutions for this country of one-billion plus. Long delayed in coming, Indian-language computing is today reaching out for help from varied sources, as a national-level Indic Computing meet held here noted. Global expat communities -- with a deep interest in the subject and also the skills and funds -- could play an important role in this endeavour. The Tamil diaspora has been particularly strong in networking across national-boundaries to find IT solutions. Globally, the English domination of computing has increased the problems of getting Indian scripts to work on this powerful tool. Besides, some South Indian languages groups, including Kannada, feel suggestions going to international decision-makers from officials in Delhi have been inadequate or largely attuned to the needs of North Indian tongues. But there's a lot of optimism on possibilities of wider networking. "I just met Laotian and Kampuchean experts who were keen to follow India's work on local language computing solutions," said Prof Pat Hall of the UK Open University, a close watcher on moves that could throw open computing to hundreds of millions in this region. Prof Hall points out that Burmese and some other South East Asian languages use the Brahmi script to write, which is closely related to Indic scripts. Burmese is spoken by an estimated 32 million mainly around Myanmar. Even if India's situation is seen as rather complex -- with there being some 1652 mother-tongues, from half-a-dozen different language groups, including 33 spoken by over a hundred thousand people -- things are not that bleak. Solutions in a few major languages would immediately open up computing to hundreds of millions, for instance. "This is not rocket science. Solutions are possible. Indian-language word processors and spreadsheets are badly needed," says Venky Hariharan, a long-time campaigner on this front, now at the Mumbai-based Media Lab Asia. "But this is not just an engineering problem. There are cultural issues, lingustic ones, and questions of deployment involved," reminds Tapan Parikh, an expat now based in India, and keen to see some solution come on this front. One strategy of the Indic-Computing group will be to network with others working in the field -- ranging from the Free Software and Open Source networks like KDE to software giant Microsoft. Other smaller groups are also being seen as key players in the field -- including the IIT-Madras group that has been working and incubating innovative Indian-language solutions, the NCST (National Centre for Software Technology) in Mumbai, and the IIIT (International Institute of Information Technology) in Hyderabad, which has done impressive work on machine-language translation and related areas. Local GNU/Linux Users Groups, scattered volunteers spread across India to study and promote the use of Free and Open Source Software, are also being looked on as potential allies. India already has a wide network of LUG groups, as they're called, with bigger ones operating out of the metros and IT-oriented cities like Bangalore. This city, designated sometimes as the 'Silicon Valley of India', is already planning a major national meet called LinuxBangalore2002 in early December. Last year, over 2000 participants took part in this meet. Organisations trying to widen India's computing base and take IT solutions to the rural areas, are also searching for solutions. One example is Bangalore's Simputer network, which plans to take a sharable, low-cost people's computing device to the millions. IIT-Madras has also incubated firms -- such as n-Logue -- offering solutions for low-cost Internet and telephone access, which would also vastly gain from local language solutions. Other languages have gone far ahead. On the Internet, languages with far more complicated script problems have already made progress. For instance, it's already possible to list websites and do a search in non-Romanic Asian languages like Japanese, Chinese and Korean. But some Indian tongues are making headway. Tamil expat speakers in Toronto recently highlighted the success of Mandrake, a brand packaging GNU/Linux software, in coming out with a Tamil-enabled version. Commented Toronto-based expat V Venkataramanan: "A total Tamil computer is now available. With the release of Mandrake Linux 9.0, an average user should be able to operate a computer and use Internet -- all in Tamil." This means that for the first time, the prerequisite of English knowledge for using computers has been eliminated, at least for those who know Tamil. People throughout the world have been using computers and Internet in their own languages. Some how, Indian users are compelled to use them in English. Indian engineers and scientists are a dominant force in the IT world, but have also faced criticism for being grossly negligent of the needs of the commonman from their own region. "This has pushed India to the top of the list of countries suffering from the Digital Divide," argue campaigners like Venkataramanan. Several Tamil programmers however have been given credit for making computing more accessible in that language. Tamil GNU/Linux programmers currently come from as disparate regions as Canada, USA, Singapore, Japan, India and Malaysia, largely interacting through the web and Internet discussion groups. There's also an International Federation of Information Technology in Tamil (INFITT). In Malayalam, the Free Software Foundation-India is undertaking some initiatives. Kannada has been spearheaded by groups like the Kannada Ganaka Parishad and scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Hindi and Marathi have also been getting considerable attention. Bengali IT solution campaigners plan to share solutions with developers like Tani Ahmed in Bangladesh, while the same could apply with Urdu possibilities from Pakistan. "Most of our clients have a big need for Indic-language solutions," says Sunil Abraham, who's Mahiti.org works in equipping not-for-profit grassroot organisations with IT solutions in Bangalore. "We're anyway heading towards a boom in Indian Language computing. For all these plans of G2C (government-to-citizen) initiatives to succeed, we simply need it. Outside Delhi and Mumbai, people would still prefer to work in Indian languages on their computers," says Microsoft Corporation (India) localization program manager Raveesh Gupta. (ENDS) -- Frederick Noronha * Freelance Journalist * Goa * India 832.409490 / 409783 BYTESFORALL www.bytesforall.org * GNU-LINUX http://linuxinindia.pitas.com Email fred(a)bytesforall.org * Mobile +9822 122436 (Goa) * Saligao Goa India Writing with a difference... on what makes *the* difference

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FLOSS study: EU researches benefits of Free/Libre OSS
by Frederick Noronha 20 Sep '02

20 Sep '02

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/09/16/platform.html European Union Researches the Benefits of Open Source Software by Andy Oram 09/16/2002 Editor's Note: Andy Oram reports on the possible implications of a recent study that explored the reasons behind the widespread use of, and support for, free and open source software. A major research project under the name Free/Libre and Open Source Software: Survey and Study, or FLOSS, recently explored reasons behind the widespread use of, and support for, free and open source software. This is, to my knowledge, the first large-scale, rigorous study concerning any aspect of free software. It involves interviews with thousands of developers and hundreds of businesses, with carefully-chosen questions and a correlation of results. Equally significant is the funder of the study: the European Union. These government representatives have displayed a growing curiosity about, and sympathy for, the free software phenomenon; see, for instance, the recent announcement concerning OpenEvidence, a project in digital certificates and signatures. The EU is an excellent body to sponsor a sympathetic but demanding inquiry into the purposes and processes of free software development. (The study was carried out for the EU by Berlecon Research GmbH and the University of Maastricht. The business survey involved only European participants, but the developer survey was worldwide.) This article, like most of mine, will involve a modest portion of summary accompanied by an ample serving of my own impressions and analysis. Slow and Steady The burning question many people bring to this survey -- whether friend or foe -- is: "Why would organizations choose to use free software?" We know that the "free as in beer" aspect of free software appeals to underdeveloped countries (see recent news items from Peru and Venezuela, along with China's Red Flag Linux). But in more affluent Europe, price is not the issue. Over and over in the FLOSS study, organizations place cost savings low on their list of reasons for choosing free software. Ideological reasons will be discussed later in this article. Overwhelmingly, the highest ranking reasons for using free software center on quality: Higher stability Better access protection Higher performance Better functionality Admittedly, "better price-to-performance ratio" turns up with a high rating. But the survey notes that true cost comparisons are hard to make with any confidence. Organizations also like the absence or low burden of license fees, but I'm not sure that this is a cost issue. Organizations might simply want to avoid the pain in the ass of predicting needs, negotiating with the vendor, dealing with malfunctioning license servers, and so on. Still, quality issues clearly trump cost issues in the FLOSS survey. This is powerful ammunition for activists fighting the old misconception, still far too prevalent, that free software is a poor man's consolation for the lack of funds to buy really good software. Looking deeper, I find another lesson in this confidence expressed by businesses and nonprofits. The relatively slow pace of development in free software is one of its strengths. Proprietary software companies have earned a terrible reputation over many decades for shoveling in check-off boxes as fast as marketing representatives can think them up. Bugs inevitably abound. Users complain about bloatware and features that merely get in their way, as well as trying to fix bugs by upgrading to the next feature release and getting more bugs. Perhaps this is why MySQL is gaining market share, even though it started off quite feature-poor; MySQL AB has taken its sweet time adding such basics as transaction support and encrypted data transfers. What they offer is rock-solid reliability (along with the performance that one achieves by leaving out computationally-heavy functionality). Security, which is now on administrators' minds more than ever, has always been understood to be a function of stability and code quality. Modern Windows systems have a number of security features -- ACLs and encrypted filesystems, for example -- that Linux and the BSDs lack or require special patches for. But security features are not what most users are looking for; they want security, plain and simple. Linux and the BSDs offer that more reliably (unless Bill Gates's recent conversion to the creed of high security is matched by growing adherents throughout Microsoft). We must also remember that new features do not change user behavior the moment they're released; they take some time to percolate through the ground and up the root systems of the user community. In particular, programmers are people, too. They require time to learn about new features, recognize their benefits (if any), and upgrade their applications. Each delay reduces the utility of a feature upgrade. Please understand that I believe in evolution. But the changes that make people feel an urgent need to upgrade are those that radically reform their jobs and their ways of interacting, such as graphical interfaces, the Web, and cross-platform code development. These sorts of innovation can occur in both free and proprietary software. In contrast, incremental change is not a big selling point. I have not yet discussed ease of use, a measure where free software presumably doesn't come off so well -- at least for new and nonprofessional users. The FLOSS study addressed this in a couple criteria, especially "Cost savings regarding training and introduction of users," which predictably came out low as a reason for using free software. In general, free software has still not achieved the widespread familiarity of Microsoft software. In a recent analysis regarding the elusive "Total Cost of Ownership" (TCO) measure, the analysts noted the familiarity of Microsoft software as one of its main advantages. More exposure to free software can close the gap. The FLOSS study itself throws up its hands when dealing with TCO. They report that companies "were generally unable to provide even rough estimates about the monetary value derived from using open source software," even concerning "simple questions like license fee savings or hardware cost savings." Moral Concerns A sense of moral imperative concerning information freedom motivates a lot of free software developers. Nearly all of the programmers surveyed understood the philosophical difference between "free software" and "open source," as articulated by Richard M. Stallman and the Free Software Foundation. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, chief writer of the FLOSS study, finds in the developer results several thought-provoking observations: Although organizations trying to commercialize free software (such as my own company, O'Reilly & Associates) promote the term "open source," more of the developers identify with the "free software" side than the "open source" side (48 percent versus 38 percent). Most "free software" developers were content to coexist with the "open source" label, but 38 percent of them -- 18 percent of all developers in the survey -- took a stronger position and refused to identify with the "open source" community. Furthermore, 38 percent of all developers agreed with the statement that software should not be proprietary. Participation in free software projects tends to sharpen developers' philosophical and political concerns. Belief that "software should not be a proprietary good" and a desire to "limit the power of large software companies" were larger motivations for developers continuing to work on projects than they had been in attracting these developers in the first place. It would be interesting to imagine what would happen to the open source movement if proprietary software projects dried up. The demographic part of the FLOSS survey showed that the majority of contributors to free software are professional programmers. Most of them work on open source projects as a hobby, often for just a couple of hours a week. In short, proprietary software provides an income for fully half of the people who work on open source software. But perhaps many of these programmers work on in-house software rather than on commercially-sold software (a point made by Eric Raymond in his essay "The Magic Cauldron," published in The Cathedral & the Bazaar). Related Reading The researchers conducting the FLOSS study could not detect much of a concern for moral issues in the organizations using free software (whether commercial or nonprofit). But my interpretation of the statistics shows more of a groundswell of concern among customers than the researchers allowed for. The percentage of organizations that agreed with the statement "We prefer using open source software -- that's part of our company policy" was low (19 percent), but still pretty impressive, when you consider how rarely businesses take stands on questions outside of purely-practical considerations. Similarly, I consider it an achievement when 35 percent agree with the statement "By using open source software we want to support the open source community." On the other hand, I do not feel a sense of confidence that companies take a moral position by allowing their developers to contribute to open source projects during work hours. While 36 percent say they allow it, they could be doing so simply for pragmatic reasons. The FLOSS researchers correlated organizations' responses with many demographic characteristics, but did not correlate the responses to particular statements with responses to other statements. In any survey, it is hard to draw conclusions about beliefs and motives. So both the researchers and the readers of the FLOSS survey are left guessing about the meaning behind many responses, just as we are left guessing why free software programmers (a whopping 48 percent) prefer the Debian GNU/Linux distribution far more than any other operating system. What about the availability of source code? Open source's defining characteristic, it's been touted as an unbeatable competitive advantage. Here the researchers find very little interest among users. But once again, I think they underestimate the importance of the interest they do find. Some 12 percent of organizations rate the openness of source code "very important" (the percentage rises to 19 percent for desktop software and Web sites) and an even greater percentage rates it lower but still "important." I think that 12 to 19 percent of a user base is quite enough to create a supportive community, and is competitively significant, as well. It's no surprise that more companies are interested in modifying their desktop software (which is currently not too stable) and Web site software than their operating system or database, just as a typical home owner is more comfortable rehanging a window than ripping out the plumbing. Demographics and Personal Motives The FLOSS study spends a good deal of time looking at what kind of person writes free software, and why he (because 99 percent of these developers are male) chooses to do so. The results tend to validate another recent study made by the Boston Consulting Group, wherever the two studies overlap. As mentioned earlier in this article, the majority of contributors are professional programmers. Many can boast an academic computer science background. They tend to be young, but (contrary to popular belief in some quarters) students do not predominate. A good number of developers are in their thirties. These are heavily represented among project leaders. But most projects have only one or two contributors. How about motivations? Non-monetary rewards, such as respect in the community, are important. Both the Boston Consulting Group and the FLOSS surveys also found that one of the most popular reasons for joining a project was to learn new skills. And indeed, the investment of time pays off. A slight majority -- if one includes indirect employment, such as support -- earn some money from free software. Perhaps it is not so remarkable that a majority of contributors are convinced they take out of the projects more than they give. Lofty Goals The FLOSS report is long but quite readable, and I recommend exploring the subtleties of its reasoning for yourself. While the results will interest anybody who thinks about the prospects for the growth and spread of free software, the FLOSS project is ultimately about much more. Among the goals stated in the survey's overview are: "A better realization of political aims [presumably those of the EU] in the context of open source software" (p. 8) "Identifying the impact of and recommending changes in government policy and regulatory environments with regards to OS/FS" (p. 3) Drawing "broader" conclusions about "non-monetary and trans-monetary activity in the information society, beyond the domain of OS/FS" (p. 3) The researchers are even mining the source code on a huge number of open source projects to trace the connections between the projects and their authors. Although these efforts are tentative, someday they may help to firm up our understanding of the unique opportunities for education, code reuse, and synergistic evolution presented when programmers publish source code to the whole world. Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly & Associates, specializing in books on Linux and programming. Most recently, he edited Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies. ------------------------------------------------------------------

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