THIS SET OF MINUTES is so outdated, that had I to delay any longer, it would have been criminal. The intention was to write a detailed report on the Feb 22 meeting at Panjim... it was a great meeting. But then, in the chaotic life of a freelancer (we're so busy doing nothing), this was not to be. Anyway, here are some highlights...
o CSI'S SMALL HALL was almost bursting with participation. At one stage the count touched 25. Impressive eh?
o IF YOU THOUGHT that was impressive, you should have seen the number of newcomers who were present. Besides, lady-participants touched nearly a one-in-four ratio! Who said GNU/Linux is for left-brained male geeks?
o RAVI DEKA got started talking ... and man, this guy really knows to narrate a story. But before we went off-the-beaten track on the subject of motorcycling across India (Banduji's perchance for such themes makes it a lethal combination) we hurriedly shifted gear to focus back on GNU/Linux.
o BIJON SHAHA, as planned, was prepared to tell the LUG about GNUnify, India's first free software festival held at Pune's deemed university, Symbiosis. Quotes: "There were 15 techie talks, two parallel sessions, each hall having at least 100 people. Basically, the audience was of students." "Some youngsters proved to be very good speakers. Nirav Mehta made two presentations on PHP." Among those speaking were the skilled orator and free software evangelist Prof Nagarajuna of TIFR, Sam Metryani of the Simputer team, Venky Hariharan and G Karunakar on Indic solutions for GNU/Linux... and of course hacker-guru RMS (Richard M Stallman). Shaha also spoke on the presentations by Prof Shivakumar and Prof Jeetendra Saha of VJTI, a very determined campaigner for FLOSS. FreEDUC CDs (the latest rage, after Knoppix) were handed around to demo the power of educational free software that boots from a CD-rom.
Ravi Pradhan of Via (recently resettled in India from Silicon Valley, and determined to bring in low-cost GNU/Linux-based computers to the market) was also in Pune, presenting thin clients and inexpensive computing using Via's C3 chipset. The promise: notebooks for Rs 35K next year!
Dr Ramakrishna of the DoIT presented the government's thinking on FLOSS. Basically, the idea would be to encourage FLOSS, while not dictating any one route for computing, and letting the market decide, Shaha quoted him saying. Shaha was himself one of the speakers at Pune.
o ARVIND YADAV, founder-member of ILUG-Goa, narrated his experiences at COMPAS in Kolkata. The LUG had the biggest stall at this exhibition of IT and computers. There were demos of FreEDUC and LinuxRacer (which Arvind described as "less of a game and more of a simulation... with 50 cars and 20 cracks".
IN NO time the debate shifted (don't recall how) to educational games -- free software fo maths, symbiolic maths, equations and J'compris (maths, language, shapes and colours for the very young). Octave, where the plots come out as graphs, etc...
o SANGEETA NAIK, the coordinator of the Goa Schools Computers Project, explained that 104 schools had been given once-used computers under the Goa Sudharop project. Some 20-25 had LTSP solutions installed. There was a need to extend this to enable computer-aided learning and after-hours access for nearby communities, she said. The need for locating relevant and working software (given the hardware constraints) was always felt.
o ASHLEY DELANEY SPOKE of his recent visit to Bangladesh, to share ideas with attempts at taking FLOSS to schools.
o OTHER ISSUES throw up and spoken about as we interrupted each other included discless-PCs, whether FLOSS could replace Pagemaker and the needs of a DTP-ised magazine,
o IN THE ROUND of introductions that followed, one of those present was Biju Chacko of Bangalore. He is an ex-coordinator of the Bangalore LUG, and since last year has started his own business. Biju said there were a "lot of companies" in Bangalore moving to open tools, like PHP and Zope. "But the basic problem is that if you're not selling a thing (as against a service), they're iffy about paying big amounts." Biju also suggested that a number of B'lore LUGers getting active in their own businesses or professions was a good thing, except activity became a bit lax compared to earlier highs. But for big events like Linux-Bangalore200*, large numbers did actively participate.
o IT WAS time for the meet to end, yet no sign of Tilmann Singer. Just as we were headed for the Navtara restaurant cuppa tea, we ran into a young foreigner, who could have been Tilmann Singer. He was!
Earlier we had promised that:
o Tilmann Singer tils@tils.net from Europe will be briefly speaking on OpenACS. This is a cool toolkit for building community web applications. See http://openacs.org (specially of interest for people into web apps).
Singer lives in Berlin, and came to know of us via the Wizards of Os conference. He is currently working for four months in Hyderabad, helping with setting up a small company focussed on the development of a Free/Libre and Open Source Software web toolkit (openacs) and is an open source campaigner himself.
Anyway, we at the restaurant, we kept discussing various things. Tilmann (who had got onto the wrong bus -- a slow-moving 'local') gathered a crowd around his table of those interested in web-issues. The rest of us simply couldn't follow what was going on; they understood each other. Miracles do happen....
o FOR US, THE debate looked at the Goa government's unnecessary gift to Microsoft of ten million rupees, strategies to popularise free software among students, and a whole range of other issues. By the time we looked at our watches, it was past 2030. So what if we started just after 1600?
o THOSE PRESENT INCLUDED B B Shaha (ETDC-Saligao), Mario Alvares (Alienwiz), Lisa Mendonsa (Phil), Flavia Lobo (Phil), Victor D'Souza (GU), Sharon Bothelo (Phil), Greta Mattos, Amey Hegde (Controlnet), Alka Pai and Ajay Cuncolienkar (Khandola College), Agraj Agranayak, Yogesh Teli and Ravi Deka, Sangeeta Naik (Goa Schools Computers Project), Rina Patel (NRI volunteer working in Goa of the America-Indian Foundation), Biju Chacko (Bangalore), Gurunandan Bhat (ex-GU/PlusThought), Anil Seth (head of dept IT, PCC), Arvind Yadav (Online), Animesh 'Banduji' N Nerurkar, Sreenivas (Navy Hydrography School), Sanil Talaulikar (PCC), Mohandas Gopani (Selections).
o LASTLY, don't forget the meetings for March. Margao is on March 8 (Clinton, get working to arrange something interesting... this was shifted for you!) and March 22 (Panjim). More details http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa
o PS: Don't ask what the subject-line has to do with this report. In case you didn't guess... it was aimed at getting you to read it ;-)