---------- കൈമാറിയ സന്ദേശം ---------- അയച്ച വ്യക്തി: ashik salahudeen aashiks@gmail.com തീയ്യതി: 4 September 2008 1:00 PM വിഷയം: [ilug-tvm] Khadi Board visits the GNU/Linux installfest at Technopark today .. സ്വീകര്ത്താവ്: ilug-tvm@googlegroups.com, smc-discuss@googlegroups.com

Hi all,

We at the installfest were lucky enough to have that heady feeling that accompanies a picture of FOSS working its magic and people benefitting from it. Today we had a visit from Khadi board.

Khadi board has been using Fedora and Ubuntu to run their office for quiet sometime now. They had to obey a ruling from the government which mandated the use of FOSS. Instead of waiting around and shoving miles of red tape over it , they went into action and started using FOSS. Of course they ran into problems. They went to CDAC for help. Unfortunately , its another government body and they proved it. CDAC started bull shitting , promising stuff and delivering nothing , demanding ever increasing amounts of money for it and being secretive about it. Frustrated , the people from Khadi board turned to the FOSS community and voila !! things started to go right. Their major problem was Malayalam rendering and input which was solved by the leading Malayalam language computing group , Swathanthra Malayalam Computing ( http://fci.wikia.com/SMC ) . Its members provided support to Khadi board, over web. And Khadi board kept coming back to the community which never let them down.

Today they were here to offer support for FOSS communities , in their own words " We saved over fifteen lakh rupees on OS licensing costs alone. Donating money as sponsorship to the FOSS communities and the events that they organize is nothing com[ared to the help and support they provided us"

And you know what ? We are proud of them . We are proud of ( and to be the ) members of FOSS community that helped this organization which is a beacon of hope to the dying traditional weavers community.

Khadi board is going to be the first public sector organization in Kerala to go completely paperless. And they did this because the FOSS community was right behind them supporting them. Not the government , not the so called software and research organizations sposored and funded by government, but the community who owns and maintains FOSS.

A video that we managed to capture (pardon the poor video quality and awful reporting ) : http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=BuyfLUzFz9E

-- സ്വതന്ത്ര മലയാളം കമ്പ്യൂട്ടിങ്ങ് - എന്റെ കമ്പ്യൂട്ടറിന് എന്റെ ഭാഷ വെബ് താള്:http://smc.org.in/ ഗൂഗിള് കൂട്ടം‍:http://groups.google.com/group/smc-discuss സാവന്ന സംരംഭം: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/smc ഐആര്‍സി ചാനല്‍: irc.freenode.net ലെ #smc-project ഓര്‍ക്കൂട്ട് കൂട്ടം :http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=20512120

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