We're just working to revive the news-content of the Linux-India-General mailing list. Kindly visit and check out the links. Once you're on the site below, please check out 'Indian news'. Your contributions and news-submissions would be welcome! FN

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====================================================================== News from Linux-India * http://www.linux-india.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [Website being relaunched, by Raju Mathur of Delhi. Contributions in terms of content and tech support are welcome!] ======================================================================

Linux India: The India Linux Organisation Portal

NGOs, searching long for alternatives, find flavour in alt.software Frederick Noronha reports -- Asia Source, being held in Bangalore from Jan 28 to Feb 4, 2005 hopes to bring together over a hundred people from 20 countries to increase the use and awareness of FLOSS among the non-profit sector in South and East Asia.

GNUnify ... at Pune, Feb 13 to 15, 2005 Vidyadutt S <vidyadutt at gmail.com> has announced the GNUnify festival of Symbiosis at Pune, a regular event that takes place at this time of the year -- and has continued over the past two years -- at the central Indian city of Pune.

GNU/Linux... in the life sciences Tarun Kant <tarunkant at linuxmail.org> from the SunnyLUG from Jodhpur for this useful piece of information. He says: "For people who are into life science research/bioinformatics, there are a few good linux distros available." This includes the VigyaanCD, the live Linux CD containing "all the required software to boot the computer with ready-to-use modeling software". Says Kant: "And let me tell you this (Vigyaan) is an effort by an Indian. Kudos to you Pratul K Agarwal for such a nice package."

From software... to culture Crimson Feet coordinator Prayas Abhinav is

working on a "showcase" of audiovisual -- film, animation etc -- work produced by alternate methods, and plans an exhibition on February 5 and 6, 2005 at Ahmedabad.

Open Source in Education, Mumbai meet on Feb 11, 2005 Sameer D Saharabudde <sameerds at it.iitb.ac.in> has sent in an early intimation of a program scheduled for February 11, 2005 on "Open Source in Education". Says Sameer: "Some 50 people involved in the education system, like university department heads, college heads, etc will be invited." Further details awaited. Sameer is a research scholar, KReSIT, IIT Bombay.

Microsoft at the KSEB (Kerala) Satheesh S Pillai <satheeshpillai2000 at yahoo.co.in> recently drew attention of the Free Software User Group-Kochi to the report made by Centre for Computer Aided Power Sector Studies (C-CAPSS) in Kerala about the billing software developed by "a famous consultancy along with M$ as part of the e-Governance project". This report makes interesting reading, and has immense implications for many government computerisation plans. You can find the full report at http://www.kseboa.org/KSEB%20LT%20billing%20computerisation.pdf

LaTeX for Malayalam 0.9 released TUG-India -- http://www.tug.org.in -- has announced that an update 0.9 for 'LaTeX for Malayalam' has been released at sarovar. This update enables the use of Type1 Malayalam fonts available with CDAC ISM Publisher, according to Alex. Download the package from: http://malayalam.sarovar.org/ .

IITIANS Develop Linux-Based Cell Phone Tracking Software CXOToday.com writer Julia Fernandes has reported on how "three young Mumbai-based IITians, who have developed a Linux-based software application that tracks the location of mobile phones."

Nithin Kamath's LinTux Newsletter A made-in-Mangalore product. Interesting compiliation of news and updates from the world of FLOSS across India and the globe. Check it out at Now in the 14th issue. Keep it up Nithin. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/lintux

THE HINDU: A whiz-kid's tryst with Linux What do people do when they hear that doing a particular thing is very difficult? Most of them try to avoid it. But some people meet the challenge headlong. Sarath Lakshman a Standard X student of the Jawaharlal Nehru Government Higher Secondary School, Mahe, belongs to the second category. This article is from the national newspaper THE HINDU, reproduced here with gratitude to this publication for highlighting an issue which is important to understanding what makes sense to the young techies-in-the-making of South Asia.

Low-cost CD outlet http://www.linuxbazar.com is run by Srinivasan <LinuxIndia at hotmail.com>. Says he: "I sell CDs at Rs 50 per CD. Spreading the word on my website is difficult .. still I have managed to ship Fedora to remote corners in India incl. Jammu."

L10N How-To and Toolkit On Jan 19, 2005 Sunil Abraham <sunil at apdip.net> announced that the IOSN-CDAC L10N How-To and Toolkit is ready for a "final round of comments and feedback." The main page contents listing of the CD is available at http://anakin.ncst.ernet.in/~aparna/consolidated/CD. It has links to the guide, as well as the list of tools we will include in the CD. You can see the current version at: http://anakin.ncst.ernet.in/~aparna/consolidated in the HTML format. Feedback welcome!

Font developer's guide Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at clai.net> is offering what he terms a "preliminary version of a font developer's guide". Check out what this determined young man has to offer at http://sayamindu.randomink.org/conv_guide/

Listing Indian LUGs, GLUGs, FSUGs and more... a list of links to various user groups in the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) world. Please visit it at http://wikiwikiweb.de/LugsList/

Punjabi translation of Debian Installer comes closer to realisation Christian Perrier <bubulle at debian.org> said January 19, 2005 that the Debian Installer team has been contacted by Amanpreet Alam, who offers to start working on Debian Installer (and further Debian translations) in Punjabi. Says he: "The work on Hindi started about two to three months ago after a discussion here where Ravi Shrivastava offered to initiate it."

ET's software stories Indian business daily, 'The Economic Times', has this link for software-related stories. Unfortunately just a few related to Free/Libre and Open Source Software in India ... a field where so much is happening!

C-DAC launches Janabhaaratii FLOSS localisation project C-DAC, the Indian government-run Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing, has announced in October 2004 the launch of the launch of its "janabhaaratii" project for localisation of FLOSS. It suggested the goal would be "development, deployment and community building, and the work would be put out under the GPL/LGPL licenses.

Govt open to open source software ... or just hedging bets? India's business newspaper reported in end-December 2004 that the Government of India "continues to evaluate options for using open source software, a move which would proliferate the usage of IT by bringing down its costs". IT secretary Brijesh Kumar was quoted as telling the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, an industry lobby group, that the "government continues to consider options available in open source software". There was a suggestion that "India should force proprietory software makers to share source code by threatening to shift to open source software", the ET reported, citing the case of China.

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---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://goabooks.swiki.net * Reviews of books on Goa... and more