Hello All,
The Jan 14th meet was held at five gardens from 4 pm to almost 7.30 pm. It was attended by 12 people and the concept of meeting in a public place like a garden had a good response. Dr. Nagarjun even suggested an idea of having a wireless access point network to make the gardens hot spots for people to come in the free open space with their laptops and do their work without any restriction of wires or walls.
The topics covered in the discussions were, faxing in Linux and later on we had a very interesting talk by Dr. Nagarjun on free software.
For the faxing solutions, Dr. Nagarjun, Anurag and Benoy spoke about their experiences with fax softwares and Hylafax was the clear choice for everyone. Then Dr. Nagarjun gave a very in depth talk on the Free Software Movement. He updated us on how the software patents bill would have killed software freedom in India and how it was withdrawn in the nick of time after a lot of interaction with the Govt. and political parties. He went on to tell us the difference between open source and free software and how open source did not necessarily mean free software. Please note that here free is freedom, not price. He has also suggested conducting a Linux installation workshop for hardware vendors in Mumbai so that they can get an actual hands on experience with linux. They can be invited to bring their own setup, without monitors, to the workshop and go back with a working linux system.
Overall it was a good meet and I am sure all those present share this view.
Regards,
Rony.
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