Fsf-friends December 2002

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Big Blue counters Gates' offer for Indian software
by Soundara Rajan N.S. 13 Dec '02

13 Dec '02

Big Blue counters Gates' offer for Indian software IANS Thursday, December 12, 2002 BANGALORE: After Microsoft chairman Bill Gates' lavish offerings for health, education and proprietary software, his company's biggest competitor IBM has offered to transform India into a software industry hub if it adopts the open source standard. The world's second largest software company that is also known as the Big Blue is offering to build "enablement centres" for India to shift from being a mere software services powerhouse to a full-fledged software industry hub. "We are willing to invest heavily in the enablement centres based on what decision the government takes. It should standardise on open source and we will create centres for the software industry to flourish," Amuj Goyal, vice president, solutions and strategy, IBM software group, told IANS. Source: siliconindia.com ================================================================= N.S. Soundara Rajan, freelance IT journalist and Knowledge networker, based at Mysore, India ...connecting people to people, and people to knowledge

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Anyone knows more about the Akshaya project (Kerala)?
by Frederick Noronha 12 Dec '02

12 Dec '02

'Akshaya' project ----------------- Reports in the mainstream press say India's 'Akshaya' project plans to set up some 9,000 community information centres across Kerala as part of a campaign to bridge the digital divide. These centres are to be established through private initiative, with the objective of having one centre within two km of each household. The project would commence in Malappuram and Thiruvananthapuram in January 2003 and the entire State is proposed to be covered by May 2004. http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/11/17/stories/2002111704810400.htm

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LINK: GNU/Linux in Indian languages ...
by Frederick Noronha 12 Dec '02

12 Dec '02

[Note, please read GNU/Linux instead of Linux below... since this refers to more than just the kernel. -FN] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- GNU/LINUX IN INDIAN LANGUAGES * Call for participation We are a group of people who passionately believe that the benefits of information technology must be widely and freely available to the Indian masses. Our group consists of people who combine skills in written scripts, free/open source technologies, language experts and technology journalism to make this happen. Why Indian languages ? Today, almost all software and operating systems and websites in India are in the English language. Since English is a language spoken by less than 10 percent of India's population (generally considered to be the language of the affluent) language is a significant barrier for the other 90 percent of India. This is creating a new class of people who live in what can be called as "Information Poverty" even as technology becomes cheaper and cheaper. To destroy this barrier we need to create a national-level, collaborative effort to localise Linux to Indian languages. Why Linux ? The openness of Linux allows local linguistic groups to customise user interfaces in ways that are far more culturally sensitive than any centrally controlled approach. Linguistic groups that may be considered too small a market by vendors can also take their destiny in their own hands by customising the Linux interface to their own needs. We therefore believe that Linux is a very attractive long-term solution to India's computing needs. We believe that information technology in India in general and Linux in particular has been confined to the 3 % of the Indian population who feel comfortable reading, speaking and writing English. Given that there are 1 billion Indian citizens, this is a scandal. Linux and its ecology encompass almost all areas of computing today from small embedded devices and clusters with thousands of nodes. We believe that Linux technology should be accessible to all Indians, regardless of linguistic background. How can I participate ? Localising the user interface of Linux to all the 18 official Indian languages will involve changing the menus and help-text to Indian languages and creating a whole stack of applications and tools (word processors, browsers, spell-checkers etc.) to enable computing in Indian languages. To achieve this goal we are looking for people with either of the two skills (if you have both these skills, that's fantastic!): Technical skills: The project needs a variety of technical skills in variety of programming languages (C/C++/Java/Perl) and platforms such as X-Windows GNOME,KDE, font development, application development , locale support etc. Language skills: You must be fluent with the script of at least one Indian language and be willing to contribute to the task of Indianising the menus and help text of Linux. We request linguistic user groups and patriotic individuals to come forward and help us in this task. Join in at www.indlinux.org - - - - - - - - - - Ongoing Indianisation Projects Indian Linux Project , IndLinux.org - http://www.indlinux.org Project page on SourceForge - http://www.sf.net/projects/indlinux Main Focus : Complete language enablement at all levels, building a fully Indian language supported Linux distribution ( http://www.indlinux.org/distro ). Indic Computing Project - http://indic-computing.sourceforge.net Project page at SF - http://www.sf.net/projects/indic-computing The Indic-Computing project is a central resource for the Indian language developer community, featuring information on Indian language computing issues and providing a forum where standards can be discussed and evolved. The project intends to serve the community by collecting information on the various aspects of Indian language text processing in one place, and publishing this in the form of a freely accessible handbook. http://indic-computing.sf.net/handbook/index.html Linux Localisation Initiative - http://lli.linux-bangalore.org Project page of SF - http://www.sf.net/projects/lli Main Focus : Translation of LDP documentation , esp HOWTOs in all Indian languages Language Teams Bengali http://www.bengalinux.org Gujarati http://www.indlinux.org/gujarati Hindi http://www.indlinux.org/hindi Kannada http://kannada.sourceforge.net/ Malayalam https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/smc Marathi http://www.indlinux.org/marathi Oriya http://www.indlinux.org/oriya Punjabi http://punjabi-linux.sf.net/, http://www.indlinux.org/punjabi/ Tamil http://www.tamillinux.org/ Telugu http://www.indlinux.org/telugu Others (add you mother tongue) http://www.indlinux.org/otherlang.php Other Projects NCST Indix http://rohini.ncst.ernet.in/indix BharateeyaOO - OpenOffice in Indian Languages http://www.ncb.ernet.in/bharateeyaoo IITM IndLinux http://www.tenet.res.in/Donlab/Indlinux/ [If you know anyone who can be a potential contributor, please pass on this message.]

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NEWS-BANGALORE: Big Blue counters Gates' offer for Indian software
by Frederick Noronha 12 Dec '02

12 Dec '02

Big Blue counters Gates' offer for Indian software By Imran Qureshi, Indo-Asian News Service Bangalore, Dec 12 (IANS) After Microsoft chairman Bill Gates' lavish offerings for health, education and proprietary software, his company's biggest competitor IBM has offered to transform India into a software industry hub if it adopts the open source standard. The world's second largest software company that is also known as the Big Blue is offering to build "enablement centres" for India to shift from being a mere software services powerhouse to a full-fledged software industry hub. "We are willing to invest heavily in the enablement centres based on what decision the government takes. It should standardise on open source and we will create centres for the software industry to flourish," Amuj Goyal, vice president, solutions and strategy, IBM software group, told IANS. "Innovation on the Microsoft platform has moved out. VCs (venture capitalists) are not investing any more on the MSN platform. Gates' visit was only to carry the message of proprietary software that will not benefit the customers," he said. Goyal, the highest ranking Indian in IBM worldwide, has helped drive the growth of the hardware leader's foray into the software business and made it a $13 billion group in just seven years, displacing Oracle from the position of the world's number two software company. "IBM was on proprietary technology in the early 1990s. We could not see outside that. We were trying to look after ourselves, not the customers, until we started the software business in 1995. Today Microsoft is on the wrong side," said Goyal, an alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. "We will put up enablement centres (like e-governance or e-business centres) for software centres. Our strategy is different. Customers need to have control and that can come only through open standards. Microsoft's strategy is to get in their proprietary technology. That's a big trap," he added. "Today you can use database from IBM or any other vendor on open standard. The reason why customers like us is because our systems are robust and scalable and for support services. If you are caught in the proprietary trap, the software business cannot be built. Those are hooks and lures he (Gates) is investing in. Customers don't want that," Goyal said. He quoted examples of the governments of Britain, Germany and Singapore that have adopted open source standards. "India does not have a software business. We want to build the future SAP or a BEA in India by focusing on open standards." IBM is leveraging India not only for its "tremendous skills in software and services" but also because it sees the country as an important market. It has set up five software research and development centres and a solution partnership centre in India. The company has committed $100 million until 2003 for the India software laboratory in Bangalore, which is being scaled up from a headcount of 500 to about 600. "But the skills in India can be applied far beyond the Indian market, primarily the English-speaking countries in the Asia-Pacific unlike China or Japan, which are country-focussed labs," Goyal said. So, was the shift in focus from hardware to software during the downturn coincidental? "No, it was not coincidental. We have been on this strategy for the last 10 years. We have recorded growth for 21 consecutive quarters," Goyal said. The software group drives about 30 percent of IBM's profits. It is the largest supplier of Internet infrastructure software, called middleware, which accounts for about 80 percent of IBM's software revenue of over $10 billion. "We are young -- just seven years old -- and growing, and we will continue to grow. Given the current economic situation, if an opportunity exists, we will go in for acquisition, as we did with Rational Software (the world's leading supplier of software tools for $2.1 billion). It makes sense because it is open standard. We have completed seven acquisitions in 18 months." --Indo-Asian News Service

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The Open CD... what's it about really?
by Frederick Noronha 12 Dec '02

12 Dec '02

URL : http://www.theopencd.org/about.php The OpenCD is a collection of high-quality Open Source Software. All of the programs on the disc run under Windows; the disc is intended to be an Open Source showcase. New users can try out Open Source software in the comfort of their own, familiar operating system, rather than having to take the drastic step of reformatting their hard drive to install Linux. Currently, the disc is aimed solidly at non-techies. The primary audience is expected to consist mostly of people who use computers regularly for their work, but are not power users. This might be, for example, Jane from Accounting, who spends a lot of time working on spreadsheets and checking her email. She can find her way around the computer without too much trouble, but wouldn't know a kernel from a TCP/IP stack. By showing the benefits of Open Source Software to users such as these, we hope to encourage its adoption -- in the workplace, in schools, and by individuals. The OpenCD features a CD browser application that allows for easy browsing of the programs on the CD. It also includes a selection of essays about Open Source philosophy, and links to other programs that might be of interest. The OpenCD The following programs are on the OpenCD. Click a program name to see a full description, with screenshots and a link to the program's own home page. * [1]OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 * [2]DictInstall 0.9.3.2 * [3]AbiWord 1.0.1 * [4]Beonex Communicator 0.8.1 * [5]FileZilla 2.1.1 * [6]Putty 0.52 * [7]WinVNC 3.3.3r9 * [8]XChat 1.8.10a * [9]Audacity 1.0 * [10]CDex 1.40 * [11]7-Zip 2.24 * [12]NetTime 2.0b6 * [13]Win Privacy Tray 0.5.5 * [14]Sokoban YASC 1.53 * [15]Celestia 1.2.4 * [16]More OSS Programs These are candidate programs, most of which are not currently on the CD. http://www.theopencd.org/programs/MorePrograms.html

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The OpenCD : (URL - http://www.theopencd.org/)
by Frederick Noronha 11 Dec '02

11 Dec '02

URL : http://www.theopencd.org/ The OpenCD [2]What is TheOpenCD? [3]The Programs [4]Download [5]CD Covers [6]Getting Help Project [7]Forum [8]FAQ [9]Nominate a Program [10]Contact Us Links [11]The FSF [12]The FSF - Europe [13]OpenSource.org [14]Knoppix [15]GNUWinII [blueline.gif] Update, 3 December 2002. We are proud to announce the release of the OpenCD's first edition! [16]Download and enjoy! "TheOpenCD" is a trademark of Henrik Nilsen Omma. References 1. http://www.theopencd.org/ 2. http://www.theopencd.org/about.php 3. http://www.theopencd.org/programs/index.html 4. http://www.theopencd.org/mirrors.php 5. http://www.theopencd.org/covers.php 6. http://www.theopencd.org/help.php 7. http://www.theopencd.org/forum/ 8. http://www.theopencd.org/faq.php 9. http://www.theopencd.org/nomination.php 10. http://www.theopencd.org/contact.php 11. http://www.fsf.org/ 12. http://fsfeurope.org/ 13. http://www.opensource.org/ 14. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html 15. http://gnuwin.org/index.html 16. http://www.theopencd.org/mirrors.php

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How to make Motorola SM56 internal modem work ?
by R. Sreekumar 11 Dec '02

11 Dec '02

Hello if fact I am using SM56 speaker phone modem and is working(with RH7.1). But the problem is that it will not work with RH versions higher than 7.2. The kernal will not support. I reccoment to use "Connexant modem". As they provide source code we can use for any disto , any version. this should be popularised sreekumar On Sun, 08 Dec 2002 Mahesh T. Pai wrote : >N S Srikanth wrote: >>But to make internal modem work, it was no way. I installed >>sm56 rpm, > > >If you use Motorola's SM 56 SpeakerPhone modem, there is no way >it will work with GNU/Linux. > >I have tried, and resigned. > >SM 56 data/fax and data only modems may work, not the SM56 speakerphone modems. > >With much sympathies, > >Regards, >Mahesh T. Pai. > > >_______________________________________________ >Fsf-friends mailing list >Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in >http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends

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Living without Microsoft
by KG Kumar 11 Dec '02

11 Dec '02

Check out www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org

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Microsoft will offer Linux software, predicts META
by Soundara Rajan N.S. 11 Dec '02

11 Dec '02

Microsoft will offer Linux software, predicts META REUTERS[ TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2002 10:01:45 AM ] SEATTLE: In a major strategy shift, Microsoft will introduce software based on the Linux open source operating system in 2004 for Web services and server software, market researcher META Group predicted on Monday. Microsoft, which denied that it had any plans to develop software for Linux, is facing a growing threat from the open source software standard as it gains share in the corporate server market used to manage networks and data. META Group predicted that Linux will be used on nearly half of new servers by 2007, up from its current share of 15 to 20 per cent, making it difficult for Microsoft to ignore Linux as a platform for its database, Web hosting and e-mail server applications. "We believe that, beginning in late 2004, Microsoft (and its partners) will begin moving some of its (to-date) proprietary application enablers (eg, .Net components) to the Linux environment; this will gradually include the major Microsoft back-office products, such as SQL Server, IIS, and Exchange," META Group said. In a further shift, META Group said that Microsoft will also re-price or separate its Windows server operating system "so that it can be favourably compared against 'free' Linux." "I'm unaware of any efforts at this time to move any products onto Linux," said Peter Houston, senior director at Microsoft's server group, adding that there were no plans to detach or re-price its Windows server operating system. "We have made a bet on Windows, and we believe that customers are getting value from the bet we made," said Houston, "and we're going to continue doing what we've been doing for customers." Linux advocates argue that Linux offers better security, flexibility and innovation because its underlying code, or blueprint, for programs remains open to evaluation and scrutiny. Microsoft, which has grown into the world's largest software maker by selling proprietary software that cannot be copied or modified freely, said it is not opposed to open-source software, and points out that its source code is available to approved partners and educational institutions on a limited basis. Cost A Non-Issue Microsoft faced a similar situation a decade ago when its nascent server software was competing head-to-head with market leader Sun Microsystems, but Microsoft did not choose at the time to write software for Sun's proprietary version of Unix. Now Linux, essentially a free version of Unix, is eating away at Sun's share of the business server market. Sun, a hardware and software maker, is now selling computers running Linux, a strategy that was also embraced by International Business Machines. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has toned down its criticism of Linux recently, after an internal strategy document said that some of its arguments against open source software has "backfired." Instead, Microsoft has stressed that its software is more affordable when considering the total cost of using Linux, including ongoing personnel and administration costs. A recent Microsoft-sponsored study by researcher IDC concluded that servers based on Microsoft's Windows 2000 were cheaper to own and operate when used for networking, storing and sharing files, printing and security, while Linux servers were cheaper to operate when used for Web hosting. "The IDC study shows that the upfront cost is a small part of the total cost to the customer," said Microsoft's Houston. META Group's report also came to the same conclusion, saying that Linux's total costs of ownership were likely to be higher for mainstream server applications. "IT organisations must evaluate platform costs from a total-cost-of-ownership perspective," META Group's report said. Source: "Economic Times" dt 10th Dec '02 ================================================================= N.S. Soundara Rajan, freelance IT journalist and Knowledge networker, based at Mysore, India ...connecting people to people, and people to knowledge

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How to make Motorola SM56 internal modem work ?
by N S Srikanth 10 Dec '02

10 Dec '02

Hi Listers I am trying to install GNU/Linux on some of my friends' PC's here at Trivandrum. The trouble is that all of them have only internal modems. They would very much like to try Any distro. Having heard that it works with PCQ Linux 7.1, I installed it at a friend's PC (dual boot). But to make internal modem work, it was no way. I installed sm56 rpm, set it up and ran it . Setup was okay , but the modem will not work. Either " it is unable to find the modem" or " modem is busy"(I made the sym link, changed the device pointer /dev/modem, /dev/ttyS01, 02 etc ., "n" number of times). But no way. I posted this query earlier. I am at my wits end. Now apart from RH7.3, I have MDK9.0, Slackware 8.1 and Debian Woody (3 CD set) with me. Will the internal modem (Motorola SM 56) work in any of these distros without any hassle ?At least 5 of my friends have internal modem only. I would like to install GNU/Linux in as many PC's here in Trivandrum, but only if this problem is resolved . Any pointers or hints to help solve this problem ? N S Srikanth Trivandrum

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Fsf-friends December 2002