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3393 discussions

Dont be proud of freedom if its through linspire
by Hiran Venugopalan 25 Apr '06

25 Apr '06

I am now seeing many guys here who SAYS them as Linux [GNU/Linux Users] and talks about freedom.But when I ask them about the distro there reply is some times sad one for me - linspire.I dont think the linspire as Linux.Itssimply proprietary.Its on EULA.Although the basic GNU/Linux system is free software, most of the GNU/Linux versions now available include a small amount of non-free software--just enough to spoil them as a way to attain freedom. But Linspire is in a class by itself; large and important parts of this system are non-free. No other GNU/Linux distribution has back slided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master. | Hiran Venugopalan | | Palakkad Libre software Users Society | Adding freedom to common minds | | 09846951870 | hiran.v(a)gmail.com |

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Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:10:08 +0530 From: "Prabhat Sandheliya" <prabhat.news@gmail.com> Re: [Fsf-friends] Lamers Stuff !!!
by Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray 25 Apr '06

25 Apr '06

>> Nice to know about your views. It _was_ nice to read after all. I spent a faur amount of time rolling in laughter too. >> Let's discuss the Sardar Sarovar Dam and Jessica's Lal's murder here >> too, while we're about it. How about Salman Khan's incarceration for >> shooting a black buck? Do you feel justice was served in that case? >> Hey, the wrong guy won Indian Idle too -- maybe we should organise >> mass meetings across the country to protest that! >> >> I look forward to hearing the views of everyone on this list with >> respect to all the burning issues in India today. > Well, dear. I don't think this is the right place to discuss these topics > here. This is FSF list and lets confine our discussions to IT, Linux and OSS > here. But if you have something to say, please visit here ( > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/India-Force/<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/India-Force/>) . People will love to hear your > views. My dear Prabhat, that is exactly what Raju was trying to imply. :)

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Google Summer of code guidelins
by प्रव ीण् ए (Praveen A) 25 Apr '06

25 Apr '06

Hi, These are the GNU projects guidelines to participate in Google Summer of Code. http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/guidelines.html More about Google Summer of Code http://code.google.com/soc/ http://code.google.com/soc/studentfaq.html will give you Frequently asked questions like 1. What is Summer of Code 2006? Summer of Code 2006 is a program that offers student developers stipends to create new open source programs or to help currently established projects. Google will be working with a variety of open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several hundred projects over a three-month period. The inaugural instance of the program, which took place last summer, brought together 400 students and 40 mentoring organizations from 49 countries. We'd like to include even more organizations and participants this year. The program's goals are to inspire young developers and provide students in Computer Science and related fields the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during the summer, and to support existing open source projects and organizations. Since we're looking to find developers around the world (many of whom may have considered creating open source software but havent yet taken the plunge), we felt that concentrating on the student population was a good place to focus our efforts. Further, since no single organization could possibly mentor hundreds of students working on disparate projects, we thought it made sense to spread the work throughout the open source and free software community. We also think that the Apache Software Foundation (for instance) knows a lot more about what an Apache project needs than Google does and is more likely to ensure that an applicant gets the right kind of guidance so they can create acceptable code. I really hope some of you join in. I'm sure it will be a really good opportunity to learn with some of the best programmers of the world (and ofcourse $4500). Regards Praveen -- "Value your freedom, or you will lose it, teaches history. `Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn." -- Richard Stallman Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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Networking skills...
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 25 Apr '06

25 Apr '06

Can someone help a friend in Belgaum? Networking skills? Is Anand Babu still in town? FN From: Nitin Bilgi <nbbbgm(a)rediffmail.com> Date: 13 Apr 2006 06:02:03 -0000 (11:32 IST) Hi Frederick. How r U? We are planning to conduct NETWORKING COURSE in Last week of APRIL/MAY can u suggest some Hardcore Networking prof. in GOA. offcourse Bhat and other and some from DLINK u know. pl send their contact email id and tel no's. Hope u will help us Thanking u NITIN BILGI

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Re: [OT][Fsf-friends] Lamers Stuff !!!
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

He may be a lamer, but I can say for sure, unless we expose such things, youngsters especially students will take him/ such people as an example to follow and forget about the real heros of computing (RMS, Denis Richie, Linus, ESR, and many more). I know so many students who think and assume Business Gate$ and even ankit fadia as their idol, and think of them as some great software engineers, IMHO they were/ are good business man, have been successfull in making money, if ankit ever was a hacker wannabe, ending up as a script kiddie but now a successfull business man. All that is necessary for a business man to succeed is for a hacker to do nothing. Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Dept of CSE & IT BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib Punjab, INDIA -------------------------------- http://www.bbsbec.ac.in -------------------------------- ajaypal[at]bbsbec.org, ajaypal[at]acm.org ----- Original Message ----- From: Baishampayan Ghose <b.ghose(a)gnu.org.in> To: Principal Support List of FSF-India <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in> Sent: à¨¸à©à¨®à¨µà¨¾à¨° 24 à¨à¨ªà¨°à©à¨² 2006 03:36:32 à¨¶à¨¾. IST Subject: Re: [Fsf-friends] Lamers Stuff !!! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Prabhat, > Well, dear. I don't think this is the right place to discuss these > topics here. This is FSF list and lets confine our discussions to IT, > Linux and OSS here. But if you have something to say, please visit > here ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/India-Force/ ) . People will > love to hear your views. Raju is right. We all know AF is a fraud. This is a fact and it has been established many times. Now what we can/should do to expose him is totally off-topic here. Regards, BG - -- Baishampayan Ghose <b.ghose(a)gnu.org.in> Free Software Foundation of India http://www.gnu.org.in/

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Breaking News !
by Prabhat Sandheliya 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

Hi guys, I am sure you remember, the story I posted few days back, on the mailing list about Ankit Fadia, "Ankit Fadia : The real picture " . There is a new twist in the story. :-) I sent this mail to various people, including one IT and Cyber Law expert, Deepti Chopra. She also felt that Mr Fadia is doing something fraud and misleading people. She talked to Certificate authority of India and questioned about the authenticity and credibility of the certificate. When I posted the original story to various people, I got many positive responses. I forwarded all those mails to Deepti and she passed them to the Certificate authority of India. Now the twist in the story. :-) Deepti just informed me that, she got positive reply from Certificate authority of India. They have issued a notice to Mr Fadia and CEO, Reliance Web World to stop the issuing certificates. Now we are also thinking about taking some legal action against Mr Fadia and Reliance Web World. Cheers to our victory over unethical business practice and fraud. :-) Do send me your suggestions and views. -- Prabhat Sandheliya --------------------------------------------------------------------- Promote Linux - Join mailing list : http://groups.google.com/group/lug-indore (Linux Users Group - Indore)

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Yet another list on FLOSS?
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 24 Apr '06

24 Apr '06

Dear FSF-India friends: BytesForAll has just launched a new mailing list, specifically focused on Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS, or FOSS). Details of the group are below. We invite all interested to join. Rather than replicating the many existing FLOSS networks, this one intends to have a specific agenda (i) build cross-border regional South Asian links among FLOSS campaigners, users and supporters (ii) share resources and building networks among those working on localisation of FLOSS, particularly on languages which have implications for more than one country in the region, or whose initiatives we can learn from (with a special emphasis on Urdu, Bengali, Nepali, the Devanagari script, smaller languages currently unsupported by FLOSS and/or proprietorial software, etc). In this way, we hope to complement, support and spread awareness about useful initiatives like IndicComputing, Ankur Bangla, and the MPP initiatives on Nepali localisation. On the Urdu front, in particular, links between Pakistan and north India (particularly) are needed on the FLOSS front. Your support and active participation is welcome! Many thanks to Fouad Riaz Bajwa <bajwa(a)fossfp.org> of Pakistan for his high energy levels and repeated prodding to BytesForAll for undertaking this initiative. INTRODUCING THE GROUP: A network to link Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS, or FOSS) advocates in South Asia, with an intention of building regional links and specially encouraging localisation efforts in this populous part of the planet which can really benefit from the power of free-as-in-freedom software. This is a sub-group of the wider BytesForAll Network. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_floss -- ------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | http://fn-at-google.notlong.com Goa, India | fred(a)bytesforall.org Co-Founder, BytesForAll | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436 -------------------------------------------------------------

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[Fwd: [ILUG-BOM] Digital Certificates]
by Nagarjuna 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [ILUG-BOM] Digital Certificates Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 23:25:29 +0530 From: Saswata Banerjee & Associates <scrapo(a)saswatabanerjee.com> Reply-To: GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai, India <linuxers(a)mm.glug-bom.org> To: GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai, India <linuxers(a)mm.glug-bom.org> Hi Everyone, I attended a lecture at Indian Merchants Chambers yesterday on the new government rule called MCA-21. The new rule provides that all document sumbitted to the Ministry of Company Affaires now needs to be given in digital form only. They will no longer accept physical documents. Further, each of these documents will have to have a digital signature of the persons who were earlier required to sign the physical documents. This is the first step to moving all governement documents to digital form and save huge time and cost of users now wasted in standing in line and submitting documents to the government. The next will be Tax authorities, followed by Excise and Customs. Land Records are expected to be next thereafter. There are 7 companies in India who are authorised to issue digital certificates recorgnised under the Information Technology Act. TCS is one who was present at the seminar and demonstrated the use of the digital certificates. For those who have not used them, these are stored by TCS on USB Tokens, which look like USB Pen drives but are read-only 32KB drives with processors built in. You are supposed to insert in the token in the UCB port and then ask the Online-Form to pick up the digital certificate from the token and add it to the document to submit to the government. These certificates are based on 128 bit encryption and PKI. TCS assured me that it is designed to work both on Linux and Mac in addition to Windows and that they are including the relevant drivers with the token. However, the additional software tools they are providing for automating digital signatures on other documents will work only on Windows. I would like to know if any of you have used the Digital Siganture / Digital Certificates that is being issued under MCA-21 and can confirm that it works properly on Linux. The other providers of Digital Certificates includes MTNL. While TCS is charging Rs. 2075 for a 1 year valid certificate, MTNL is charging Rs. 350. They are sending it to you on email !! Ofcourse, they are doing this only at Malabar Hill Exchange and you have to go personally to their office and they will verify that you are the person whose name is on the form and your address, photo, etc. I do not know much on Digital Certificates. However with this becoming a major part of commercial and business transactions, I hope what the government is doing does not work only on Windows. If necessary, we (or perhaps FSF) will need to initiate a dialog with the government. In the next year, it is estimated that just government requirment will result in over 1 million digital certificates being issued. I think the actual figure will be close to 5 million as more government depatments like Income Tax, Sales Tax, Excise and Customs departments move to "digital documents only" mode. (Just imagine - if every shop keeper needs to file his sales tax returns online and needs a digital certificate to be able to upload the return to the government). It would be very important for us to ensure that Linux gets supported in the process. Regards Saswata -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers . -- -- Dr. Nagarjuna G. Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Mumbai India. V.N. Purav Marg, Mankhurd, Mumbai, INDIA 400088 http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/Data/Objects/n/nagarjun/viewObject

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Re: [Fsf-friends] FSF is incomplete w/o FIF (or something equivalent)
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 21 Apr '06

21 Apr '06

This is a very good idea, though i do hope some one can point on the legal issues/ validity of FIF. There are a lot of inteligent people and if it is possible to document ideas and somehow before the patent hogs get to patent them or even think of them. Sounds good. But ofcourse I do hope someone from legal background will comment on this. Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Dept of CSE & IT BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib Punjab, INDIA ----- Original Message ----- From: sandeep Kumar <blackray(a)indiainfo.com> To: FSF India Friends <fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in> Sent: à¨µà©à¨°à¨µà¨¾à¨° 20 à¨à¨ªà¨°à©à¨² 2006 09:04:54 à¨¶à¨¾. IST Subject: [Fsf-friends] FSF is incomplete w/o FIF (or something equivalent) Hi, Past couple of days, I interacted with RMS over this and in the process not only found about existence? of FSF India chapter, but also that I hadn't been the only one who got the wrong idea about association of OpenSource movement with RMS. FIF - Free Ideas Foundation, a forum where people can register their ideas, whether usable directly or in future, whether to do with computers or any other fields. People/Organisations can pick these ideas and develop product out of it, but can't practice the monopoly called patents. As a benefit for the consumer, this will present the options for better implementations and improvisations of same idea. But as far as I look at this FIF, it comprises of computer s/w and h/w related ideas, but not limited to these only. A little background behind this can be seen on http://idiotkid.blogspot.com/2006/04/opensource-is-incomplete-w_11439031574… and http://www.geocities.com/shimple0/techcorner.html Nagarjuna had asked me to introduce myself on this list, as other lists are kinda dead. I have been working as consultant for s/w companies as well as teaching at Pune University Computer Science Department as visiting faculty. Details more than this you can check out via "[Professional Details]" link on my homepage. May be my views are what has been discussed here in past, but I believe each time we come across same question, if environment/conditions have changed, we are likely to get different and each time more refined and closer answer. Sandeep ----- Want to know more about me? Check out http://www.geocities.com/shimple0

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FSF is incomplete w/o FIF (or something equivalent)
by sandeep Kumar 20 Apr '06

20 Apr '06

Hi, Past couple of days, I interacted with RMS over this and in the process not only found about existence? of FSF India chapter, but also that I hadn't been the only one who got the wrong idea about association of OpenSource movement with RMS. FIF - Free Ideas Foundation, a forum where people can register their ideas, whether usable directly or in future, whether to do with computers or any other fields. People/Organisations can pick these ideas and develop product out of it, but can't practice the monopoly called patents. As a benefit for the consumer, this will present the options for better implementations and improvisations of same idea. But as far as I look at this FIF, it comprises of computer s/w and h/w related ideas, but not limited to these only. A little background behind this can be seen on http://idiotkid.blogspot.com/2006/04/opensource-is-incomplete-w_11439031574… and http://www.geocities.com/shimple0/techcorner.html Nagarjuna had asked me to introduce myself on this list, as other lists are kinda dead. I have been working as consultant for s/w companies as well as teaching at Pune University Computer Science Department as visiting faculty. Details more than this you can check out via "[Professional Details]" link on my homepage. May be my views are what has been discussed here in past, but I believe each time we come across same question, if environment/conditions have changed, we are likely to get different and each time more refined and closer answer. Sandeep ----- Want to know more about me? Check out http://www.geocities.com/shimple0 -- ______________________________________________ IndiaInfo Mail - the free e-mail service with a difference! www.indiainfo.com Check out our value-added Premium features, such as an extra 20MB for mail storage, POP3, e-mail forwarding, and ads-free mailboxes!

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Fsf-friends