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Re: [Fsf-friends] Annual Free Software Event, India
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 16 Apr '06

16 Apr '06

Its not just the magazines that say like this, at times even "premier" newspapers like "The Hindu" too is prone to making such off-remarks. Thankfully the paper has a significant presence only in South India. Here's what G Mahadevan wrote on 28 Feb this year. "... In fact, there are many committed users of free software who argue that this `geek factor' may be one reason for inhibiting the growth of free software usage in the State. A lecturer in a teaching department of the University of Kerala and a vocal proponent of free software points out that the `free software debate' as it were has now become politicised, personalised and is today anything but `free.' Some votaries of free software have taken their case beyond all limits. The kind of philosophical arguments about the differences between free software and open-source software actually put off everyone except the most committed users. Many a time the casual user of the computer is scared off Linux by all this geek-speak...." G Mahadevan could have taken some time off to learn about the differences in the same time he took for going after someone who doesn't know it. CK Raju Thrissur

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Formation of Ubuntu-India
by Baishampayan Ghose 14 Apr '06

14 Apr '06

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 [Sorry for cross-posting] Hello Fellow Ubunteros, Greetings!!! Hope by this time you would have known that the Ubuntu Indian Local Community Team has got the Official Status from the Council. See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/IndianTeam We have a few requests as well as announcements to be made. * Firstly we would appreciate if the GLUG's have their Local Ubuntu Teams who will be responsible for creating awareness about Ubuntu and Ubuntu-In community and also distribute the Ubuntu CDs in their Monthly meets or FOSS Events organised by placing bulk orders. [http://shipit.ubuntu.com] * We request you to create a Wiki page for your Local Team on our ubuntu-in.org website and start posting/contributing. Once you have created a wiki page kindly link it from http://ubuntu-in.org/wiki/Regional_Teams For e.g.. Once you have created a wiki page for your regional team say [Ubuntu_Chennai] kindly go to the Regional_Teams wiki page mentioned above and add your team name and link it. * You can help us in Localisation/translation/Packaging for Dapper as well as future Ubuntu releases. * Contribute Articles, Documentations, Frequently Asked Questions /Answers * Keep giving suggestions to help make Ubuntu better for us and the world. You can subscribe to ubuntu-in mailing list to get the latest information: http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in Hang around in our IRC channel #ubuntu-in @ irc.freenode.net "Live the Spirit of Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings" Regards, BG - -- Baishampayan Ghose <b.ghose(a)gnu.org.in> Free Software Foundation of India http://www.gnu.org.in/ 1024D/86361B74 BB2C E244 15AD 05C5 523A 90E7 4249 3494 8636 1B74 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFEP6qaQkk0lIY2G3QRAv1qAJ4q5M2R27wyMEf7dotFTZVyaW7cEwCgnTXV oAvg8yFeO9+badpYuR3NvEU= =xDV+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Is it available in the world ?
by M.Balakrishna Pillai 14 Apr '06

14 Apr '06

hi all From "Fast Track to Linux" published by DIGIT, section 1.2.1 (page 15) <quote> A closely-related but not similar idea is that of free software. Free software means, well, that the software is available for free. It is already compiled and ready to use. Open source only means the source code is available to whoever wishes to build it and make fully-functional software. Free software need not be open source and similarly, open source software need not be free either. A free, but not open source, software can only be used, but cannot be modified-or for that matter dissected to see how it works. Open source software can also be a paid software, in which the source code is made available to the buyer. Open source and free software are closely related in the Linux world, but they are not the same. </quote> and last paragraph on page 16 <quote> No discussion on open source or free software is complete without the mention of Ricahard Stallman, the founder of GNU project </quote> Any known method of education to teach them ? With regards M.Balakrishna Pillai PS: I stopped reading it after that page.

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 36, Issue 11
by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

Please try this http://edu.kde.org/ There are plenty of other software too. Maybe google can help you. Sincerely Ajay Pal Singh Atwal Dept of CSE & IT BBSBEC, Fatehgarh Sahib Punjab, INDIA ----- Original Message ----- From: Mishi Choudhary <mishi_c(a)rediffmail.com> To: fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in Sent: à¨¸à©à¨®à¨µà¨¾à¨° 10 à¨à¨ªà¨°à©à¨² 2006 01:21:44 à¨¶à¨¾. IST Subject: [Fsf-friends] Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 36, Issue 11 hi i wish to know what ree the various oss available for children's education,the ones which re readily available in india and can be usedto promote the cause of free software Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary _______________________________________________ Fsf-friends mailing list Fsf-friends(a)mm.gnu.org.in http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-friends

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 36, Issue 11
by Mishi Choudhary 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

hi i wish to know what ree the various oss available for children's education,the ones which re readily available in india and can be usedto promote the cause of free software Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary

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Re: Fsf-friends Digest, Vol 36, Issue 11
by Mishi Choudhary 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

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Eduforge Tutorials
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

Eduforge Tutorials Tutorial 1 WHAT TO ASSESS WHEN SELECTING FOSS LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS http://tinyurl.com/psdoz Tutorial 2 SOURCES OF INCOME FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH EXPERTISE IN FOSS IN E-LEARNING is at http://tinyurl.com/r6623 Tutorial 3 FACTORS THAT DRIVE ORGANIZATIONS TO SHIFT FROM PROPRIETARY TO OPEN SOURCE LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS is at http://tinyurl.com/qvtbb Tutorial 4 GUIDELINES FOR MIGRATING TO AN OPEN SOURCE LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM http://tinyurl.com/rs27c Tutorial 5 OVERCOMING OBJECTIONS TO THE ADOPTION OF OPEN SOURCE LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS http://tinyurl.com/qh9tr Tutorial 6 IMPROVING OPEN SOURCE LEARNING CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS http://tinyurl.com/jevmm Tutorial 7 OPEN SOURCE SYSTEMS, TOOLS AND REPOSITORIES USEFUL FOR E-LEARNING http://tinyurl.com/jtz46 Tutorial 8 OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE FOR THE EDUCATION MARKET http://tinyurl.com/f4nld -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | Yahoomessenger: fredericknoronha http://fn.goa-india.org | fred(a)bytesforall.org Independent Journalist | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436 ---------------------------------------------------------- Pics from Goa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/popular-views/

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paradigms of knowing
by Anivar Aravind 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

Dear Friends Checkout these interesting links http://www.paradigmsofknowing.org/ http://www.kumbham.in/ It is the experiments/explorations & thoughts of Jinan, an architect based on Nilambur, Kerala Anivar

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[GNU] Linux a BIG hit in India
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 09 Apr '06

09 Apr '06

http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/08spec.htm Linux a BIG hit in India Leslie D'Monte | April 08, 2006 It has been over a year since UTI Bank set up its call center that handles over 7,000 calls per day. The bank was looking for a robust platform that could guarantee it "high availability of services and uninterrupted call traffic". It had options but finally decided on Linux for its core business applications. "Today, we are really happy with Linux that has delivered 99.99 per cent uptime so far," says Pritesh Thaker, AVP, IT, UTI Bank. The bank, in fact, is now planning to base its credit card-based system on Linux too. UTI is not the lone player to swear by Linux. Eveready, a leading manufacturer of dry cell batteries and flashlights in India, has built a mission-critical resource system to automate all functionalities of its daily business using the Oracle e-business suite running on a Linux platform. Central Bank of India has implemented Linux in nearly 3000 branches. The Penguin (official mascot of Linux), it appears, has finally marched into enterprises like IDBI Bank, Canara Bank, New India Assurance, LIC, BSNL, IRCTC, ABN Amro, Airtel and even the governments of Maharashtra and West Bengal. The list, of course, is not exhaustive. In most cases, though, the implementation of Linux in Indian enterprises is by Red Hat (primarily since Red Hat Linux has been popularised by the media and offers support for Linux which, being open source, can be downloaded for free and has no upfront licensing fee). Otherwise, one can choose from the hundreds of other Linux distributions - Mandriva, Debian, Suse, PCLinuxOS, Knoppix and Ubuntu to name a few - for desktops and enterprises. "All verticals are ready for Linux adoption today. However the banking, financial and insurance services (BFSI) and government markets have been pioneers of sorts in adopting Linux. The retail segment is also gaining ground quickly, along with verticals ranging from telecommunications to media and entertainment. "In India, we are increasingly seeing corporates running ERPs and mission-critical applications on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. Large databases and blade servers are being powered by Linux to run online share trading and lottery applications," says Javed Tapia, CEO, Red Hat. The Indiabulls group is a case in point. Indiabulls runs its Internet trading platform - Oracle 9i - on Linux. This system, which handles 40-45 per cent of Indiabulls' revenue transactions - nearly 10,000 customers are online at any point of time and transactions are in the range of Rs 1000 crore (Rs 10 billion) - runs on Linux. The online share trading infrastructure at Indiabulls generates close to 150000 database queries per minute. "Linux has become prettly stable. We never considered Windows because of the perception that it has a lot of vulnerabilities. Hence, we adopted the Linux route and are satisfied with the results," says Tejinderpal Singh Miglani, CTO, Indiabulls. IDBI's Sanjay Sharma, Head IT, corroborates this view. IDBI has been using an Oracle HR management and financial accounting system, which runs on Linux. From Sharma's perspective, this is a "mission-critical" application. "We did evaluate options like Unix and Windows too. However, we did not want to be tied up to resource-hungry applications and any particular vendor. Besides, you hardly have a problem of viruses with Linux," he says. Linux, indeed, is doing reasonably good business. IBM's business built around Linux, for instance, was worth $16 billion last year and is projected to be worth more than $50 billion, says the company's global head of public sector Linux sales, Mary Ann Fisher, who recently spoke at LinuxWorld, Australia. She added: "Governments worldwide are spending more than $3 billion a year on Linux hardware, software and services, and this is growing at 35 per cent a year. But it's the US military that is spending the most." "Mission-critical" debate Now, mission-critical applications, among other things, need servers. And for the first time, the server market in India is expected to cross the 100,000-unit mark in 2006. Servers are powerful networked machines for tasks such as handling e-mail, financial transactions, airline reservations and file storage. Based on the price, vendors classify servers as small (anywhere from Rs 40000 up to Rs 500,000), medium (from Rs 500,000 to Rs 1 crore) and large (over Rs 1 crore). They are identified as Intel (or X86 processor-based), Unix (or non-X86 processor-based) and Blade servers. Linux and Solaris are flavours of Unix. Windows and Intel form the loosely-termed "Wintel" brand. Back in 2000, India was primarily a Unix market in the enterprise. With the entry of certified and supported Linux solutions, Unix users in India found Linux an attractive proposition to migrate to. IDC has consistently reported Linux as the fastest growing OS in the world and predicts that the overall market revenue for Linux will exceed $35 billion by 2008. Globally, Windows narrowly overtook Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time, according to IDC. Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers. Linux came third. The Unix market, though, is still huge. Sun is trying to restore Unix fortunes as well by making Solaris an open-source project and bringing it to the x86 servers. The battle for Unix customers (traditionally, the server King) is not new, with IBM, HP and Red Hat all pushing Unix-to-Linux migration plans. This definitely has hurt Sun's profitability. Sun, in turn, released Solaris 10 last year as a free download (it has close to 5 million downloads). Praveen Sawkar, country manager, Solaris, Sun Microsystems India, admits that "Linux has gained some traction in the x86 server space and has managed to break Wintel combination's stronghold on this segment of the market". However, he adds, that most mission-critical applications in the world "continue to be deployed, almost without exception, on the SPARC platform". He opines it will be a long time before the industry will start basing their mission-critical applications on Linux. "In the BFSI industry, one of the largest users of mission-critical applications, Linux is used for end-user banking, algorithmic and analytical work (derivative analysis and risk portfolio assessment). It is yet to be used in core banking environments, something that can be classified as being mission-critical," asserts Sawkar. Microsoft concurs with this view. Sanjiv Mathur, director (customer and partner experience), Microsoft Corporation India, notes that according to IDC, 42.3 per cent of mission-critical applications worldwide run on Windows server platform. "With a 69.5 per cent market share, Microsoft has a strong foothold across all verticals including BFSI and government. Linux has a much smaller share of the market, which is limited to specific areas of high-performance computing and other workloads like security and edge servers, which have traditionally been on the Unix platform. So this whole perception of Linux posing a threat to Microsoft does not hold true. Linux growth is more from the re-platforming of Unix," he adds. Frost and Sullivan (India) - director ICT, Alok Shende, too, appears to be in agreement. "Linux is definitely getting into the enterprise. However, enterprises today need end-to-end solutions. Second, the price of the OS is a small part of the end-to-end solution. People should look at the total cost of ownership, which included long-term costs like services and people availability. Linux has to create a whole market around the product. While it has matured as a technology, it is wanting from a business perspective. And that will take some time," he opines. However, there are major companies that stand aggressively by Linux. Sandeep Menon, director, Linux Business, Novell West Asia, opines that Linux is increasingly being used as a platform of choice for mission-critical applications. "Several mainframes and super computers are running Linux. Linux is also been embedded in routers and telecom equipment. It is used by some of the largest banks, airlines and Internet engines in the World. What else can be more critical?" he asks. He adds that with proprietary software, the customer is totally at the mercy of vendor. If the vendor discontinues support for any reason, the customer can't do anything. In the case of Open Source Linux, even if the vendor stops support, the customer can go to anyone else for support or even support it using his/her own resources, given that the source code will be available. Ashutosh Dhanesha, country manager, Linux Business, IBM India, concurs: "Linux gives customers choice. Our philosophy on "Freedom of choice" for software, hardware and services and leadership in industry standards provides customers with security, flexibility and control of their IT infrastructure and applications. We see Linux moving to mission-critical applications such as ERP and even high end applications such as Seismic data analysis." "Linux is the most proactive as far as security is concerned. With a million eyeballs looking continuously at the code, bugs are fixed faster than they can be exploited. As opposed to a licensing approach that proprietary platforms follow, we sell subscriptions, wherein customers are automatically covered for upgrades and updates," says Tapia. Experts opine there is a Rs 600-crore (Rs 6 billion) market for open source software which is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 35-40 per cent. A sharp rise in enterprise-wide adoption of Linux or Open Source is one of the primary reasons for this optimism. Gartner predicts that by 2008, 95 per cent of Global 2000 organisations will have formal open-source acquisition and management strategies. The Penguin, it appears, will give its competitors an icy path to walk on. Penguin facts * Linux is expected to have a 15 per cent share of the ERP market by 2007 (Peerstone Research) * 55 per cent of all companies deployed Linux by the end of 2005 (AMR Research) * There are over 1.2 million developers with Linux skills (Evans Data Corp) * IBM has more than 7000 services professionals working with Linux * Robert Francis Group (IBM-sponsored research) found security levels in Linux generally exceeded those in Windows, providing a more secure and manageable environment out of the box with significantly more functionality in terms of security integration and management * The Linux kernel programming code is better and more secure than the programming code of most proprietary software - based on a four-year analysis of the 5.7 million lines of Linux source code conducted by five Stanford University researchers

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.LRN ... and a weblog (supporting e-learning and digital communities)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 07 Apr '06

07 Apr '06

LINKS: .LRN, combines three functional areas (CMS, blogs, collaboration) in one platform. .LRN is the world's most widely adopted enterprise-class open source software for supporting e-learning and digital communities. Originally developed at MIT, .LRN is used worldwide by over half a million users in higher education, government, non-profit, and K-12. http://dotlrn.org See also Cesar Brea's Weblog What I saw at the revolution: .LRN/ OpenACS meetings in Heidelberg, Germany http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cesarbrea/stories/storyReader$33 -- ------------------------------------------------------------- | India Linux Users' Group, Goa | | Join the friendly user group | | Mail list http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa/join | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/teach-yourself-linux | | http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ilug-goa-announce | | http://www.iosn.net/country/india/organizations/ilug-goa/ | ------------------------------------------------------------- , , / \ .-. * SOFTWARE ((__-^^-,-^^-__)) (. .) * FREEDOM `-_---' `---_-' / V \ * SHARING `--|o` 'o|--' // \\ \ ` / /( )\ KNOWLEDGE IS POWER ): :( '.^^_^^.' SHARE IT EQUITABLY :o_o: \_/ \_/ "-"

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