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No Software Patents (People's Democracy)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 05 Feb '06

05 Feb '06

No Software Patents People's Democracy (Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) Vol. XXIX No. 50 December 11, 2005 No Software Patents Govt Assures FSF India UNION minister of commerce and industries, Kamal Nath has assured that the Indian government is committed to its stand of not allowing software patenting for the time being and that it would reiterate this stand in the forthcoming meeting of WTO ministerial at Hong Kong. This was conveyed to a delegation of Free Software Foundation of India (FSF India), which met the minister on December 6 in New Delhi and discussed with him about the proposal for software patenting which came up early this year. It comprised M Arun, secretary and Y Kiran Chandra, secretary FSF AP Chapter. CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and MP, Sitaram Yechury and CPI(M) central committee member and MP, P Madhu accompanied the delegation. A memorandum was also submitted to the minister on this issue. In a statement released to the press, the FSF India representatives termed the discussion with the minister as fruitful. The minister informed the delegation about his opinion that copyright provides reasonable protection for the software industry. However, pointing out that there was a strong demand from sections of the Indian IT industry to allow the patenting of software in conjunction with hardware, the minister expressed the need to find a via media between arguments of different groups. The FSF India stated that in the coming days it will interact with industries, particularly small and medium industries, to highlight the harmful effects of generic software patenting and also in order to understand the needs of the industry. "It would be working with the industry to find a via media which will protect the larger social interests and at the same time protecting economic interest of industries", the statement assured. (INN)

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Fwd: Asia Commons: Asian Conference on the Digital Commons
by Anivar Aravind 04 Feb '06

04 Feb '06

---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- From: jchittoor(a)csdms.in Date: Wed, February 1, 2006 8:04 pm -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Asia Commons: Asian Conference on the Digital Commons April 18-20, 2006 Bangkok, Thailand http://www.asia-commons.net During the last 20 years or so, the level, scope, territorial extent, and role of copyrights and patents have expanded into new sectors. There has been much discussion and debate on the impact of copyrights and patents at a micro level of economic activity while at a macro level, policy dialogue in several international fora, not least of which is WIPO, has been addressing barriers posed by copyrights and patents. Asia Commons: Asian Conference on the Digital Commons invites researchers working in the area of copyrights and patents, promoters of collaborative models, development practitioners engaged in collaborative content creation and dissemination and custodians of public information to go beyond the current dialogue and debate to explore key issues and ideas related to access to knowledge and culture in Asia. Participants are invited to explore key themes and questions related to the Asian Commons: * What is the relationship between infrastructure and copyrights on access to culture and knowledge? * How do software and business process patents affect innovation? * What are the impacts of patents on software innovations in Asia? * What are the emerging Open Business Models for content production in Asia? * Given existing legal, cultural and infrastructural environments both within and outside of Asia, how can we contribute to increasing access to knowledge and culture through an Asia Commons? While we will be inviting a number of speakers who are seen as thought-leaders in the field of Access to Knowledge and Culture, we will also look to innovative approaches to ensure a high degree of interaction among participants in spaces and sessions which are designed to maximize the exchange of experiences and ideas. Conference Fees, Registration, and Scholarships: There are no fees for participation in the conference which is supported through funding made available by the International Development Research Centre's (IDRC's) Pan Asia Program (http://www.idrc.ca/panasia). If you are interested in participating, please register online at http://www.asia-commons.net/conf_registration/add or email registration(a)asia-commons.net to receive a registration form which can be submitted through email. Please register before March 8, 2006. Thanks to the generous support of IDRC's Pan Asia (http://www.idrc.ca/panasia) and UNDP APDIP's IOSN (http://www.iosn.net) there are also a number of scholarships available for participants in need of financial support. Please visit http://www.asia-commons.net/participate for more information. Can't Join Us? For those unable to join us physically during the event, we invite you to participate through the participants discussion list and visit http://www.asia-commons.net for outputs during the conference itself. To subscribe to the participants discussion list, send an email to participants-request(a)asia-commons.net with the word subscribe in the subject. A special issue of i4d Magazine (http://www.i4donline.net) will be produced in June 2006 based on the conference and its themes. We look forward to seeing you at Asia Commons. Your Organising Committee: - Shikha Shrestha, Bellanet Asia (in partnership with SAP International) (http://www.sapint.org) - Sarah Kerr, Bellanet International Secretariat (http://www.bellanet.org) - Jaya Chittoor, Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies (http://www.csdms.in) - Sunil Abraham, UNDP APDIP's International Open Source Network (http://www.iosn.net) ----------------------------------

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From "manipulative grace" to "public disgrace"
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 03 Feb '06

03 Feb '06

"THIRUVANANTHAPURAM APRIL 13. The Information Kerala Mission (IKM), functioning under the Department of Information Technology of the Government of Kerala, has emerged as one of the three institutions in the race for the prestigious national awards instituted by the Computer Society of India..." The graceful-plot hatched by IKM in 2002 to hoodwink the UDF Government (after successfully convincing late Chief Minister EK Nayanar with the 'cat and mouse' story - that both M$ Windows and GNU were mere cats, and the need was 'just to catch the rat'). Full story appearing in The Hindu at http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/04/14/stories/2002041405350400.htm "KOCHI: Awards for exemplary initiatives in e-governance were given away at the national e-governance conference here on Thursday. Kerala Public Works Minister M.K.Muneer distributed the awards in various categories. There were Golden, Silver and Bronze icons in each category...." The disgraceful exit from national scene in 2006. Full story at http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/03/stories/2006020304741700.htm --------------- Compiled by CK Raju, Thrissur

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Create a custom GNU/Linux network install image
by प्रव ीण् ए (Praveen A) 03 Feb '06

03 Feb '06

Hi, Built on LinuxCOE a powerful set of tools recently open sourced by Hewlett Packard, Instalinux makes installing Linux easier than ever. http://www.instalinux.com/ LinuxCOE http://linuxcoe.sourceforge.net/ News stories: http://linux.sys-con.com/read/176353.htm Almost the same - http://www.pclinuxonline.com/article.php?sid=10355 Cheers Praveen -- "GNU is the system, and Linux is the kernel." A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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Freeculture... from an Indian blog
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 02 Feb '06

02 Feb '06

http://openfreeworld.blogspot.com/ A Generation is waking up Recently I came across the site http://freeculture.org/, an international student movement for free culture. Their manifesto says... "The mission of the Free Culture movement is to build a bottom-up, participatory structure to society and culture, rather than a top-down, closed, proprietary structure. Through the democratizing power of digital technology and the Internet, we can place the tools of creation and distribution, communication and collaboration, teaching and learning into the hands of the common person -- and with a truly active, connected, informed citizenry, injustice and oppression will slowly but surely vanish from the earth. We believe that culture should be a two-way affair, about participation, not merely consumption. We will not be content to sit passively at the end of a one-way media tube. With the Internet and other advances, the technology exists for a new paradigm of creation, one where anyone can be an artist, and anyone can succeed, based not on their industry connections, but on their merit." After reading the manifesto one can easily figure out that the founders of this movement are highly influenced by the free software, open source movements. If one can spend some time on the internet searching for sites similar to these... he/she is bound to be overwhelmed. www.publicknowledge.org, creativecommons.org, www.plos.org are some of them. If you are a book worm never miss out www.gutenberg.org, there are over 17,000 free eBooks in their repository. And never be content to sit passively at the end of the one-way media tube, bring out the artist/journalist/writer/activist or whatever in you. Take back the web, take back the world. posted by suresh_balasubra @ 6:27 AM 0 comments

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Free Electron goes online
by james mathew 02 Feb '06

02 Feb '06

Friends, Kerala Education Grid Project <http://www.edugrid.ac.in/> has uploaded the Free Electron iso images and documentation. You can now download Free Electron from http://www.edugrid.ac.in/webfolder/download/freeElectron/fe.html If you have any queries on Free Electron please join the mailing list <http://mm.gnu.org.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-electron> James. --

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Open and popular ... FLOSS in Tamil
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 30 Jan '06

30 Jan '06

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2302/stories/20060210003909700.htm Open and popular A CORRESPONDENT An open-source suite of Tamil applications for the Windows operating system is the first of its kind for the platform. PANACEA DREAMWEAVERS, a Chennai-based software company, has released an open source suite of Tamil applications and tools into the public domain. It includes an accounting package, two dictionaries, a management software for self-help groups (SHGs), a simple text editor and a feature-rich word processor, and about 250 free fonts. Most of the products ship with the source code. It is claimed that this is the first such initiative by a company or organisation in the area of public domain Tamil software. A similar effort was sponsored by the Central Government, in which a collection of tools was acquired from private players and released for public consumption in a compact-disk form by Minister for Communications Dayanidhi Maran. However, none of the software included in the package was in open source format. Besides, the company claims that its efforts are a first in the Microsoft Windows-based Tamil computing environment. Most open-source Tamil applications are developed for the Linux operating system. Open-source software is software whose source code is made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify or redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees. Open source is associated with collaborative development, wherein developers who have access to the product's code correct any problems or deficiencies in it or add additional features, thereby helping the software to evolve. Many such applications are backed by a large number of developers from all over the world and have evolved into robust systems. Some well-known examples of open-source initiatives are the Linux operating system, the Integrated Development Environment Eclipse, the Apache web server and the Mozilla suite, including the web browser Firefox, which recorded its 100 millionth download recently. One of the most prominent advocates of free software is the Free Software Movement started by Richard Stallman in 1983. The movement is also active in India, but its adherents focus all their energies on writing software for open-source operating systems such as Linux and not for the commercial Windows platform. In the CD under review, the products are neatly divided into sections: Panacea Apps (short for applications), Panacea Desk, Panacea Valaiyodi, and Source. Panacea Apps comprises Mugavari (Tamil-English address book), Sangam Pro (SHG management package), Selvam (accounting software), Valluvan (documentation software), and Pulavan-Paalam (dictionaries). The Panacea Desk folder comprises Pathippu-250 (collection of 250 fonts), R4U (English-Tamil word processor), Saarathy (keyboard driver) and Tamil Olai (simple Tamil text editor). The Source folder includes the source code of all the products except R4U and Valaiyodi. According to the company, Sangam Pro is meant for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to assess and evaluate the performance of SHGs. Some of the features are the ability to enter and save details of loans, repayments, meeting schedules, deposits and membership. Selvam, the software for maintaining accounts in Tamil, is aimed at small and medium enterprises and is also suited for home users. R4U, a Tamil-English word processor, easily creates Tamil and even multilingual documents. Users can easily switch between English and Tamil typing. The other products in the suite are also useful and easy to navigate. The company's stated mission to develop the Valaiyodi browser into one that can translate English Web pages into Tamil is something to look forward to. Th applications have a few bugs, but they are minor and should not stand in the way of encouraging such attempts. The country sorely needs free software and open-source initiatives for the Information Technology revolution to reach most segments of society. And it is widely accepted that the best way to go about achieving this is to write software in the language of the people and make it available free of cost. Nevertheless, a few points need to be made. The collection of fonts in TAB and TAM formats is no doubt excellent but run the risk of obsolescence in a world that is quickly adopting Unicode as the standard for recognising non-English textual characters. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique a number for each character. In other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way, and leaves the visual rendering (size, shape, font or style) to other software, such as a Web browser or a word processor. Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP make extensive use of Unicode as an internal representation of text, while Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, BSD and Mac OS X have adopted it as the basis of representation of multilingual text. Secondly, the dictionaries - both of which are well-structured and simple to use - need to be updated. The Tamil language has kept pace with the modern world and a dictionary with contemporary words and phrases and their usage will be most handy. It is hoped that the budding entrepreneurs behind the venture will do what is needed, for the collective good of the Tamil computing world. Panacea Dreamweavers, which is hardly a year old, is the brainchild of a group of entrepreneurs whose goal is to develop solutions for the Tamil language computing space, according to the founders. Their corporate philosophy is that Tamil language software must not place any financial compulsions on the end-user. The software developer community in India and abroad would do well to emulate this endeavour and come out with more such products so that the divide between the digital haves and have-nots is bridged.

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Meeting minutes of 27th Jan
by प्रव ीण् ए (Praveen A) 29 Jan '06

29 Jan '06

Hi, The last meeting at Kunningahm Road on 27th about FOSS Month ( http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/Bangalore/FOSS_Month-2006 ) was awesome. We came up with a lot of ideas. Checkout the details http://fci.wikicities.com/wiki/BoFs/Jan27-2006 Cheers Praveen -- "GNU is the system, and Linux is the kernel." A proud GNU user http://www.gnu.org Me scribbles at http://www.pravi.co.nr

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Localization as a movement in India (Rajesh Ranjan)
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 29 Jan '06

29 Jan '06

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/015jan06/features/rhindia/ Localization as a movement in India by Rajesh Ranjan A few days back, a famous writer from Kannada, India, U R Anantmurthy, mentioned in an interview that languages are the repositories of culture. The importance of enabling this culture of languages to not merely survive but flourish in this digital age cannot be understated. If a language is not becoming part of digital advancement then the language will become outdated and endangered and in some cases might even become a thing of the past. End of a language means end of a culture. Thanks to the free software ideology and contemporary open source development methods that have given a new lease on life to many different languages, no matter how small we are, we now have the potential to fix this fundamental issue. Free and open source software, unlike other bureaucratic processes, enable each individual, including you, to contribute toward enabling local language computing and thereby expediting the process of adoption of technologies enabled by computers in rural India. We all can cherish Mahatma Gandhi's quote "Whatever you do will be insignificant but it's very important that you do it." That is why the free software movement enabled by collaborative peers in the community is of paramount importance here. It is a fact that proprietary groups cannot afford to fulfill the needs of the masses, especially in an economy with limited purchasing power, but we in the community of open source computing can rise to the occasion. In India, so many groups are working to have their languages enabled on computers. "Localizing free software for a free country" is the slogan of IndLinux, a major and popular group having enormous success with this work. IndLinux is a group of people who believe, not so surprisingly, that the benefits of information technology must be widely and freely available to the Indian masses. They are a group of people who combine skills in written scripts, free/open source technologies, and technology journalism to make this happen. This organization has inspired so many new groups to come forward to work together. Punlinux is one of the most successful examples. Within two years, this group has localized an enormous amount of content in Punjabi, a vibrant language and culture of India. Everything from Fedora® to GNOME to KDE to OpenOffice and all! A great success story from an organization based in rural India! None of the Punlinux members has any urban base! Mix of love for language and open source has produced unbelievable results like this one example. There are several other efforts being made to Indianize Linux®. One major effort, the Ankur Bangla Project, is a collaborative initiative aimed at bringing Bangla to the FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) desktop. The core objective of the Ankur Bangla Project is to make available a completely localized GNU/Linux OS and they have received notable success in this field. Open source contribution of Utkarsh in giving the power of computers to the Gujarati speaking populace is also immense. It is one of the most professionally managed organizations. IndianOSS is another one committed to the cause of Gujarati computing. Tamil has several active communities. http://sourceforge.net/projects/zha is one of the major efforts. TAMIL-LINux is another group involved in the development of Tamil on Linux/Unix. The BharateeyaOO project is an initiative to bring OpenOffice to India in Indian languages by the ICT Research and Training Centre (India). It is being done as part of the activities of the Development Gateway Foundation. Project Malayalam for the Malayalam Package offers a set of macros and fonts for typesetting Malayalam, which is the primary language of an estimated 33 million people in the South Indian state of Kerala. The Linux in Oriya project is the initiative for making Linux available in Oriya. The GNU/Linux Telugu Localization Effort aims at localizing most common applications on GNU/Linux to Telugu including GNOME, KDE, Mozilla, and OpenOffice. Swathantra Malayalam Computing at present is focusing on translating/localizing GNU/Linux GUI into Malayalam. Swathantra Malayalam fonts is a sub-project of Swathantra Malayalam Computing. Their aim is to make enough free (Swathantra) Malayalam fonts. Indic Trans also works in the field of Linux localization in Indian languages. The Indic-Computing Project is providing technical documentation for Indian language computing issues. There are several more names: Kannada Localization Initiative works for Kannada language and Thamiz Linux is yet another effort from the Tamil language. Free software localization in Assamese works for Assamese, MarathiOpenSource works for Marathi language, Swecha is a GNU/Linux Telugu localization effort for Telugu language, and http://thamizha.com encompasses multiple projects such as localization of Firefox and OpenOffice among others. A project has even started for minority languages like Maithili, which is spoken in a particular part of a state of India and was incorporated in the schedule of the constitution of India in recent years. It is a fact that in some projects, the pace of work may not be as rapid, but the above examples show there is great awareness and response towards transparent and collaborative open source localization and its methodology. If the subcontinent of India could be described in a single keyword, diversity would be it. There are about 500 languages in India in which 22 of them are considered official. It's easy enough to imagine the situation merely by knowing that in a small country like Nepal there are more than 50 languages. Sooner or later these smaller languages can hope to go hand in hand with information technology but only through the free software philosophy. The localization movement in the neighboring countries of India has also started. The language of the mountains of Gorkhali, a.k.a. Nepali, has only 1.6 million speakers. A group working with Madan Puraskar Pustakalay has shown a significant momentum in the field of localization in Nepali language last year. This group has completely localized the Gnome desktop. Dzongkha, sometimes called Bhutanese, is the national language of the Kingdom of Bhutan. The goal of Dzongkha Localization Project is to incorporate Dzongkha script into Linux to enable computing in Dzongkha to provide the benefit of information and communication technology to the Bhutanese masses. This project is implemented by the Royal Government of Bhutan and is being funded by International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada, through its Pan Asia Networking (PAN). The Sinhala Linux Project is another project to localize Linux in Sinhala. This was started by Lanka Linux User Group (LKLUG). The PAN Localization Project has a broader reach. It is a regional initiative to develop local language capacity in Asia. This organization is working for the following languages: Bangla, Dzongkha, Khmer, Lao, Nepali, Pashto, Sinhala, and Urdu. Generally, dominant languages suppress minority languages. But in the case of Punjabi in Pakistan it is different. In Pakistan, Punjabi is spoken by the majority but the government there does not seem to support this language. So Punlinux has planned to start the localization of Punjabi in Shamukhi script and already filed an enhancement request to create a separate locale for it. This can only be possible in the world of open source! Just like a democracy where every person is equal, in the eyes of open source, every language can be made equal in computing! Localization of open source software is a transparent and community-driven process. That is why it is easier to customize the software according to local needs. Sometimes, due to cultural differences, people may not be comfortable with western user interfaces. But the difficulty does not stop there. Imagine the struggle of the typical rural Indian to understand metaphors like folders and recycle bins! You might as well as speak Greek, no offense to the friendly folks from Greece. It is particularly true in the case of a major language like Hindi and languages like Bengali and Punjabi that are spoken in two different countries that the whole language is basically split into different zones in two neighboring countries. Hindi is spoken and understood by more than half of the Indian population and has innumerable dialects. In the open source environment, it is easier to modify things according to specific needs irrespective of the profit-loss theory so very typical of the proprietary world. The open source model is not only helping to achieve the local need but also maintains respect for the local emotions. For example, Bengali is now divided into two separate locale (bn_BD and bn_IN) in Fedora and Mozilla after the demand from the community. Basically, localization in open source alone has the power to represent futuristic language computing. The contribution of Red Hat making the localization effort successful and lively is enormous. By selecting five Indian languages (Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi and Gujarati), Red Hat has given great impetus to l10n and i18n works related to Indian needs. Working on a computer with local languages was never so easy. Red Hat launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora in those five Indian languages and localized them at not only the application level but at the operating system level also. Red Hat is going to launch similar efforts in eight more languages: Assamese (as), Kannada (kn), Malayalam (ml), Marathi (mr), Oriya (or), Sinhala (si), Telugu (te), and Urdu (ur). This is enough to demonstrate Red Hat's compassion and commitment to India and its local language computing industry. The President of India, Abdul Kalam once said, "In India, open source code software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people." In a poor country like India where per capita income is much lower than the average, words of our president and visionary Mr. Kalam should be an important bottom line. These localized computers will be very useful in the field of rural computing. The people of real India only speak their native languages. For them, English represents the language and culture of British domination and exploitations. In analyzing why radio and television has a deep-rooted impact in India, especially in the rural areas, we can understand that the main reason is the availability of television programs produced in local languages. The localization movement in India has made 'alien' computer 'desi' one--hamara computer, tumhara computer. The Local Language IT market is in a development stage and it is rising with exponential growth. E-governance is one major field where localization of software is a must. The cost of hardware is going down very fast and in this context, the future of localized open source software is great. Last year the government started a program to launch localized CDs in all 22 official languages. Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu language CDs have already launched. Many of the applications available on the CD were released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This is a success story of the localization movement in India. The initiative has been funded by the Indian government. It has planned to distribute 3.5 million copies of the Hindi Language CDs after the popularity. IndiX is a project funded by TDIL working on Indian language support for Linux. CDAC, a government organization, has also done important work for supporting open source software localization. There are many people and several organizations in India that support the open source ideology. A strikingly unique example of this is the establishment of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya (Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University) in 1997. An eminent Hindi poet and former Secretary in the Ministry of Culture of India, Mr. Ashok Vajpeyi was the first vice chancellor of the university and he made the decision to run the university completely on open source. During his tenure, two books (in Hindi) and a bilingual magazine (in Hindi and English) were published completely on open source technology. Having open source computer based technology which works in a native language, particularly in Hindi, was the main target of the university. (On the website it is still the same!!) It is unfortunate that the situation hasn't been so positive after the completion of his term! The Delhi-based non-profit organization Sarai is fully committed to the use, propagation, and development of free software. Sarai has played a key role in the localization of some of the Indian languages. According to Sarai, free software emerged as a democratic alternative to proprietary control over code. Sarai has encouraged so many people to engage and enlarge this domain by giving fellowships and having several workshops. The work of localization started long before and now it has taken the form of movement. Internet availability, lack of resources, and illiteracy are some hindrances in the path of local language computing. The major hurdle is the mentality of the English speaking elite who sneer at the local language computing efforts. The elite have not had any grass-root experience, but they are still controlling the major positions within administration and finance. But ultimately they have to stumble down against the force of the local language computing market. Two decades ago, the condition of the television industry was similar to the present computer industry in India. Positive changes are inevitable and also not very far off in the field of computers. Poet Mr. Ashok Vajpeyi once wrote that the Indian tradition of selfless distribution of knowledge is very old and universal. We can say that the free software movement is the western version of the old Indian tradition. Mr. Vajpeyi's statement is very right and so, in the long term, Indian soil will prove itself very fertile for open source software. "Where knowledge is free" was the dream of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore for his nation and now the time is moving ahead toward his dreamland About the author: Rajesh Ranjan is Language Maintainer, Hindi at Red Hat. He is working with several localization projects including Fedora, GNOME, Openoffice.org, and Mozilla. He is the Indic Language Co-ordinator for the Native Language Confederation of Openoffice.org. Before joining Red Hat, he worked with The Indian Express Group and Literate World, Inc.

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(no subject)
by sarang pathak 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

--------------------------------- Jiyo cricket on Yahoo! India cricket

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