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Microsoft to give access to code
by james mathew 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4649348.stm *Microsoft has said it will allow rival software companies access to license parts of the source code for its Windows operating system.* The concession was made in response to a 2004 European Commission anti-trust ruling, which ordered the company to be more open to competitors' needs. It came three weeks ahead of the EU's compliance deadline, which threatened fines of 2m euros (£1.4m; $2.4m) a day. The commission said it was not sure the offer would help resolve the dispute. Microsoft's legal chief, Brad Smith insisted "the source code is the ultimate documentation. "It should have the answer to any questions that remain." But competition commissioner Neelie Kroes disagreed. "Normally speaking, the source code is not the ultimate documentation of anything," she said. "[This is] precisely the reason why programmers are required to provide comprehensive documentation to go along with their source code." *Needle in a haystack* Microsoft said the code will help rivals make their software compatible with its own. "We will ... license the Windows source code itself," said Mr Smith. "Today we are putting our most valuable intellectual property on the table so we can put technical compliance issues to rest and move forward with a serious discussion about the substance of the case." Rivals were not impressed. "Even the most sophisticated software engineers would be lost," said Thomas Vinje, a lawyer who represents some Microsoft opponents, dismissing Microsoft's move as a PR stunt. "They would dump millions of lines of code and finding what competitors need to interoperate would be like looking for a needle in a haystack." *Record fine* The compliance deadline was set in December when the European Commission said that Microsoft's offer of 12,000 pages of documentation and 500 hours of free technical support was not adequate. The landmark 2004 ruling said the world's biggest software company was guilty of abusing its position and hit Microsoft with a record 497m euros fine, telling it to open up its operating systems. Microsoft said that the latest concession went "far beyond" the 2004 decision. It maintains that it has tried to comply with the EU's demands, but says that Brussels keeps changing its guidelines. The EU's second highest court, the European Court of First Instance, will hear Microsoft's appeal against the 2004 ruling in April. -- "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? Is is neither able nor willing, Then why call him GOD??"

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[Fwd: NetBSD live CD]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

Thanks Haidut, I'll pass the word around. FN -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Haidut <haidut(a)metawire.org> To: fred(a)bytesforall.org Subject: NetBSD live CD Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 23:14:24 -0500 (EST) Hello, I am one of the developers of Arudius - a live CD Linux distro targeting information security professionals. The CD has a large collection of security tools and a very small footprint (210MB) so it fits on a mini-CD, thus it can load its tools completely into RAM and run them very fast. In addition to this security-related Linux distribution, we also developed a NetBSD live CD focusing on the non-security community. It is called NeWBIE (or simply Newbie). This acronym is pronounced just like the word "newbie" and stands for (Ne)tBSD (W)are (B)urned (I)n (E)conomy, a naming convention similar to the one used for the well-known FreeSBIE CD. Newbie caters to the desktop-user (i.e. with applications for web browsing, chat, multimedia, document editing, etc) but will also serve as a core for creating a NetBSD-based live CD for network security auditing just like Arudius (see the website). We are also in the process of developing a DragonflyBSD version of NeWBIE. The goal of both CDs is to promote the usage of Linux/BSD and hopefully serve as useful tools for people who need that kind of software. We would appreciate it if you try out the CDs and give us some feedback on how we can improve them (i.e configuration, install additional software, etc). If you find any of the CDs to be useful, please mention them on your site or post a link to the homepage - http://arudius.sourceforge.net Thank you very much for your attention and if you have any questions feel free to send an email to haidut(a)gmail.com best regards, Haidut

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Samba 4.0 getting ready
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

Samba on its maturity path. ------ "Q: For how long has development on Samba 4 been going on now? Jeremy Allison: I think it started about a year ago, maybe longer. And it's big, it's biting off a lot of stuff. Right now the Kerberos Domain Controller and the LDAP server are less well developed than other areas, and that's where a lot of the work is going on with now... The problem is, people tend to trust their LDAP server; the one they have. So there are some tensions in Samba 4. One of the things is, there are many many people who have - let's say - they've got a small office with 50 computers or whatever. They don't have an LDAP server, they don't want an LDAP server, they don't know what an LDAP server is, they just want something that will standardise all their accounts in a single file. So for that, a built-in Samba 4 LDAP server is great, is exactly what they want...." Complete story at http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&… CK Raju

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Free Software Award Winner Announced
by Anivar Aravind 25 Jan '06

25 Jan '06

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Sullivan <johns(a)fsf.org> Date: Jan 26, 2006 12:53 AM Boston Massachusetts, USA - Wednesday January 25, 2006. At the ceremony for the 2006 Free Software Awards, Richard Stallman presented Andrew Tridgell with the award for the advancement of free software. Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell was recognized for his work as originator and developer of the Samba project. Samba reverse-engineered Microsoft's version of the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, which is used for file-sharing and print services. This software enables free operating systems to fit into Microsoft-based environments, encouraging greater use and adoption of free software. Samba has been implemented on millions of servers throughout the world. Tridge also released rsync, a highly respected remote file-distribution system, and contributed code to the Linux kernel. During 2005, Tridge wrote a free software client to interoperate with BitKeeper, a proprietary revision control system used at the time by the Linux kernel developers. His reverse-engineering efforts led BitMover Inc. to remove permission for the use of BitKeeper, paving the way for a free software replacement. The Linux kernel is now being developed using a revision control system called Git, begun by Linus Torvalds and licensed under the GPL. Every year, three finalists are nominated for the award by the free software community. This year's other two finalists were Harmut Pilch, recognized as founder of Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) and for his leadership during the fight against the Software Patent Directive in Europe, and Theodore T'so, recognized for his work on file systems and the Linux kernel. Previous winners of the Free Software Award * 2004 Theo de Raadt * 2003 Alan Cox * 2002 Lawrence Lessig * 2001 Guido van Rossum * 2000 Brian Paul * 1999 Miguel de Icaza * 1998 Larry Wall This year's Award Committee: Peter H. Salus (chair), Richard Stallman, Alan Cox (winner 2003), Lawrence Lessig (winner 2002), Guido van Rossum (winner 2001), Frederic Couchet, Jonas Oberg, Hong Feng, Bruce Perens, Raju Mathur, Suresh Ramasubramanian, Enrique A. Chaparro, Ian Murdock. The Free Software Foundation sponsors the annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software, to recognize and honor those that have made a great contribution to the progress and development of Free Software (free as in freedom as defined in the Free Software Definition), through activities that accord with the spirit of software freedom. Any kind of activity could be eligible---writing software, writing documentation, publishing software, even journalism---but whatever the activity, we want to recognize long-term central contributions to the development of the world of software freedom. "Accord with the spirit" means, for example, that software, manuals or collections of them (online or on CD) must be entirely free. Work done commercially is eligible, but we give this award to individuals, not to companies, organizations, or teams. You can support the award and the work of the Free Software Foundation here.[1] [1] http://www.fsf.org/donate -- John Sullivan Program Administrator | Phone: (617)542-5942 x23 51 Franklin Street, 5th Fl. | Fax: (617)542-2652 Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA | GPG: AE8600B6 Anivar Aravind -- Knowledge is power... share it equitably! http://www.gnu.org

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GNU/Hurd on Qemu
by प्रव ीण् ए (Praveen A) 25 Jan '06

25 Jan '06

Hi, This is the most easiest way to try GNU/Hurd. http://www.zabor.org/balrog/hurd/ A beautifully built qemu image of GNU/Hurd. Try it now !! 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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[Fwd: [PRC] FLOSS fellowships announcements]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 24 Jan '06

24 Jan '06

-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: V Vivek <viyyer(a)sarai.net> Reply-To: Free/Libre and Open Source Software Project List <prc(a)sarai.net> To: Free/Libre and Open Source Software Project List <prc(a)sarai.net> Subject: [PRC] FLOSS fellowships announcements Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 17:01:40 +0530 Happy New Year! We're excited to announce this year's Sarai-CSDS FLOSS Fellows, and we look forward to hearing more about their upcoming explorations... Vivek The Sarai- CSDS FLOSS Fellows 2006 Abhishek Choudhary Implementing/ Porting Hindawi, Romenagri, APCISR etc. to Linux / FLOSS environments Baishampyan Ghose/Kenneth Gonsalves Panini - Integrated Translation Management System. Ravishankar Srivastava Hindi Localization of OpenOffice.Org2.2 Help Contents Sharad Maloo Open Source Parallel Database. Subramanya Sastry Newsrack - Automating News Gathering and Classification Supreet Sethi Search Interface Driven Archive Surekha Sastry/ Srinivasa Raghavan "Indic B2B" Localization Modules Knowlege is power... share it equitably! _______________________________________________ prc mailing list prc(a)sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc

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[COMMERCIAL] ETDC courses... in Goa
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 23 Jan '06

23 Jan '06

Electronic Test & Development Centre, Goa announces software/IT courses: Linux Sysadmin (consists of Linux Administration modules for professionals). Pre-requisite: Knowledge of Linux installation commands, KDE and GNOME Desktops. Course dates 30 Jan - 2 Feb. Course fee: Rs 4500 + Rs 459 service tax per participant Information Security Management Systems Framework and Implementation ISO/IEC 17799 2000/ISO 27001 : 2005 Course date: 13-14 Feb 2005 Course fee Rs 4500 + Rs 459 service tax per particpant Linux Resource & Security Management Pre-requisite: Must have attended ETDC's Linux Sysadmin Course date: 15-17 FEb 2005 Course fee Rs 3500 + Rs 357 service tax per participant Group discount 10% for three or more participants. Venue: ETDC Conference Hall. Timing 10-17 hrs Further details: OIC (Computer) / OIC (Training) Director / PA to Director Electronics Test & Development Centre GMC NIO Road, PO Goa University Goa 403206 Phone 0832.245 8680-83 Telefax (0832) 245 9784 Email etdc_goa(a)sancharnet.in Payment: Course fees: DD in favour of "Pay & Accounts Officer, Dept of Information Technology" Payable at New Delhi Service Tax: DD in favour of sBI Treasury Branch Service Tax a/c payable at Panjim. Note: For outstation candidates, economical staying arrangements can be made on request.

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Dwayne offers tips on getting started in localisation
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 21 Jan '06

21 Jan '06

Dwayne offers tips on getting started in localisation By Frederick Noronha Dwayne Bailey (34) lives in Pretoria and comes from Cape Town, South Africa. In the world of Free Software and Open Source, Dwayne is well known for preaching the localisation gospel. Says Dwayne: "Actually localisation is everything that makes the computer work for you in your locale (country and language). Translating the computer interfaces is by far the biggest task and ongoing. But its not the complete picture. Keyboards, fonts, locales, date systems, rendering, bidi are all part of localisation." Dwayne has been involved with a major translation project in South Africa. As he put it when we last spoke, "At Translate.org.za we're localising Free and Open Source Software into 11 South African languages. One is English, it's quite an easy one (smiles). The others are Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Venda, Tsonga, Tswana, Siswati, Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho, Ndebele." [2] But this time, at Africa Source 2, we focussed on another issue. What's the best route for a small-to-medium language to take, if it wants to enter the world of computing? Says Dwayne: "What I'm discovering now is that the first things to do (for any language) is to get in place the basic infrastructure. One reason is so that they can start, the other is so that they can write and do things in their language." Three things need to be checked, he explains. Firstly, whether you can type your language, and have a keyboard to do so. Then, you need to be able to see the text, so font-rendering is the issue here. The third important task is to define a locale for language and country. (In simple language, this is a configuration file that defines whether your language uses the metric or imperial system, what are the names in your language for the days of the weeks and months of the year, what calendar system do you use, and so on...) After this, what? Then, says Dwayne, you're really free to do translations. That's when you need to really start thinking about what you want to achieve. Even a small group can achieve change, he believes. "The reason why you need to define goals is to ensure you don't kid yourself about what you're doing. If you're localising [GNU]Linux into Bulgarian, and you say this is being done so that Bulgarians can use a computer in their language, when in fact they all use Windows, then you need objectives that are based in reality," he explains. Your objectives could be anything. "I'm happy if someone says I'm translating Thunderbird, the email client, into Afrikaans for my 100 year old granny," jokes Dwayne, whose specs and lean figure makes him look much more serious than he is. The import thing is to understand what your goals are like. "It's all about focus. Your objective helps to focus where you put in your energies. In our organisation, we found we were being pushed from pillar to post. Everyone wanted us to translate something, and there was always a good reason," he narrates. But what works well for a small language? "My feeling is that you have to translate stuff that focuses on the end-user. And that narrows down your scope. End-users are the people that are mostly going to benefit from whatever you do," he stresses. Dwayne also suggests that localisation teams look at cross-platform tools, i.e. those that work on multiple operating systems such as GNU/Linux, Windows or Apple Mac. "Even within that, I would define (the more useful tools as) a sub-set: anything to do with communication is probably the most important thing to work on," he explains. Has he emerged wiser from his experiences of past work? "If I was going to do things again, I would prioritise it in the following order: email client, instant messaging and a word processor. When you look at (the whole of) Open Office, it's a relatively large project. But you can (begin by) translating only the word processor." Can localisation in computing really make a difference to a language's future? Dwayne narrates the "interesting story" of the Venda language, which has some 700,000 speakers. "We needed to translate it. I found there were some extra characters needed -- beyond the Latin characters. So I investigated how to make a keyboard, and made it just for fun. I made some fonts." One translator in the team was a linguist. He talked about 'mechanical imperialism', where the deficiencies of the computer were changing the way people could write a language. That is still a problem. This worked itself out in odd ways: a professional translator employed by the South African parliament to translate into Venda, couldn't type all the characters needed. So they would type things out, and then add the 'missing' characters by hand. "Which is completely sad. Valuable information which could be created for the language is completely lost. That's a demonstration that simple things could do amazing things for a language," says Dwayne. Isn't it sometimes an uneasy relationship between techies and linguists, both of whom need a stable partnership to make a translation project a success? Says Dwayne: "Whereever there are issues about techies and translators, the reality is that techies don't appreciate translation. They appreciate translation when it looks good in a press release; but in their behaviour there's not that kind of care. But having said that, there are certain projects where there's a growing respect for the localisers. The key thing there is usually to have a representative for the localisers (in tech teams). They often act as the go-between." Check the TranslateWiki [3], a great starting point for localisation of your language. It offers links to: The WordForge project; The Translate Toolkit (a toolkit to convert between various different translation formats); Pootle (a portal that will enable you to manage your translation project, do web-based translation and offline translation); the Localisation Guide (a guide to how to start and run a localisation project) and a glossary of translation terms. Once programmers see localisers as valuable members of the community and once localisers see responsive programmers both sides begin to see a very healthy relationship, argues Dwayne. "Something that can take us onto 100 languages." Here are some figures that remind us of how serious the task is: There are about 239 languages in Africa with more than one million speakers. Free/Libre and Open Source Software covers about 50-60 languages in total. In Africa currently covered are 10! Says Dwayne: "Localisation is a task that many people can do and clearly we need lots more people to contribute." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_localization [2] http://www.tacticaltech.org/node/237 [3] http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/ -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Frederick 'FN' Noronha | http://del.icio.us/fredericknoronha Saligao, Goa, India | fred(a)bytesforall.org Independent Journalist | +91(832)2409490 Cell 9822122436 ----------------------------------------------------------

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Re: FSF in LinuxAsia
by Amol Hatwar 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 12:37 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote: > Hi > > I will be planning to be around for Linux Asia in Delhi probably all the > time so if you need someone at the booth/stalls on occasions I can help > you with that. It would be helpful if you have some material for me to > go through related to the FSF India activities to answer questions on > that. If you need other help, just let me know and I can potentially > give it a try. Rahul just like Mishi wants to be involved at the FSF stall in Linux Asia 2006. I have asked him to be there at the IRC meets. Regards, ah

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[Fwd: Re: FSFI@LA2006]
by Amol Hatwar 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

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