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FOSS.IN is here - Are you IN?
by Guntupalli Karunakar 25 Oct '05

25 Oct '05

Hi all, Heads-up for anyone interested in Free & Open Source Software, FOSS.IN is here. FOSS.IN/2005 (the successor to the well known Linux Bangalore conferences) is from November 29th to December 2nd, at the Bangalore Palace in Bangalore, India. This is India's biggest FOSS conference. If you want to know more, check out http://foss.in/2005 Imp: Last day for speaker registration is 8th October 2005, till midnight IST! So hurry. FOSS.IN/2005 is a community-oriented event. For it to be successful, it needs to reach the people who would benefit the most from it, and help in increasing the tribe of contributors and users of Free & Open Source Software. The four day conference intends to bring together the entire cross section of players in the FOSS scenario - users from different target communities, technologists, developers, educationists, businesses as well as policy makers. The theme for this year's conference is "Conversations". On the FOSS horizon, there are several efforts that are represented or addressed across the country. In, parallel, there are various technical discussions and dialogues that have happened at the earlier conferences and meetings and are expected to happen at this conference too. At FOSS.IN/2005, the focus would be to catalyze mutually beneficial interaction between the technologists and technology implementers (FOSS developers) and the end users, policy makers, educationists and industry. This focus would be in addition to the intent of enabling technology knowledge dissemination across the community through talks and/or demonstrations. The call for participations has been out for quite some time now. You can see the Call for participation @ http://foss.in/2005/cfp/ A list of possible topics is available at http://foss.in/2005/topics/ If you would like to give a talk, tutorial, do a workshop or organize a Birds of Feather session, then register it at the earliest. Imp: Last day for speaker registration is 8th October 2005, till midnight IST! So hurry. To register as a speaker visit http://foss.in/2005/speakers/ Giving a talk for first time? Do read do's & don'ts compiled by past speaker experiences http://foss.in/2005/guides/speakers.php If you are planning to speak or attend (or even if you cant attend due to reasons beyond your control), you can help getting the word out in a variety of ways: eg. talking about it friends, colleagues, clients etc, putting it up on your blog if are planning to speak or attend, putting up posters about the event at your school/college/organization etc. See http://foss.in/2005/promote/ on ways to promote it. If you are part of a LUG/GLUG/FSUG etc post on your mailing lists about this event, especially if you stay in south. Also keep a watch on http://linux-bangalore.org/2005/wiki/index.php/Community_Issues where we would be planning for some pre-event activities where we welcome participation of all FOSS communities. Primary action items being conducting a web-survey of FOSS usage in India in academic and business environment. And also on mapping the FOSS movement in India. More on this in a future mail. So are you IN? Karunakar -- ************************************* * Work: http://www.indlinux.org * * Blog: http://cartoonsoft.com/blog * *************************************

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Fwd: [fredpook@gmail.com: electronics expert volunteer needed]
by Nagarjuna G. 23 Oct '05

23 Oct '05

Fred is looking for a hardware hacker to fix some problem for a free wireless infrastructure developement, any one can find a solution? Write to fred if you need further information, with a cc to me. Nagarjuna ----- Forwarded message from Fred Pook <fredpook(a)gmail.com> ----- > Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 13:54:33 +0200 > From: Fred Pook <fredpook(a)gmail.com> > Subject: electronics expert volunteer needed > To: Arun Mehta <arunlists(a)softhome.net>, nagarjun(a)gnowledge.org > > Hi Arun and Nagarjuna, > How are you today? > Since we are allowed to use 1 Watt RF output on the 2.4 Ghz frequency in > India. And most Wi-Fi consumer products that we are using only output about > 80mW, I went on a search for a low-cost RF amplifier. I found: > http://www.fairchildsemi.com/news/2004/0407/rmpa2455.html > chosen by broadcom (the producer of the chipset used in WRT54G and Asus) as > the basis of an 2.4Ghz amplifier. So being Dutch and bold I just went on an > ordered 10 of them here: > http://www.digikey.com/scripts/dksearch/dksus.dll?KeywordSearch?Keywords=RM… > to my surprise they arrived with no problem. > Now this IC is very small 3 X 3mm with 16 tiny surface mounting contacts > and it needs some supporting capacitors etc all describe in the datasheet > here: > http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ds/RM/RMPA2455.pdf > Do you know any electronics hackers in India who can put this together for > us? And how to get these tiny little IC's to him? > To have some extra RF output will make our wireless life a lot easier since > we don't have to worry to much about cable and plug loss and it can keep the > design of the antenna much smaller and lower-cost. Now higher output doesn't > solve every problem on long range Wi-Fi connections (fresnel zone clearance > is the big one) but it did wonders for the Djursland project after they got > 1Watt 802.11a equipment. > OK, so much for now, > hope to see you soon, > Fred ----- End forwarded message -----

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[Fwd: [Fwd: Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolic]]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 23 Oct '05

23 Oct '05

-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Sunil Abraham <sunil(a)mahiti.org> Reply-To: sunil(a)mahiti.org To: asiasource-l <asiasource-l(a)lists.tacticaltech.org> Subject: [Asiasource-l] Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolicII Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:04:24 +0530 Dear Sourcers, Some exciting news from Jaromil. Thanks, Sunil http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1693674882;fp;16;fpid;0 Dine in geek heaven with Dyne:bolicII Dahna McConnachie 21/10/2005 08:58:34 Multimedia producers and artists will have the power to fully customise their own tailored GNU/Linux environment on a bootable CD with the release of Dyne:bolicII by the end of the year. That is the aim of core developer, Jaromil, who says the new system will give users unprecedented flexibility and control. Aimed at multimedia producers, artists, activists, and content creators, the Dyne:bolic multimedia platform on a bootable CD offers a vast range of software for multimedia production, streaming, 3-D modelling, photo editing, Web browsing and publishing, peer-to-peer file sharing, and networking. It also includes games and a world navigator. Dyne:bolic is capable of automatic clustering - joining the CPU power between any other Dyne:bolic on the local network. It can recognise a variety of hardware devices (sound, video, FireWire, and USB) and works on several types of machines from Windows through to "modded" Xbox consoles. Jaromil says the main addition to version two, currently in beta, is that it will include all the compiler tools required in order to modify it. "So far live meant demo, now live really means live, so you'll be able to adapt your own version of the live CD wherever you want," he said. "You can boot a RW CD, copy a directory on the hard disk, modify its contents and burn it back, without repartitioning anything, to have a Dyne:II system customised for your needs. You can install things from almost any available binary packages (deb, rpm, tgz), plus with new systems like Zero Install and Autopackage." Dyne:bolicII will also have additional modules that you can drop into a directory before booting, with collections of more software not included in the core. Other changes include increased security for user interaction, the ability to write modifications in the "usr", advanced thin client functionality and modular design to be easily combined with other software. "It's also faster than the previous version, taking full advantage of most recent developments in desktop technology for GNU/Linux," said Jaromil. There are many differences between Dyne:bolic and distros like Ubuntu and SuSE, according to Jaromil. "The differences exist from the ergonomic design, to the focus on providing a desktop environment, to the special dyne functionalities of docking and nesting which lets you run the system from the hard disk and have your data stored without the need to repartition anything," he said. Other differences, he said, included all scripts being rewritten from scratch, hardware recognition is not the same and there are no big frameworks like Gnome or KDE being used. "They consume too many resources for a desktop that runs on a Pentium 1 with 64MB of RAM," said Jaromil. "In fact one of the focuses I kept with dyne is keeping requirements low. I think this is an important ecological issue, by looking at the quantity of hardware waste produced nowadays and the consumerist rush that is pushing it." Other than occasional small donations, Dyne:bolic is not yet funded, but by the end of the year, Dyne.org will be registered as an official foundation valid in Europe. "[Though we are] starting with no money, we have a lot of ideas and software that works already, so we might find a good sustainable situation," said Jaromil. "But it's way better to have people liking your activity, knowing your story, than to be a billionaire donating more cash than you can spend to make a branded product out of your software." Avid Linux user Tom Russell, who has written a generic version on customising Dyne 1.4, said the new version of Dyne was "geek heaven" and definitely worth downloading. To use a stable version of Dyne:bolic go here: www.dynebolic.org. To get involved in the beta of Dyne:bolicII go here: http://dev.dynebolic.org Alternatively, for something different, going to Russell's How To page explains how to http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/14628.html customise Dyne 1.4 to run his 'SCOOL application from a bootable CD. "I had to rewrite 'SCOOL a bit to suit the squash module approach," he said. "This actually only involved changing some shell script variable assignments and changing the Runtime Revolution transcript for the same reason, as it originally resided in $HOME. Now it can support multiple users on the same system, which is a much better approach."

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Re Re: [Fsf-friends] Brand Ambassador of Microsoft Inc
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 22 Oct '05

22 Oct '05

>Would beautiful hard bound books and cool looking CD's compensate for good course contents. >I would rate the Shiksha Abhiyan by MS -10 on a scale of 1 to 10 As on date we are aware that most (80%) of the world's critical software(s) are being developed in a free and open source environment which is showing a steady upward trend. This is also a site where everyone can contribute and participate, nowhere restricted. Microsoft, however prefers to stick to the techniques deployed by the weakening 20%, often abusing the legal (through patents, restrictive copyrights) and political framework (through tie-ups with governments) to assist its functioning. This is sure a serious attempt to take the present and future technologists and their service-users to an intellectually dark stone-age. In any ethical dimension, its evident that faced with a choice, embracing the one where many can participate, would be very obvious, because of the non-antagonising face that it shows. On this account, Microsoft comes a total cropper. The existing presence of Microsoft is largely due to the unholy nexus with bureaucracy, which will soon have a natural death, because of the immense challenge that the corporate throws at the Indian school-teaching community, which is by far the best in this world. Shiksha Abhiyan, a gloomy project, thus is doomed to darkness, where the contribution of Microsoft will indeed be 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. CK Raju Thrissur

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FSFE: Early comment on new Microsoft Shared Source Licenses
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 22 Oct '05

22 Oct '05

Would you believe this? FN -------- Forwarded Message -------- To: press-release(a)fsfeurope.org Subject: [FSFE PR][EN] Early comment on new Microsoft Shared Source Licenses Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 13:44:07 -0200 [for immediate release] FSFE: Early comment on new Microsoft Shared Source Licenses "Since we so rarely have opportunity to say something positive about Microsoft, let me begin by congratulating them", says Georg Greve, president of Free Software Foundation Europe. "Microsoft finally seems to have made a step forward on their long march towards giving their users freedom: of the five licenses published, our cursory first analysis suggests that two of them indeed fulfill the Free Software Definition." According to FSFEs first glance, the "Microsoft Permissive License" (Ms-PL) and "Microsoft Community License" (Ms-CL) both appear to satisfy the four freedoms that define Free Software. In particular: The Ms-CL also appears to implement a variation of the Copyleft idea, which was first implemented by the GNU General Public License (GPL). Given previous Microsoft statements about the Copyleft approach and in particular the GNU GPL as 'viral', 'cancerous' and 'communist', seeing Microsoft now publish licenses applying the very same principles seems quite an evolution. Naturally, it is not the publication of licenses, but the publication of software under a Free Software license, that gives people freedom: It is indeed not very useful if every company, administration or author publishes their own license; so it would have been preferrable if Microsoft had made the decision to use the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Lesser General Public License (LGPL) for its Shared Source program. Far more than 50% of Free Software worldwide is published under these licenses, they are very well-known and people trust them for good reason. "Microsoft has walked a mile and is now standing mere inches from the GNU (L)GPL: We fully understand that Microsoft is first trying to get the nail of its little toe wet in the Free Software community, and we welcome that," continues Greve. "But in the course of time we would prefer to see Microsoft join the large global community of commercial GNU (L)GPL vendors." "For now it will be good if Microsoft starts relicensing its portfolio under the Ms-PL or Ms-CL; but we still have to warn people to be careful about the 'Shared Source' label and look at the specific licenses: The other three licenses of the Shared Source program are clearly proprietary and obviously do not qualify as Free Software." Greve finishes. The Free Software Foundations will need more time to study all these licenses and their interactions with other licenses in depth, so this is not a final evaluation -- and the final evaluation may as well reveal problems that were not visible at first sight. Microsoft still has a long way to go, but for now it seems they made a step in the right direction, and the Free Software Foundation Europe hopes they will keep it up. About the Free Software Foundation Europe: The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), founded 2001, is a charitable non-governmental organisation dedicated to all aspects of Free Software in Europe. Access to software determines who may participate in a digital society. The the Freedoms to use, copy, modify and redistribute software - as described in the Free Software definition - allow equal participation in the information age. Creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE. Further information about FSFE's work can be found at http://fsfeurope.org, get active yourself at http://fsfeurope.org/contribute/. _______________________________________________ Press-release mailing list Press-release(a)fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/press-release

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[Fwd: Blogging, Sri Lanka... and Pakistan]
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 21 Oct '05

21 Oct '05

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/sanjiva October 16, 2005 Sahana and Pakistan By sanjiva Chamindra and Bud left a few hours ago for Pakistan - they are probably in Karachi by now. Over the weekend we worked out what was suitable to be recommended for use in Pakistan from the old Sahana project; see http://www.linux.lk/~chamindra/docs/Sahana-Pakistan.pdf for details. We're being careful not to over-promise anything. Thanks to Ajith Ranabahu, one of the folks who did a lot of work on the Java parts of Sahana I, Eran Chinthaka, and Sudheera Fernando, one of the developers of Sahana II as well as Chamindra and Bud of course, for pulling a marathon weekend effort to get it all ready to go. In the last second, we had apparently screwed something up while copying it over to the notebook that was going .. luckily Ajith (who was on his way to his hometown Kuliyapitiya to spend the now half-spent long weekend by then) managed to pull over to the side and found the problem! If they decide to use it we have to pull together a quick volunteer effort to localize it a bit more and to harden a few weak spots. I don't expect we'll have any difficulty finding folks to help! Yesterday for the first time I had a glimpse at Sahana II. Wow, that's looking really solid .. its too bad its not ready yet! However, the data can be migrated from the old version. As soon as Sahana II comes a bit more of age we'll host it on a public place for people to play with it. * Posted on: Sun, Oct 16 2005 11:56 PM October 13, 2005 Sahana and Pakistan By sanjiva Some of you may recall the disaster management system called Sahana we started building immediately after the tsunami. As I have blogged earlier taht is currently being re-done to be a totally globally reusable disaster management system. As everyone knows Pakistan is currently suffering from a disaster that is probably not second to the tsunami in terms of human impact. I cannot begin to imagine how painful it must be for those people. My heart goes out to them. We've been asked by a couple of groups in Pakistan to come over and try to help get Sahana deployed and going to assist in their response. I'm proud to say that Chamindra de Silva and Bud Siddhisena have agreed to go and see what they can do! They're heading off ASAP and hope to be back in a week or so. However, I have to note that unlike many people who tried to push imaginery software on us during the tsunami, we are not going to push very hard, even though Sahana can be really helpful to them. Hoever, if they don't want to bite we will back off! Good luck to Chamindra and Bud; safe travels! http://budlite.blogspot.com/ Pakistan meets Sahana We managed to catch an early flight at 5AM as opposed to the originally booked 7AM one and make it to the hotel early on. Though we made it to the hotel earlier, Murphy would have us wait for about another hour before we could see the rooms. Nevertheless after seeing the 60 inch plasma TV equipped with 70 odd cable channels, there weren't any hard feelings. The room at the Marriott is very nice and relaxing to be in. After a very short nap, we were escorted to the IBM office, where we met a lot of new faces. Chamindra presented the current Sahana system and I showed a working demo off one of the notebooks we brought with us. As soon as that meeting was over, we all rushed over to the Priminister's secretariat, which is a massive palace like building just a few meter's off IBM headquarters. There were several high ranked Army officers to whom we (IBM/LSF) demoed the system and offered other templates and consultancy services Our presentation was taken quite positively by the officials, and they even offered to take the two leading guys from the Emergency Crisis Team on a chopper to see the disaster area. Later in the evening, quite happy with the day's progress, Asif who is one of the IBMers, took us out to Pizza Hut to initiate eating after fasting all day. We took the special "All you can eat" offer that's happening these days due to the Ramadan season. I must say the quality of the Pizza was better when compared to what you get in Sri Lanka. The day ended with some coffee and chitchat at a prominent Minister's residence about the current situation. There seems to be a lot of expectations from everyone to get the system operational ASAP. Hopefully all the elements will come together in the coming days. posted by Bud at 11:31 PM 0 comments Blogging from Pakistan I've just arrived at the Pakistan airport in Karachi, trying to kill some time till the next flight at 7AM. Even though my search for wireless networks through kismet came up with 2 unknown essid's that seem to be unencrypted, I wasn't about to go any further with trying to hack into it just so I can get this blog out on time. My self and Chamindra are in Pakistan on our way to Islamabad to help with the disaster efforts as a result of the Earth quake strike last week. No so much so by picking up shawals or buckets but by what we know best - Free & Opensource software. I only got to know about our need for the visit on Thursday, when IBM requested us to join their Emergency Crisis Management Team. If your wondering why us, then the simple answer is, for building the Sahana system in a very short time when the Tsunami hit. Unfortunately as we built it very quickly, within a week or so, its far from perfect when it comes to implementing for a world wide disaster solution. The good news is Sahana phase 2 is in full swing, and is being built by LSF as a generic system that can be use for just about any disaster. Unfotunately the new system is about 2-3 months away from being realized. That's where I come in -- as an architect (literally) of the old system :) Our mission is to demonstrate the system as a proposition to managing the current crisis in the hope that it can ease some of the chaos and disorder usually found in such a situation. Enough said about Sahana, my trip here was quite a company. Murphy seemed to have joined us along the way, following us secretly and popping up from time to time. From the setting up of the demo till the last minute to me loosing the ticket coupons while filling the embarkation to the tatty flight that a 1 hour stop over in Mumbai after circling the sky for about 20 minutes due to traffic! If that wasn't dizzy enough, we were forced to stay in the plane, while a cleaning crew tore plane apart. Which brings us to the present, sitting and blogging in an empty airport with another 5 hours to go. Well I just bought a book -- "The beautiful Mind", and if its anything like the movie then I'd guess it would be a real treat. Things can only get better.... posted by Bud at 2:30 AM 0 comments ________________________________________________________________________

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[Fwd: [Ilugc] Adelphi Charter]
by Ramanraj K 21 Oct '05

21 Oct '05

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Ilugc] Adelphi Charter Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 07:57:59 +0530 From: Sivasankar Chander <siva.ilugc(a)gmail.com> To: Indian Linux Users Group - Chennai <ilugc(a)ae.iitm.ac.in> Britain's Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), http://www.rsa.org.uk/ which is a venerable 250-year old institution, has issued the Adelphi Charter, drafted by numerous eminent personalities, including a Nobel Laureate and various legal luminaries, which links IP policy to public benefit: [Adelphi Charter] http://www.ipcharter.org/ [Commission Members] http://www.ipcharter.org/group.asp [Guardian] http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,9828,1591467,00.html [Economist] http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=5032375 Among other things, it recommends a ban on the issue of software patents and business and medical process patents. -Siva _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email ilugc-request(a)ae.iitm.ac.in with "unsubscribe <password> <address>" in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc

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Help abolish software patents
by Nikhil Prabhakar 21 Oct '05

21 Oct '05

Hi all, *Luminaries are calling on Worldwide Community to vote against Software Patents.Plz help in abolishing software patents by voting online for *Florian Mueller, the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign. http://www.ag-ip-news.com/GetArticle.asp?Art_ID=2254&lang=en Regards Nikhil Prabhakar "Live Life Ethically" www.gnu.org/philosophy <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy>

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Brand Ambassador of Microsoft Inc
by doxa＠sancharnet.in 20 Oct '05

20 Oct '05

Friends, The sudden discovery of an ambassador in Minister Dayanidhi Maran by Microsoft Inc is not surprising in the wake of the much touted training of teachers in Tamil Nadu (a project whose sibling met with an untimely death in Kerala, thanks to efforts of a few volunteer activists). But what is surprising is to see the Minister shamelessly sitting atop foolish advertisements of the corporate telling us *what ought to be the right way to address digital divide*. Perhaps it would do a world of good if someone from Tamilnadu retold the story of Don Quixote to the Minister (in its 400th year of celebrations). CK Raju Thrissur ---------------- http://ernakulam.sancharnet.in/doxa

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Isn't it ironical?
by Nikhil Prabhakar 18 Oct '05

18 Oct '05

Hi All, Just now going through the web I reached a site ( http://www.linux-mag.com) which is supposed to promote GNU/Linux (or at least it seems to be ).I found M$ ads there which were telling people to believe that Windoze is more powerful. This has really disturbed me. What these so called Open Source guys trying to achieve? They are doing more harm to the community. The point I'm trying to prove here is that untill and unless you believe in the philosophy behind the free software movement you will achieve no good.It's like going one step forward and two step backwards. Expecting comments and suggestions. Regards Nikhil Prabhakar "Live Life Ethically" www.gnu.org/philosophy <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy>

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