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Audio of RMS Talks
by Bharathi Subramanian 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Hello All, In the last visit, RMS went different places in India and He covered different topics in his speech. I am planning to collect all of them in a CD. Presently I am having following audio tracks with me:- 1) Danger of Software Patents @ IIT Madras. 2) Free Software Movement @ REC Trichy (Thanks to Vijaykumar) If you have any audio track, Kindly send it to me in CD/Tape/WebLink. Bye :) -- Bharathi S

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Hello FLOSS!
by Ankit Malik 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Hi I just joined in to the FSF mailing list and thought of introducing myself! I am Ankit from New Delhi in 10th Standard as on 1st March 2005 ;-) . I have been interested in Linux since 2 years and wud like to know more abt the underlining philosophy of FLOSS. Plus I wanna stay updated of the happenings @ FSF-India! I dont believe in reinventing the wheel. I also don't like making a new distro or something since there are way too many ;-) Personally I am attached to Ubuntu Linux! and of course all the free/libre and open software which help me in my tasks! I have also written one or two articles. Read them when you wanna feel asleep :D Here >http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/06/1557225&from=rss and i also maintain a blog http://scribbler.tk ! thought you wud be interested although i post only 3-4 times a week usually. I think that is it. [too much i know :D] Looking to hear more on FLOSS events/happenings/philosophy/advocacy Thanks for reading this! _____________________ Ankit Malik http://scribbler.tk

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Typos @ FSF India's Site
by Ankit Malik 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Typos @ FSF India's Site http://www.fsf.org.in/contrib/contrib.html The Linux Command Dictinary -- Santhosh Thotingal -- _______________________ Ankit Malik http://scribbler.tk

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Reading the archives...
by Ankit Malik 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Hi I was reading the archives and there were talks of FSF-India Awards to be implemented. So have they been implemented? If yes, can someone point me to the rules for submitting and what is required et al ? Thanks in advance. Another thing is it is possible right now for a CBSE affliated school to stick to FLOSS and still teach all the computers related subjects in 11th and 12th ??? -- _______________________ Ankit Malik http://scribbler.tk

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Can my article make it for FS Award Nomination
by Ankit Malik 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

I recently wrote an article for LFY and then also gave it to Newsforge with permissions from both the parties.. http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/06/1557225&from=rss Considering its license, is it eligible for an FS Award. [of course winning it is going too far fetched ;-) but can I make it to the eligible list ???] P.S. I regret not releasing it under Creative Commons or LGPL :( but its too late. For future articles, I am with CC ! -- _______________________ Ankit Malik http://scribbler.tk

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About the Free Software Directory
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 28 Feb '05

28 Feb '05

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/directory/entry-20050212.html One of our most important projects is the Free Software Directory. by Janet Casey To make a donation supporting the Free Software Directory and other FSF projects, please visit donate.fsf.org. The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It catalogs useful free software that runs under free operating systems, particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants. The Directory maintainer verifies the license for every package in the directory by opening each package and checking the license of each source code file. Almost 90% of the packages included are under the GPL or LGPL, but any package under a license we consider acceptably free (see this list), that runs on a free OS, and that does not depend on non-free software can be included. The Directory has grown enormously since its inception in late 1999. It now has almost 3,300 packages, each one individually checked as described above. The scope of the Directory has also broadened: the original template for a Directory entry had 30 possible fields; the current template has 47. Licensing issues with Qt and PHP4 have been resolved, so packages that use Qt or are written in PHP4 are now included. Originally, almost all packages had command line interfaces; now Web-based and GUI packages account for roughly a third of the Directory. The Directory accounts for between 40 and 45% of the traffic on the FSF's Web site; in a recent five day period, it had almost 2.5 million total hits. THE DIRECTORY IS AT: http://directory.fsf.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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The Free Software Foundation's Campaign for Free BIOS
by Frederick Noronha (FN) 28 Feb '05

28 Feb '05

http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html Campaign for Free BIOS Chips and Motherboards that support LinuxBIOS The Free Software Foundation's Campaign for Free BIOS In 1984 the GNU Project set out to make it possible to operate a computer in freedom--to operate it without any non-free software that would deny the user's freedom At the time, the obstacle to this was simply the operating system. A computer won't run without an operating system, but all the modern operating systems of 1983 were proprietary, user-subjugating software. There was no way to use modern computers in freedom. We set out to change the situation by developing a free software operating system, called GNU. When the kernel Linux became free software in 1992, it filled the last gap in GNU. The combined GNU/Linux operating system achieved our goal: you could install it in a bare PC, and run the computer without any installed non-free software. Strictly speaking, there was a non-free program in that computer: the BIOS. But that was impossible to replace, and by the same token, it didn't count. The BIOS was impossible to replace because it was stored in ROM: the only way to to put in a different BIOS was by replacing part of the hardware. In effect, the BIOS was itself hardware--and therefore didn't really count as software. It was like the program that (we can suppose) exists in the computer that (we can suppose) runs your watch or your microwave oven: since you can't install software on it, it may as well be circuits, not a computer at all. The ethical issues of free software arise because users obtain programs and install them in computers; they don't really apply to hidden embedded computers, or the BIOS burned in a ROM, or the microcode inside a processor chip, or the firmware that is wired into a processor in an I/O device. In aspects that relate to their design, those things are software; but as regards copying and modification, they may as well be hardware. The BIOS in ROM was, indeed, not a problem. Since that time, the situation has changed. Today the BIOS is no longer burned in ROM; it is stored in nonvolatile writable memory that users can rewrite. Today the BIOS sits square on the edge of the line. It comes prewritten in our computers, and normally we never install another. So far, that is just barely enough to excuse treating it as hardware. But once in a while the manufacturer suggests installing another BIOS, which is available only as an executable. This, clearly, is installing a non-free program--it is just as bad as installing Microsoft Windows, or Adobe Photoshop, or Sun's Java Platform. As the unethical practice of installing another BIOS executable becomes common, the version delivered inside the computer starts to raise an ethical problem issue as well. The way to solve the problem is to run a free BIOS. And our community has developed free BIOSes--for instance, LinuxBIOS, which is a modified version of the kernel, Linux. However, few computers can run them. Whereas "PC clones" were and are quite similar, and fully-documented as regards what the kernel and user-space programs need to know, the commands that the BIOS must execute in order to initialize the machine are varied, and in most cases secret. How to install a new BIOS is also secret on many machines. And so far, most manufacturers have not given us the necessary cooperation of providing these specifications. Some desktop machines can run a free BIOS, but we don't know of any laptop that can do so. The FSF uses laptops donated by IBM over the past few years. This was one among several ways IBM cooperated with the GNU Project. But the cooperation is incomplete: when I asked for the specifications necessary to make LinuxBIOS run on these laptops, IBM refused--citing, as the reason, the enforcement of "trusted computing" http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html Treacherous computing is, itself, an attack on our freedom; it is also, it seems, a motivation to obstruct our freedom in other ways. Not all of our community perceives the non-free BIOS as an acute problem. Much of our community supports the open source philosophy, which says that the issue at stake is choosing a development model that produces powerful, reliable software. The open source philosophy doesn't say that "closed source" software is unethical, only that it is likely not to be as reliable. People who hold those views might care about the loss of freedom imposed by a non-free BIOS, because in their philosophy, freedom is not the issue. For us in the free software movement, freedom is the main issue; we have to solve this problem, whether they help or not. How You Can Help Since requests for manufacturers' cooperation have not solved the problem, another approach is needed. Now we are asking you to help. For instance, simply installing a new BIOS in the machine is a substantial challenge. Most manufacturers don't publish the information on how to do this. If you can figure this out for some recent model, especially a laptop, that would be a substantial contribution. Cooperation from the manufacturers would make that work unnecessary. However, to gain cooperation we need to press for it. The most uncooperative company is Intel, which has started a sham "open source" BIOS project. The software consists of all the unimportant parts of of a BIOS, without the hard parts. It won't run, and doesn't bring us any closer to a BIOS that does run. It is just a distraction. By contrast, AMD cooperates pretty well. You can help our campaign by buying AMD CPU chips and not buying Intel, and by publishing statements about what you're doing. Likewise, buy motherboards that support free BIOS. See http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html for information on which companies cooperate and which models and motherboards are supported. When you do this, tell your friends and your coworkers. And please tell us, too--please write to bios(a)gnu.org to tell us that you have chosen what to buy because it supports a free BIOS. You can also help our campaign by writing to manufacturers such as Intel, saying they ought to cooperate with a fully free BIOS. Calm but strong disapproval, coupled with stating an intention to take action accordingly, is more effective than venting rage. Please send a copy of your message to bios(a)gnu.org, so we can monitor the support for this campaign. The more mail they get, the more effect, so please do add your voice to ours. We would like to offer positive inducements as well as pressure. Our idea is to endorse, for a period of time, the first manufacturer in a given category of machine (for instance, laptops) that cooperates fully with free BIOS. To make this offer effective, we would like to collect a long list of people who say they intend to make their choices according to our endorsements. See http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html for how to add your name to this campaign. Once this campaign has built up strength, we will publicize offers of endorsements and begin inviting manufacturers to accept them. We will ask for your help at every step. Created by peterb Last modified 2005-02-28 10:27 AM FORWARDED VIA: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436 http://fn.swiki.net http://fn-floss.notlong.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. --Aristotle

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WordPerfect to Plain Text
by Ramanraj K 28 Feb '05

28 Feb '05

Is there a free software tool that converts WPF - WordPerfect document binaries into plain text? Thanks, Ramanraj.

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[Fwd: Re: [Ilugc] Theo de Raadt gets FSF Award]
by Ramanraj K 27 Feb '05

27 Feb '05

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Ilugc] Theo de Raadt gets FSF Award Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 22:54:00 +0530 (IST) From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <linux(a)frodo.hserus.net> To: topa_007(a)yahoo.com CC: LUG-C linux <ilugc(a)aero.iitm.ernet.in> References: <20050227162441.26866.qmail(a)web30203.mail.mud.yahoo.com> > This years award commitee has two well known faces ( > e-mail handles actually :) from our very own ILUGC mailing list. > > srs : Suresh Ramasubramanian and FN : Frederick Noronha The third indian in that list is Raju Mathur, moderator of linux-india-* It should be fun seeing Theo and RMS together on the same stage :) -srs _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email ilugc-request(a)ae.iitm.ac.in with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc

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[Fwd: [Ilugc] Theo de Raadt gets FSF Award]
by Ramanraj K 27 Feb '05

27 Feb '05

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Ilugc] Theo de Raadt gets FSF Award Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 08:24:40 -0800 (PST) From: Toufeeq Hussain <topa_007(a)yahoo.com> Reply-To: topa_007(a)yahoo.com To: LUG-C linux <ilugc(a)aero.iitm.ernet.in> Hi, Slashdot News for those who might have missed it. Theo de Raadt, creator of OpenBSD and ex-NetBSD hacker has been bestowed the 2004 FSF Award.I know very less of Theo but his work towards OpenSSH and the fight against Wi-Fi Hardware Chipset Manufactures is well known in the FLOSS world. Congratulations to Theo. He joins the ranks of Alan Cox, Larry Wall and Guido van Rossum in the FSF Hall of Fame. This years award commitee has two well known faces ( e-mail handles actually :) from our very own ILUGC mailing list. srs : Suresh Ramasubramanian and FN : Frederick Noronha Good Choice Guys.Keep up the good work. :) Cheers, Toufeeq Hussain ===== ############################################ # mail me @ toufeeq at computer dot org # # running Debian Sarge \w 2.6.10-ck5 # ############################################ _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, email ilugc-request(a)ae.iitm.ac.in with "unsubscribe " in the subject or body of the message. http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc

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