FSUG-Bangalore May 2004

fsug-bangalore@mm.gnu.org.in

6 participants
14 discussions

[Fwd: failure notice]
by Abhas Abhinav 24 May '04

24 May '04

Sent this to FSF Friends this morning. Had marked a copy to this list but had misspelt the email address. So forwarding the same again. Abhas. --------------- Dear Friends, Bangalore now has a Free Software User's Group (FSUG)! Starting off from the 'GNUs Grazing' initiative by Rakesh Ambati we have met up twice already. During Arun's trip to Bangalore earlier this month, we were able to press out a firm agenda for Free Software related activities in Bangalore.=20 Broadly speaking, FSUG (Bangalore) works towards two broad areas: o Free Software advocacy, lobbying and awareness in Bangalore o Technical help for Free Software and GNU/Linux The minutes of previous two meetings are available in the list archives (not yet web-viewable) and will be put up on a web-site by tomorrow. (Or I could post them here to the fsf-friends list if that's more convenient!) FSUG (Bangalore) discussions happen on the fsub-bangalore mailing list. To know more about what's happenning, who's involved and how to get involved, please subscribe to the mailing list by sending an email to fsug-bangalore-subscribe(a)lists.deeproot.co.in . A lot of activities are planned for the next few weeks - please do participate and give you comments and feedback. Regards, Abhas. --=20 Abhas Abhinav <abhas(a)deeproot.co.in> CEO, DeepRoot Linux http://www.deeproot.co.in / +91 (80) 2856 5624 Getting Linux to work for you. Faster. Better. Today. Every way.

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RE: [fsug-bangalore] NGOs in Blore
by Senthil_OR＠Dell.com 24 May '04

24 May '04

-----Original Message----- From: Rakesh 'arky' Ambati hi friends, > > Welcome move, Arun! > > This is good idea and I would like to help. I guess > all of us would like > to help/contribute. > Perhaps what Arun meant was,that he'll provide a formal introduction to local chapter. Anyway, its nice to know that you are rearing to go ahead. So, let me ask you one thing. 'What are you going to do/help/contribute if we approach this NGO?' cheers __________________________________ Good Question. What I have in my mind is support for their IT Needs. Training and Technical Support/Services. We need to know their Requirements. Regards, Senthil

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Say 'NO' To SCO !
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 22 May '04

22 May '04

Dear Friends, Take few minutes off your nice weekend and read about the subpoena. Let's unite our voices to say no to SCO http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/sco/subpoena.html TIA --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Domains � Claim yours for only $14.70/year http://smallbusiness.promotions.yahoo.com/offer

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Follow-up to our last meeting [on May 2nd] and further action plan...
by Abhas Abhinav 17 May '04

17 May '04

Hello Everyone! Firstly, I owe apologies to the entire group for not sending this email earlier. I have been out of Bangalore for about a week and so could not devote time to this activity. Let met get straight to what we discussed and then propose an action plan that we can have a discussion on. Meeting took place on: 2nd May, 2004 - Sunday Venue: Barista, MG Road, Bangalore Participants: Arun, Rakesh, Senthil, Sajith, Avinash and Abhas Meeting theme: Discuss and agree upon a broad agenda for Free Software related activities in Bangalore and nearby areas 1. One of the first things things that everyone agreed to was that we need to work on increasing the number of people involved with the group here in Bangalore. That way it would be easy to start and then scale up activities. Also it would ensure that the activities are not the mandate of a few individuals or organisations but of a larger group of people bound by a common goal to "promote the usage of free software and help in its adoption". 2. The next thing that arose was the formal status of our group here and under what name we should co-ordinate our activities. Arun suggested that we form two sub-groups here in Bangalore. One - which would deal exclusively with advocacy and lobbying related activities. Another one - which would cater to technical support activities of free software. Based on the scope and scale of where we can take the activities, the advocacy group could later be absorbed into FSF India as its Karnataka chapter. The decision for this, of course, is only up to the FSF board and would be based on how well we can grow these advocacy and lobbying activities here. (So we need to work real hard on these!) 3. It was suggested that we make up a list/pool of time and computing resources we are willing to contribute to this effort. Here is what everyone came up with: Time Resources - Rakesh => full time for at least six (6) months - Sethil => Saturdays, Sundays - Avinash => mid-june onwards full time - Sajith => Saturday / Sunday - Suraj => Alternate weekends - Abhas => completely flexible and depending upon need Computing Resources - Abhas => We are ready to contribute as much of our office equipment that could be needed for this effort. All our computers run Debian GNU/Linux (mostly unstable and testing, one experimental) [I somehow missed noting down others' inputs here - please feel free to add your contributions.] Monetary Resources - Mainly for footing meeting bills - Avinash suggested that we equally pool money together that can be spent on these expenses 4. Then, briefly, the discussion shifted to the Demo @ Schools project. We tried to analyse how we could undertake such an activity in Bangalore. A couple of things we decided were: - Inputs for such a project: Time, dedicated people, equipment - Desirable output / results: Involvement of interested students over a large period of time - Risks: If driven by the idealism / energy of very few people, it can quickly collapse. So we need to encourage this effort to be multi-lateral from the start. The more people we have who feel the same way and as passionately, better are the changes of getting something done. - Strategy: Low key with distributed responsibilities Modus operandi: (in my view) Work closely with organisations (profit / non-profit / academic) that are already into promoting IT education and similar efforts in schools. I have personally interacted with three organisations of this sort which have an all-India scope. Providing support to them and operating through them could not only be more effective, but also easier and more sustainable. 5. We also discussed about the best ways of keeping this energy and process alive. One idea that was suggested was that of a newsletter highlighting free software related news and events with a local perspective. This is something that we can send out to interested people by email or using the Web. A brief outline of its contents and scope are presented below. Please comment and grow this outline. Newsletter content: Drawn from happennings in FSF (US) / FSF (EU) / FSF (IN) organisations and mailing lists Proposed content could be as follows: - Arun's work / travels/ interactions / projects with people - Our meeting here in Bangalore (at least some highlights of activities whenever we start them) - Links to latest articles at FSF.ORG - Some content from Fred (Goa) / Niyam (Delhi) - Some content and guidelines / structure from the earlier Freedom Matters initiative which had a similar scope and aim - Case studies and Free Software adoption experiences One or two of us can take up responsibility for starting to author / collect content. Lets set a deadline for this and ensure we can get the content out by them. I can get a designer to do the online / HTML / PDF design for us. 6. Arun needs to mail us some copies of the FSF brochures if any are still left behind. We will use those to distribute here for our activities. 7. We need to register a sub-domain: bangalore.fsf.org.in. Arun will register this sub-domain and point the DNS to the server here so that we can manage it. Arun: The IP to delegate the DNS to is: 202.71.152.157 8. Arun recommended that we make use of NGOs as starting points for our advocacy and awareness campaign. 9. We also discussed the possibility of coming up with an integrated CD of all localised GNOME / KDE desktops available for Indian languages. This will enable us to highlight localisation as one of the most important features of Free Software when pressing for people to adopt it. 10. Meeting timings & Place Sajith suggested we meet on Saturdays. I don't remember what consensus we arrived at, but lets have a poll on this and go by anything that we all can agree upon. ------------------ That's it for now. I'm sorry if I made this all look very formal, but I just haven't been able to write down the other aspects of our meeting on the 2nd. I'm also setting up a Wiki so that we can starting adding content and start growing these activities. Will also file these (and earlier) minutes there as well - at least they will look better and hence more readable. (didn't want to use HTML formatting in email!) Comments awaited and appreciated. Cheers and have a great week ahead! Abhas. -- Abhas Abhinav <abhas(a)deeproot.co.in> CEO, DeepRoot Linux http://www.deeproot.co.in / +91 (80) 2856 5624 Getting Linux to work for you. Faster. Better. Today. Every way.

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Patently stupid
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 14 May '04

14 May '04

Hi, Patents are back !!!!! Hide if you can, they'll get you. <news> In direct contravention of the recent vote by the European Parliament to curtail Software Patents, the Irish Presidency of the European Union has surreptitiously reinstated unlimited software patent language into the text of a statement to be adopted by the European Council of Ministers on Monday, May 17, without further debate! The new text, if adopted, will extend Software Patents to every piece of software, including computer programs, data structures, and process descriptions. This will directly harm most software firms and all Open Source projects unable to pay patent licensing tribute, and amounts to an appropriation of the public domain by proprietary interests. A direct beneficiary will be a new class of pure patent companies without any real business or contribution to employment, which will use the threat of litigation to extort payments. Of note is that a sponsor of the Irish Presidency is Microsoft, currently building a large patent portfolio. If the Software Patent text is adopted, Microsoft may use this patent portfolio against Linux and other Open Source projects. </news> Read More Software patents back on the horizon after EU leaders ignore the vote of MEPs: http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/05/13/1447225.shtml?tid=132&tid=1… FYI --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! - Internet access at a great low price. http://promo.yahoo.com/sbc/

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RE: [fsug-bangalore] NGOs in Blore
by Senthil_OR＠Dell.com 13 May '04

13 May '04

-----Original Message----- From: Sajith T S Arun M wrote: > I've talked to a person in Baratiya Gyan Viyan Samati. They said > that they have a active group in Blore. Working with them will help us > further our ideals. If we are ready to interact with them i will get > the contacts. And may be request the person to inform the local > chapter. http://www.bgvs.org/html/state_centres.htm#9 appears to have the contact details. But if we are ready to interact with them is a good question. Are we? Or should we wait for Godot? ;) Sajith. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome move, Arun! This is good idea and I would like to help. I guess all of us would like to help/contribute. Kindly let us know more details. Regards, Senthil

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FairPlay is now Hymn
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 13 May '04

13 May '04

Hi list, The project has been renamed Hymn, according to Anand Babu, the maintainer of the project. It is being hosted on two sites by a US-based hosting service provider. Babu said last month that the project would be hosted outside the US. Read the complete story here. http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=8637 cheers --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover

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NGOs in Blore
by Arun M 12 May '04

12 May '04

Hi all, I've talked to a person in Baratiya Gyan Viyan Samati. They said that they have a active group in Blore. Working with them will help us further our ideals. If we are ready to interact with them i will get the contacts. And may be request the person to inform the local chapter. regards, arun.

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Multi-lingual CD's
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 10 May '04

10 May '04

Hello Friends, In the last Gnu(s) Grazing,I remember someone's pointing out the advantage having a multi-lingual liveCD's while promoting Free Software. I guess we don't need to build such distro's coz most of the work has been done by Dr.Nagarjuna and his team(Please see the thread).What needs to be done is lot of extensive testing and feedback. The work is really cut-out for us. Anyone game for it. --arky <thread> --- "Nagarjuna G." <nagarjun(a)hbcse.tifr.res.in> wrote: > On Sun, 2004-05-09 at 10:04, Rakesh 'arky' Ambati > wrote: > > hi list, > > > > --- "Kenneth Wong <ken(a)apdip.net>"@apdip.net > wrote: > > > Ramanraj K <ramanraj(a)md4.vsnl.net.in> wrote .. > > > > I just tried using Knoppix 3.3 that came with > the > > > May issue of > > > > LinuxForYou. Looks like good free software! > > > > > > Warning - not all of Knoppix is Free Software. > Some > > > things like acrobat reader (4.0) aren't free > > > software. > > > > > Yes,very true not all software the liveCD distro > are > > free.But sometimes distro devlopers tend to add > the > > very popular app's for the people who move over to > > GNU/Linux. > > > > There are lot of other liveCD distro around. > > (see > > > http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/print/0,23102,3680996,00.html) > > > > > > In the last Gnu(s) Grazing meet held last > sunday > > 2nd of May in bangalore,one of the topic we > discussed > > was about building a live Distro with free > > software(of course) and all Indian languages. > > > > It would a great tool for spreading free > software > > here in india.Anyone interested in taking up such > a > > project,perhaps someone from www.indlinux.org > project. > > We have made three versions of such CD based on > Knoppix. one for > schools, one for college and one for office use, all > of them support > Indian Languages. We will keep them for download by > the end of May. > the students who did the work are busy in finishinng > their exams. If we > have time we will remake the versions on Knoppix 3.4 > and then release. > Any of you willing to give us feebdack and testing, > please send your > emails and postal address to me, I will mail the CDs > to you. > > Nagarjuna > </thread> __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover

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FSUG- Kochi Website
by Rakesh 'arky' Ambati 06 May '04

06 May '04

Morning Friends, Here is Free Software User Group - Kochi Website. http://puggy.symonds.net/~fsug-kochi/ Perhaps we can have a website something like this.The "Member contributions page" and "Business directory" are interesting.Though I find LOST bit out-of-place. In the last Gnu(s) Grazing Sajith had asked about listing of various Users Groups,I can find it here on http://www.gnu.org/gnu/fs-user-groups.html. Putting up press kit is really a great idea. Now before we go about building our website,what we need find a balance between technical and advocacy issues. What'd you say ? --arky cheers --arky __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover

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FSUG-Bangalore May 2004